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. 18
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Awkward silence.
Awkward with some extra vowels thrown in for extended awkwardness. Aaaaawkward.
Jazz had endured some awkward silences in his time. He'd caused quite a few of them. It could be argued, in fact, that he'd caused this one. He'd agree with that, too, but only to a point. This silence was actually the result of Jazz staunchly refusing to respond to the accusation of causing something even more awkward.
So this was awkward squared, really. If this were a science experiment, it could be said that the AWK2 element had supersaturated the test. Time to go back to the drawing board.
Or find an escape route, but that wasn't going to happen right now. This experiment had an observer keeping the mouse in the maze. He wasn't impartial in the least, but he seemed very interested in the end results. He also seemed to be working under the question of 'How much awkward can be added before the test subject explodes?'
"I'm not saying that you outright said anything," Starscream drawled from further ahead. "I was standing right beside you, after all. You didn't say anything."
Jazz picked his way through the rubble of Tarn and hopped over what had once been a shop sign. He deliberately ignored the Seeker perched on the wall up ahead. A teasing chortle informed him that he was being watched anyway. Jazz vaguely wished he knew what the experiment hypothesis was, if only so he could rebel against it out of spite. Playing by the rules seemed to be inviting more awkward to be added right now.
Fortunately, keeping his footing with only the moons and his headlights to guide his way was sufficient excuse for why he kept his head down. Two moons were up, now, but that barely gave more ambient light than the stars through the pollution that still drifted through Cybertron's skies in wispy, acrid clouds. Since he couldn't possibly get more spotted by the Decepticons than being in the company of Starscream, Jazz had his brights on to help light his way. Scanners weren't enough unless he wanted to pick his way slowly through the ruins. What hadn't collapsed in the repeated assaults during the war had been torn apart by scrap salvagers. All that was remained was inferior building materials left to rust. It made walking tricky at best, or a sinkhole lottery at worst.
Tarn really was a mess. Jazz doubted it'd ever be rebuilt.
Cybertron's population had been decimated by the civil war, and those who still left were clustered around outposts and fortresses, or hidden underground as Neutrals or part of the Autobot resistance cells. Cities like this had long ago been abandoned. Survivors had fled, knowing that it was better to be a refugee than a sitting target. As the energy crisis got worse, refugees had pulled together enough resources to build statis-holds far under the surface of the planet. Sometimes, it hadn't saved them. The substrata of Cybertron had collapsed as the support structure fell to war and neglect. Energy lines had been intercepted, and the statis-holds became crypts when the energon was blocked, diverted - or poisoned.
The Autobots had uncovered far too many of those crypts. Some had still been sealed. Some had been ripped open, the inhabitants slaughtered or gone missing. The culprits could have been anyone, even Autobot units prioritizing their own survival over neutrals. Neutral groups were just as ruthless, at times, willing to brutalize strangers to ensure their company made it. Decepticons had gone after any group large enough to be a potential threat, and, at least at the very beginning of the war, the Senate hadn't been much better.
Sadly, that last fact hadn't come out early enough in the war to stop the Senators' last gasps of power from screwing over the planet. There was no denying that the Decepticons had been out for victory and vengeance, but there was also no denying that the Senate had been equally vicious in the early days of the rebellion and subsequent war. It had blocked any peaceful resolution back in the time when its dissolution would have gone most of the way toward satisfying Megatron's initial demands. Instead of surrendering their power in return for nonviolent solutions, the Senators had ordered more than their fair share of war horrors to try and destroy the Decepticons.
The truth had been long lost in the sucking pull of news-spinning from both factions, but the Senate had committed atrocities. Even after all this time, vorns after making it to Third-in-Command and poring over Special Operations' gruesomely detailed history of the war, sick horror still tightened Jazz's spark. When he climbed to the top of a toppled support pillar and looked back the way he'd come, the sensation worsened. The pillar wasn't very high, yet he could see the floodlights from the arena in the distance. There was nothing still standing tall enough to block his sight. An entire city, flattened.
Tarn had been leveled, but not by the Decepticons. Like a dying Morphobot flailing through its death throes, the Senate had managed a lot of damage going down. In its last gasps, using its last loyal units of the Planetary Guard and Enforcers, it'd struck out against the Neutral Territories. The stubbornly independent city-states had never fully agreed with the Senate's rule before the war, and they'd refused to join either side of the burgeoning war. In the name of the Cybertron Unification Alliance, in the name of propaganda, the Senate had attempted to turn that fierce individualistic pride against the Decepticons.
