PAIRINGS: Mirage/Optimus, Jazz/Optimus, and Primus/everyone

WARNINGS (for this section): sticky sex, divine intervention.

The Autobots gathered in the plaza were a shifting mass of hope and anxiety. They all felt vulnerable and vaguely silly unarmed and half-unplated as they were. Some were all but unrecognizable, having taken off entire sections of plating, wheels, spoilers, and kibble. Some felt blind, having laid aside augmented visors and specialized sonar and radar arrays. Some felt exposed, faceplates and facemasks removed to bare mouths and expressions for the first time in vorns. Some felt guilty and hypocritical, having long ago decided that Primus had turned away from all of them. Some felt ashamed that they were not as excited as the others, sure that they were missing something. Some watched and waited for an attack from above, praying that the Decepticons didn't show up. Some-a very quiet few-prayed that they would.

All shivered at the feel of the mountain wind playing over newly-exposed struts and protoform. All waited for their Prime to emerge. And at the appointed hour, all gasped at the wave of energy that preceded Optimus as he walked out of the staging shelter and climbed the dais.

He was beautiful in ways that went beyond the physical and slid into the mystical. His plating removed, he was smaller, the width of chest and shoulders lessened, limbs slimmed but still powerful. The base layer of his chromonanites still lay over struts and protoform, but his colors were muted, the boundaries less rigid. Combined with the occasional visible licks of charge that arced between and under his plating and the brightness of his spark, the soft colors made him look like he was glowing. The thickness of his helm had been lightened, emphasizing his audials and making his optics look larger. Those optics were no longer Autobot blue, instead glowing a holy, incandescent white. Looking into those optics, feeling the blessed resonance pouring off him like a second sun, every spark down to the most nervous calmed, steadied, warmed, as if cradled by a great hand.

The Prime raised his hands, and his acolytes approached.

One acolyte was outwardly serene as he knelt before the Prime, familiar with this ritual and graceful in his piety. Inside, however, he was conflicted between opposing emotions: thankfulness that such a holy rite was being performed again, after so many vorns of war...and sadness tinged with an unacknowledged anger that one of the holiest rituals in the Cybertronian calendar had to be held on a backwater organic planet, all but in the dirt.

Mirage raised his face at the Prime's touch, looked up into those plasma-white optics, all colors and none, and found the rift in his spark eased, his feelings and desires acknowledged and accepted, his anger met with understanding, his sorrow with care, his pride with love. He shuttered his optics, surprised and overwhelmed, and hands stroked over his helm, tracing over his vents and sliding down to his bare shoulder struts. The warm rush of data from newly-exposed sensors made him moan, and then there were lips on his own, arms around him, and an incomprehensibly powerful field enfolding him, inviting him to explore deeper. Mirage's spark pulsed with desire, with need, with yearnings that had nothing to do with his buzzing interface equipment. The Prime pulled him down, gently, and Mirage went, his spike sliding into the waiting valve not so much in obedience as worship.

Large hands caressed him, soothing and tender as if it was Mirage accepting another, Mirage needing reassurance. The care in that gesture, the wave of utter acceptance and love breaking against his spark like the ocean upon the shore, undid him.

For the first time in vorns, Mirage let go, his spark reaching out and finding everything it needed offered back to him, until the sweet, pleasurable movements of his body were superfluous, Primus' blessing settling on him, in him, like the sunlight against his plating.

Mirage lost himself in the ecstasy of the Prime's offering. It was like coming home.

The other acolyte was nervous. The sight and feel of a holy Prime, ripe with energy and half-ethereal was new and intimidating, yet invigorating and exciting to him. The acolyte was built to be cunning and adaptable, but the gravity of this, the POWER, rocked him to his core. He had not expected this presence, this field that was so much more than Optimus alone.

Jazz's belief in a benevolent creator-god, if he'd ever had one, had long since been pushed aside to let him perform his function and all the others that war had pushed upon him. And honestly, how could he respect a god that demanded reverence then abandoned them like a careless creator? As he watched (and watched over) the Prime and his fellow acolyte, as the very air of the plaza crackled with one overload and then another, the watching acolyte could feel, against all laws of common sense and physics, the pistol he'd deliberately left in his subspace.

He'd known it would be blasphemy when he left it there. But he'd known with the optic of a lieutenant, bodyguard, and assassin that, should any Decepticons show up bent on harming the Prime, the acolytes would be in the best position to defend him.

And Jazz never trusted in gods to do what he could do himself.

Still, as Mirage rose, optics white, his field alight, and Primus' own avatar turned to look at Jazz, the saboteur couldn't help but feel ashamed. As if he'd blown off...well, something important.

The Prime held out a hand to him, and Jazz went, helm bowed.

For a spec ops mech, a profession built on NOT being seen, the sense of examination as Prime's field washed over his own was at first acutely uncomfortable. It prickled against his sensors, the spark-stuttering power behind it older, more ancient than Prime, older than the Matrix, exactly as old as Cybertron. It flowed down to his very spark, slipping under every mask, every lie he'd ever told himself, further than any lover had ever gone or he'd ever dared to look. He trembled at the vulnerability (and with no little confusion as this seemed excessive based on what Mirage had briefed him to expect) but clamped down on the instinct to pull away, to protect the wound. As ever, he moved forward into the challenge, running reverent hands over thin plating and pressing his lips over the spark whose light spilled out into the growing twilight, unable to be contained in a mere mortal frame.

Prime pulled him down gently, guiding him into position and then merely waiting, a smile on those rarely-seen lips. Jazz leaned down to kiss them helplessly as he pressed forward, his eager spike sinking into the slick valve with a shock of connection that was entirely different than the interfacing marathon of the past few days.

It was like being unlocked. Not the cracking of being hacked or the breaking of an interrogation, but the joyful relief of OPENING, of being seen and known and understood. Every flaw, every sin (even the weapon he'd not been able to set aside) laid bare and examined and found acceptable. It was a thousandfold amplification of Optimus appointing him-a spy, assassin, and an ex-Decepticon to boot-third in command. This, as that, Jazz accepted for the very same, long-buried, spark-deep reason: the desire to be part of a greater, brighter whole.

Jazz laughed joyously as warm hands stroked charged sparks over his plating, as warm lips pressed gently against the unfamiliar vulnerability of bared optics. The Prime's spark flared, and Jazz's followed suit, energy dancing and twining in a rolling upwards spiral that washed away everything but the desire-the NEED-to be one. One frame. One spark. One PURPOSE.

Oh, Jazz thought, understanding dawning just as overload arced between them, as something just beyond his awareness slid into his systems. OH.

The blessing settled in Jazz's spark, delight and contentment spilling over into his field. He raised his head, opened optics as pure white as Prime's, as Mirage's, just in time to sense the roar of flight engines.

He rose as Prime rose, the three of them watching, waiting, as the Decepticons landed.