They'd sent the six orbital ships, the vast platforms between Cybertron and her moons, to crash into the city-states. The great engines and technology from a forgotten time had been wrenched from their era-long orbits and careened down into atmosphere, breaking up as they fell. It had been set up to look like sabotage by the Decepticons. The Senate's troops were supposed to move in afterward to 'rescue the survivors' - after conveniently wiping out any witnesses who might provide a different account of things.
It would had been a masterful political move, if a horrifying act of war. It might have even worked, if the citizens had survived to rally against the Decepticons. At that point, however, the only mechs left serving the Senate had either truly believed the Senate's was in the right, or they hadn't known what was really going on, despite civil war erupting in every corner of the planet. Mechs with that kind of closed-minded fanaticism and ignorance had descended on the Neutral Territories.
Despite the original plan, every living mech in the cities had been classified as a witness. The Senate's chokehold on Cybertron's mass media had prevented the real story from becoming widespread, but the attempts to pin blame had failed as well. The whole incident had become a meaningless massacre that'd done nothing but spread panic across the planet.
Even if - if - the peace negotiations ended in a real treaty, Tarn wasn't going to rise again. There weren't enough survivors left to come home, and fear saturated the foundations. The ruins still felt like a target.
The Decepticons had butchered entire cities in the course of the war. Sometimes it was difficult to remember that, for some of the Decepticons, it had been revenge. It didn't make slaughter any more excusable. Right now, however, walking through Tarn, Jazz found it more understandable than he usually did.
How many mechs had joined the Autobots because those who stayed neutral became targets? How many mechs had become Decepticons out of hate for the Senate? How many Decepticons had defected to the Autobots in order to strike back at those who hit them? How many Autobots had gone Decepticon because they believed only tyranny could bring peace?
The war was a constant exchange of vengeance, back and forth. There weren't any clear parameters, no studied proposals and simple science explanations. Nobody could point at one event, one person, one idea, and say, "This. This is what we're fighting over."
Things hadn't become far too complicated; they'd started out that way. It had never been as straightforward as cause and effect. Economics and other factors were easy ways to analyze something that wasn't that simple. That kind of perspective reduced people to numbers and refused to acknowledge their inherent unpredictability. The war had tangled morass of emotion and response, and no observer could blame one single element for the continuing turnover of vengeance and defense, offense and revenge.
Jazz had to understand how people worked. He had to sympathize with what they felt. He wasn't above that cycle himself.
Starscream waited up ahead, a dark silhouette against a darker night sky, and some part of the saboteur wanted to take the shot. For the friends who'd been torn apart, or the cities destroyed, or the screech of maniacal laughter above the battlefield as the Autobots lost another battle. One shot, and the Air Commander would go down for good. One shot, and the Decepticon Second-in-Command would be just another statistic in the war. A casualty as the Great War continued, because continue it would, for many reasons that Starscream's death would only be one of.
Jazz stood there on the pillar, looking out over the ashes of Tarn, and contemplated revenge. A single shot to restart a war.
It was the easy way out, really. Wading through the propaganda and twisted spins on the facts was tiresome. It was difficult, maybe even impossible, to pick out the real meaning behind what he'd seen and participated in tonight. Jazz was so frustrated by trying to pry truth out of Starscream's warped plotting. He was a mouse in a maze scurrying around looking for cheese, and he didn't know if the observer was merely testing him or actively attempting to deceive him. The maze could be a deathtrap instead of a trial. The Autobots were guessing, and one wrong guess could ruin it all.
Maybe there was no cheese. The reward of peace could be pure fiction. The Seeker lied habitually. Why would he be honest now?
He looked ahead, and red optics were looking back. For all that his tone had been light and teasing, Starscream hadn't come within arm's reach since they'd left the makeshift arena downtown. One of the Air Commander's wings was halved, but he'd taken to the air and jetted from wall to wall ahead of Jazz the entire way. If not for the embarrassing accusations said in that mischievous tone, he could hardly be said to be keeping the Autobot company at all.
One shot. Just one.
Jazz sighed his vents clear of the old smell of char and met the red optics with a steady stare. He could take the shot, or the risk. Bait, or motivation. Maybe the cake was a lie, the cheese didn't exist, and peace would never happen. Starscream could be staying out of reach because he was a wary observer of a revolutionary new experiment, waiting for a possible explosion from the test subject. Or he could be a coward afraid his scheme had been found out. Either way, it was up to Jazz to decide.
Meh. Nothing was certain, anyway. If Special Operatives mechs took the easy way out, they'd just be Operatives, no Special.
He began climbing down, careful where he put his feet. "I didn't say anything."
"I know. What did I just say?" Starscream tsked.
"Then what're you getting at?"
"He's a telepath."
"Oh, please, mech couldn't read my mind with Vortex holdin' me down and half a refinery pumping through my tanks," Jazz snapped back, most of his concentration on a slippery slope of roofing tiles piled in the middle of the pitted road. "You really think I don't have shields up around him?" He skidded down the slope and danced a few steps on momentum at the bottom, turning it into a jogging run up the next heap of junk in his way.
Starscream watched him come closer. "That's actually my point." From here, the cracks in his optic glass were almost invisible. "You'd have had to drop your shields and project to get the idea across to him."
"You're…saying that I came up with that."
"Mmhmm. Suggested it, in any case. Quite an interesting insight into what goes on in that head of yours, I think."
Aaaaand they'd come right back around to the awkward silence.
The footing really was treacherous here, wasn't it? Jazz found the road surface to be utterly fascinating. He didn't look away from it. Who knew where the next pitfall was located?
Starscream had worked with Soundwave for millions of years. Jazz didn't doubt that the Air Commander could discern when the Communications Officer used his unique abilities to read other mechs' neural circuitry. Like the command cadre of the Autobots, the Decepticon officers had modified themselves against known threats. Among Decepticons, that meant protection against each other as well as against Autobots. Starscream probably had cerebral shield-mods just as strong as any the Autobots used.
It gave him a headache, but Jazz had a field-scrambler installed to cover the electromagnetic output of his central processors. It didn't protect his lock-away processor or remote units, but those required much more than a surface scan to decode. The scrambler wouldn't stand up to prolonged attack from Soundwave, but it prevented casual access while, say, standing near each other in a makeshift arena in the dead of night. Starscream hadn't done more than pause to greet the other Decepticon officer, but Jazz had slammed his scrambler on the moment he realized they were approaching the telepath. One could never be too careful around Soundwave.
…thought the Autobot who'd had his hand held in the crook of the Decepticon Air Commander's arm at the time. Uh. Yeah.
Well, in Jazz's defense, he had been riding a mission-high more than half made of stymied overload at the time. He'd just fragged Thundercracker's spark, and Jazz really didn't want to meet the mech who could walk away from that without wanting a frag of his own. Seriously - Thundercracker's spark. Jazz had been touching his spark with fingers and tongue. It had been furthest thing possible from the data interface Jazz knew, and it'd been hotter than melted metal. He hadn't been thinking all that clearly afterward, and he'd been concentrating hard for those uninterrupted lines of thought he did have going.
So maybe he'd had an idea, and just maybe he'd shut off the scrambler for a quarter a klik, and, okay, it was theoretically possible that Soundwave's scanners had caught it. Erm, especially since Jazz had been thinking a specific mental picture as strongly as he could at the telepath when Starscream stopped before Soundwave to exchange completely out-of-context pleasantries. It had totally not been the time for small talk. Who asked about where progress on the draft had halted tonight when Thundercracker was sprawled on the ground behind them? Jazz had been completely justified in being impatient with waiting.
That did not mean he was going to confess he was the reason Soundwave had cut things short, however. No matter how close to the mark Starscream's guesses were falling. Jazz hadn't said anything. Soundwave had been on Earth just as long as he had. Nuts and bolts, the mech was the Decepticon Communication Officer; he'd probably had even more exposure to humanity's bizarre disciplinary practices.
So it was entirely possible that yanking Thundercracker over his knee and spanking his aft had been the telepath's own idea. And Jazz hadn't been staring at all, no matter how Thundercracker had kicked and squealed with each heavy smack! from Soundwave.
Ahem. Silence continued to be Jazz's best answer, here. The AWK2 element reading was positively sky-high in this area tonight.
Starscream laughed from up ahead, but Jazz kept his visor on the ground. Tricky stuff, rubble.
"Now you know what a courtship proposal looks like among the Decepticons," the Air Commander commented dryly, apparently deciding to let the subject lie. For the moment, anyway. "What do you think?"
Jazz thought that he was fortunate Starscream hadn't pushed him as hard as Decepticons evidently pushed each other. "I think it's weird we never heard anything 'bout this prior to you landing on our doorstep," he said, because it was true.
Also because he wasn't going to even field a hint of a suggestion that contract negotiations between Autobots and Decepticons include tying mechs up and walloping them to overload. Just…not a good idea, that.
A kinky idea, but definitely not a good one.
There was a moment of silence, during which the small Autobot ducked and crawled under an old girder propping up a wall. When he straightened up on the other side, Starscream looked down at him from the top of the Tarn/Vos border wall. Jazz reset his visor, shunting away all the automatic target-locks that popped up, and flexed his armor out so the plating gaped. Rust pattered to the ground in a dusty hail when he shook himself.
"Hmm." Red optics sized him up and dismissed the thought of offering a hand up. "It's not all that strange. It's customary to seek permission across private comm. lines," Starscream said, thinking aloud, "but Thundercracker's communication suite was," he smirked, "broken during the challenge. Soundwave had to propose out loud." His wings shrugged. "And you must admit that it got more attention when announced that way."
From the way Thundercracker's sated spark had sluggishly sped up, it probably had something to do with the Seeker's peculiar humiliation fetish, too. Making him, once again, admit out loud what he wanted. In this case, wanting what Soundwave had offered: a contract for rank held in the Communications division under Soundwave.
Jazz was never going to understand wanting that. Or being excited by someone spanking him, either. Thundercracker had quietly granted permission to court from where he'd been sprawled in the rust, then gasped agreement to the spanking from over Soundwave's knee. Even charged up and giddy, Jazz had boggled at that.
"Why'd you ask me off comm., then?" The saboteur walked along the wall, looking for a way up. There were enough handholds below Starscream's chosen perch to scramble up, but threat assessment insisted that he have a hand free in case he needed to draw a weapon. "You guys seem to be all 'bout the customs, so why break now?"
Yeah, it was still just really odd thinking about the Decepticons as being traditional. Traditional Vosians, no less.
Starscream rose and limped along the wall, keeping pace with the Autobot. "You think I don't know that anything put through to your network will be broadcast back in your base for everyone to listen to?" Contempt dripped off the high-pitched voice, making it an audible sneer. "I do prefer at least the pretense of modesty, Au - Jazz."
Speaking of awkward, the way Starscream stumbled over using his name was worth noting. The small black-and-white mech glanced up, trying to judge if it'd been intentional or not. Starscream's face gave nothing away, but Jazz's sight at the moment consisted of what could be seen by the pale metallic light of the moons, Starscream's own optics, and passive sensor sweeps. He could be missing something. Not that it would mean much, considering the Seeker's mercurial moods. The temperamental Air Commander could be incredibly easy to read at times, but nobody knew when his transparent body language was honest reaction or part of a ploy.
Information and threat assessment processors collided. The resulting random firing of subroutines made Jazz ache in unfamiliar ways. His thoughts were pulled in conflicting directions by code. Suggested actions and predicted reaction models scrolled down his HUD in a constant rapid-fire cascade. Starscream was either a scientist or a test subject himself. Jazz was either part of an experiment or a playing piece on the board. This was either war or peace, and he didn't know how to make the decision of which it was.
He was the Head of Special Operations, the Third-in-Command of the Autobots. Right now, he felt that wasn't enough. He wasn't equipped to decide the fate of a world.
If tonight was somewhere in the endless cycle of vengeance, someone had to rise above it. Someone had to stop and refuse to pursue revenge any longer. Maybe peace wasn't so much about ending conflict between the factions as it was recognizing they were locked in a self-destructive cycle against themselves. Whatever other reasons had ultimately led to the peace negotiations, the truth was that Cybertron had been well on its way to dying. The Autobots and Decepticons had been killing themselves off in their cyclical civil war for so long that that even an optimistic planetary census read like a science report on a dying species. Including estimates for undisturbed statis-holds, remaining Cybertronians still counted in under a million.
If they'd been organic, there'd be a massive outcry of concern involving propagation of their species. As it was, the initial ceasefire had allowed rationality to creep in around the bloody-minded revenge driving so many of them. The war had seemed so huge and out-of-control that nobody had really understood how very small it'd gotten. When battles were fought by resistance cells or drones, or far away in entirely different star systems, it'd been difficult to tell how many mechs were still alive. The factions had boiled off to next to nothing. The rank and file had become concentrated down, with only the very best left alive.
Cybertron had become a whole planet of Tarns, with not enough survivors left to rebuild their leveled world. And the majority of those survivors currently struggled to feel responsibility to do so, rather than an obligation to keep fighting for what had already been destroyed.
What a wake-up call.
"I wish," Jazz said softly, letting wishful thinking override his aching processors for a moment, "that I could trust you."
When he looked up, the red optics in the darkness seemed too weary for caution. "You said it yourself, Autobot: Decepticons are not trustworthy," Starscream returned, and his voice was a brassy, strident discord in the night. To the Autobot below, the Air Commander's nasal voice held more bitterness than mockery.
"There seems little point in continuing this farce."
Whatever hope the Autobots held, the Decepticons might be, could be holding onto, too.
"What do you really think you're watching?"
But the Decepticons would never show it. That would be weak.
Assessment processors fought not to freeze up. There had been too much code-changing in too short a time. Jazz needed recovery time for a thorough defragmenting. Tonight had introduced too many new factors into the subroutine protocols. Information, threat assessment, and noncombat-dealings were straining under new data-sorting protocols.
He kept himself from wincing. He looked up at Starscream and listened to his processors. War or peace, death trap or puzzle maze…reward or bait. Welcome to Decepticon courtship: cake or death?
He listened, and gambled on maybe.
"Are you gonna help me, or just stand there ogling me all night?" he demanded as if it were the most casual thing in the world. "I realize I'm too sexy for my altmode, but I got more to do tonight than stand around bein' optic candy."
Starscream's optics flared, but that was only sign of surprise. "Do you really think half the Armada won't have their optics glued on your aft after your little show?" He knelt on the edge of the wall and extended a hand down toward the Autobot. His face held none of the amusement giving his already shrill voice a keen edge. "Current odds have that I'm courting you merely for your looks and, ahem. Skills." He put emphasis on the last word, and somehow Jazz doubted the skills being bet on had anything to do with SpecOps.
That was oddly flattering, truth be told. Which truth Jazz would never tell, because becoming the 'face-fantasy of the Decepticon Armada brought a whole new level of awkward to the table. Awkward squared plus the square root of mortified.
On the surface, however, he only smiled and stretched to grab hold of Starscream's hand. "What're the other bets on?"
"The past favorite was political, that I'm settling for second-best since the Prime isn't available." Their gazes locked and held as the Air Commander lifted him up, off his feet. Starscream took his time. The black-and-white Autobot suppressed a shiver working its way down his back struts one joint at a time. "About the time you arrived tonight, the odds shifted toward unrequited personal interest, since no one could understand why else you'd call off the courtship otherwise."
Apparently the Armada was still under the impression that Jazz would be the one to call it off. Was Starscream too proud to admit defeat and call it off himself, or was this another courtship tradition? Or was this a purely coerced contract? Both Acid Storm and Thundercracker had seemed unhappy that Starscream was courting, and Skywarp had all but admitted Megatron was forcing something none of them wanted.
"There seems little point in continuing this farce."
"Maybe we're not politically compatible," Jazz suggested, covering an unpleasant judder of his fuel pump by kicking out a foot to catch the top of the wall. "Autobot…Decepticon…sometimes these things don't work out, y'know?" Understatement of the orn, right there.
Also, a backhanded acknowledgement of…before. Recognition of the argument in the hallway that had likely caused much of the upheaval tonight. Not an apology, but a nod to the fundamental differences in culture and thought that separated them. Jazz had learned a lot tonight. Too much, perhaps, but what had been seen couldn't be and shouldn't be unseen.
This close, the cracked optic and dented face plate were clearly visible. Starscream shook his head as if chiding him. "It's common knowledge that the only reason for the Decepticon/Autobot contracts is Megatron's orders. What's kept the betting going is why I chose to court you." The saboteur arched, using the Seeker's grip and the foot on the wall to buck himself up onto the wall - and practically onto Starscream as well. The Air Commander caught him before their bodies did more than brush together, and his mouth turned down in a mild frown as he looked down at the smaller mech. "It'd be easy credits to collect on the bets myself if I could only recall why I made that choice."
That was not a good thing to hear. Sounded like Starscream was still fuming. When the Air Commander fumed, he'd shoot his own foot to spite his face. Or screw a peace treaty over to get back at a meddling Autobot.
"What, you don't want me?" Jazz boldly kept his grip on Starscream's hand and stood his ground. He tilted his head back and grinned fiercely. "Everybody wants me."
"You were not my first choice." Starscream's voice was flat and insulting, just daring him to take offense. "You were not even my second."
"Ouch." The Autobot recoiled exaggeratedly, pushing his lip out in an overdone pout. "That hurts." A smile won out over the pout after a moment, and he poured on the charm. "But I'm so shi~iny," he coaxed. He was in a destroyed city with no witnesses in sight, trying to tempt the ornery Second-in-Command of the Decepticons into a round of verbal banter. He was pushing his luck and knew it. "C'mon, y'know you want the shiny Autobot." He pushed a hip out and propped his free hand on it. His windows rolled up and down as his doors jigged slightly.
The brief surge of anger that had surfaced on the Seeker's face melted back into arrogance. A less observant mech might not have even noticed it covered pain and weariness. "You are, I think, more trouble than you are worth."
Not a good sign at all. "Then why'd you go after me in the first place?" Jazz asked, keeping his tone playful. He really, really did not want this to be taken seriously. "Fine, whatever. You're not good enough for me, anyway. If you can't take the heat, get outta the smelter." He shook his hand free and examined it as if it had Decepticon cooties, now.
Starscream snorted and muttered something that had the sound of "I'll stuff you in a smelter," but he didn't reach for the saboteur. Instead, he took a step back along the wall. His freed hand disappeared behind his back, and Jazz's passive sensors blared alarm as the sudden spike of energy signaled the opening of an altmode storage subspace pocket. The Autobot's fuel pump started to pound as threat assessment immediately slid into high gear. Jazz had to control a flinch as information assessment started screaming lurid warnings down his HUD. Starscream's hand came back out of subspace, and maybe wasn't a certainty. Jazz had gambled on the wrong thread of possibility, and -
- and that was a cube of energon, not a weapon. From the purplish glitter, it was highgrade.
Red optics were watching him just as intently as his visor watched Starscream, and the Air Commander huffed a sullen bark of laughter. It sounded as if he didn't want to be amused by the surprise on Jazz's face. "Well," Starscream said as he looked down at the cube in his hand, "no one ever said Autobots were easy."
"I resemble that remark," Jazz said back tartly, but his mouth was on automatic. His attention was more on the fact that the Seeker had extended his free hand toward him. "What're you playing at now?"
This time it was the Decepticon who piled on the charm until it oozed. "Oh, did you want me to play?"
Jazz looked at the larger mech, and half a dozen scenes of what had happened tonight flew through his mind. That one rogue subprocessor spun out a few more, just for fun, and his visor shuttered through reset twice trying to stuff those imagined scenes back where they'd come from before they set his vents to blowing again. "I think I'll pass."
Even with chipped dental molds and dented facial plating, Starscream's smile was deceptively innocent. "The night is young."
"And I need my beauty sleep, so I'll just be going now, yeah?"
"For the purpose of ending our Great War," Starscream rasped, voice dropping, and it sent all those back struts to vibrating again.
He was not nervous. Amateurs got nervous. The Jazzmeister was just searching for what the angle was, and not finding it was making him a little chary. Jazz edged into a pose from which he could either fling himself off the wall or fight back. At this point, threat assessment was only guessing what Starscream would do next.
Mech was as unpredictable as a SpecOps operative.
Jazz stared into the looking glass, Decepticon-distorted like a funhouse mirror, and wondered who was testing whom.
No, he couldn't trust Starscream. However, for the sake of the Autobots, for peace and Cybertron, someone had to start having some blind faith.
He looked down at the hand and reluctantly extended his own. "For the purpose of ending our Great War."
Black fingers settled onto blue, and warped joints creaked as they closed around the Autobot's smaller hand. A blue thumb caressed his knuckles before turning his hand over and opening it upward. That blue thumb swept in again, pressing firmly into the palm of a black hand, and Jazz couldn't look away from Starscream's face. He couldn't even begin to guess what he saw in the expression there. A flicker of a smile, and the highgrade was transferred to Jazz's palm.
Starscream's now-free hand extended, and Jazz offered his other hand without conscious thought. Half-mesmerized, he let the Air Commander take his hand and turn it toward the night sky. Red optics studied it carefully, attention fastened to it as if refusing to look into Jazz's visor were another challenge he intended to win. The combat-battered Seeker almost-smiled once more and bent over their hands.
Jazz's pump skipped a beat, and his visor widened. This again?
He could have taken the shot; he hadn't. He could have pulled away; he didn't. He saw it coming, and let it happen.
In the dim light of the moon, the curve of Starscream's mouth hid beneath the shadow of his helm. Jazz couldn't see it. He could only feel the satin-smooth slide of finely polished metal in the center of his palm. Starscream pressed a kiss there, and the slight pressure revealed nicks in the soft metal. The Autobot's fans stuttered quietly to life when Starscream drew his mouth up from the palm, gently touching his mouth to the vulnerable wrist join where black hands met white-armored forearm. Hyper-sensitive sensor networks blitzed Jazz's cortex with the soft, slow feel of it, but also of the uneven drag of a nanite-clotted wound on the inside of Starscream's lower lip.
If not for the blue hand still cradling Jazz's other hand, the cube of highgrade would have sloshed as a full-body shudder passed through the saboteur from helm projections to tires. It was small, but noticeable.
Starscream looked up, just enough to meet Jazz's clouded gaze. The almost-smile lurked, and the Decepticon bowed his head down. Another kiss to Jazz's open palm, and then Starscream folded the Autobot's hand around it. Blue fingers stroked each finger into place, one at a time, until Jazz's hand was a loose fist holding onto a sensor-memory.
When the Seeker stepped forward, straightening out his half-bow enough to be level with the smaller mech, Jazz only stared at him. Starscream's smirk was lopsided but registered as oddly genuine despite the circumstances - or maybe because of them. The Autobot wasn't really sure what was going on, but there was a vast feeling of relief bottoming out his tanks. This was not aggression. This was not rejection. Somehow, Jazz had managed to wrestle something resembling victory out of the night.
Even if victory was merely Starscream pressing their forehelms together, vents sighing heated air into Jazz's face. There was a tiny brush of metal against Jazz's cheek, which he only realized had been the tip of the Seeker's nose when Starscream stepped back and straightened to his full height. Baffled but game, Jazz met his smirk with his own patented grin. His hands were still before him, just barely held up by blue fingertips. Those dropped away as the Seeker took another step away.
The small grounder looked down at what he'd been given and let his grin go crooked. "Dinner and a show, huh?"
"There have been worse first dates," Starscream replied, so martyred the Autobot's grin nearly became a laugh.
Powerful thrusters came online with a muted roar, pushing the flyer gradually up in the night sky. Knowing the kind of damage the Seeker had suffered, Jazz had to admire the even launch. Decepticon red stayed locked on Autobot blue as the Air Commander hovered briefly above him.
"Enjoy the rest of your night, intended. I would escort you home to your berth, but apparently further attention would prevent recharge. You say you need rest to maintain your looks." There was barely enough light to see the evil flash of a smirk when it came. "I'll just go ask Soundwave a few pointed questions about novel ideas and their source instead. Should be an interesting conversation, don't you think?"
The Seeker's thrusters lit to full burn not a second later, not giving the Autobot time to do more than stiffen as that processed. Starscream shot off over the ruins of Tarn, back toward the arena. Also toward Soundwave and his information on just why he'd put Thundercracker over his knee.
Jazz was left on the wall alone, holding a cube of highgrade in one hand and the sensor-ghost of a goodnight kiss in the other. His mouth opened, but closed helplessly after a moment. There wasn't really anything he could say to that.
Aaaakward.
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End Pt. 18
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A/N: Thank you so much for the reviews, folks.