Chapter co-written with starsheild and vaevade
Jazz/Optimus Prime
Jazz/Whiplash/Prowl ... with Whiplash under the whip.
Heavy consensual sexual and torture violence.

Another chapter with graphic smut. See my Ao3 account for the full version.

archiveofourown dot org/works/562319/chapters/1101040

Dark Dreamer 7: Cultural Lessons
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ =================== ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When Whiplash left, he did so knowing his leader still had a lot on his processors and a few things to sort out with Prowl over the previous evening. The silver mech wasn't alone in needing to think about what had happened and how. They both had far too much experience to make such a rookie mistake, and yet they both had. No matter how well he tried to hide it, Prowl couldn't completely conceal his uneasiness with having both Whiplash and Jazz in the same room with him. It was the primary reason Jazz had shooed Whiplash away. Playful in appearance it may have been, both minibots knew it was because Prowl had all but panicked when he saw them kiss over his frame.

Now Jazz lay sprawled on top of his pet, taking in how quickly Prowl settled with Whiplash out of the room.

"You liked Whiplash before," Jazz prodded lightly, his tone mildly curious. Though it was an effort, he kept his displeasure from showing for the moment. He wanted answers, not code-reworking compliance right now. The root cause needed to be addressed, or at least understood, before it could cause greater problems. Having an agent distressed at having Jazz and his Second in the same room was a serious issue on so many levels.

"I still like him, Master," Prowl murmured, distinctly uncomfortable with the subject. He knew his master was not pleased.

"But," Jazz prompted, his tone just a fraction harder but his field still calmly curious.

Prowl dropped his optics, submission pushing through a flared field despite the difficulty in pushing his spark energy so far. "He hurt you," his voice quivered, a faint tremor that expanded to his frame. "He made me hurt you," Prowl nearly keened despite his best efforts not to.

A resigned sigh flowed from Jazz's vents. "That I wanted him to, that I enjoy it; none of that matters, does it?"

A low, plaintive whimper was all Prowl could manage for a lingering moment. His wings trembled against the berth's plush softness before he briefly glanced up to meet his master's visor. "Master ... I'm working on it," he promised, pleading for time. "Hurting Master goes against very deep coding. It is not an easy edit."

Jazz's fingers lightly stroked Prowl's chest. "How deep?"

That flicker of stillness across Prowl's features had been one of his pet's most difficult tells for Jazz to decipher, but he'd managed. With a soothing trill Jazz slid a cable from his wrist and plugged into the quickly offered port at the base of Prowl's neck. He was welcomed in with the same mixture of self-hate/pain and frustration directed in equal measures towards himself and Prowl that had been in Prowl's field, yet there was also a definite sense that he is welcome to be in his pet's processors.

Prowl awkwardly nudged Jazz's awareness away from core processors, and even the secondary ones. The entirety of Prowl's consciousness was skipped, though it showed clear signs of recent half-complete renovations of a rather dramatic extent. Jazz paused as he recognized the beginnings of a primitive full personality partition. The kind of construct that in a far more effective form was used for deep cover missions.

Prowl waited until Jazz had finished looking with a native patience that just didn't feel quite as natural as it should if it was truly native. Jazz didn't prod at that just yet, and followed Prowl's markers with a growing certainty of where he was going. As young and simple as Prowl's programming was, there was only one small but immensity powerful set of codes that wouldn't be in his primary processors.

Spark coding.

With a nudge from Prowl, the ancient and primitive glyphs unfurled for Jazz. Simple, clean and so very painfully unable to cope with what Jazz wanted.

Serve.
Protect.
Know.

Each glyph was so simple as to be all but unrecognizable to its modern counterpart. Inscribed into the spark chamber by the spark itself, they were the immutable foundation of everything that spark could become, and what would destroy it beyond any ability to recover.

Whether Prowl recognized the power he was giving Jazz in this knowledge the minibot didn't know. He wasn't even sure he wanted to know. Yet in the glyphs themselves he could read the truth.

Yes, Prowl knew exactly what he was offering.

He offered it not out of ignorance of its value, but out of the drive the glyphs themselves spoke of.

To serve Master.
To protect Master.
To know everything.

Every line of coding installed or written, every memory and choice would eventually be filtered through the foundation of those three glyphs. Even if Prowl was completely wiped, new memory core and even a new frame, he would develop along similar lines even in significantly different situations.

To force any mecha to fulfill one of those spark-codes at the direct expense of another was inviting disaster.

Yet as he watched the glyphs shimmer before his virtual optics, strong and potent as the spark that coded them, Jazz couldn't help his own nature. Though he has no intention of sharing his spark coding with anyone not capable of tearing it from him, he knows himself. He knows what is engraved in the very matrix of his spark chamber.

He shields all thoughts of it carefully as he backs out of this intimacy and towards the upper levels where Prowl's awareness is waiting for him.

~What is the partition for?~ Jazz asked, though he's fairly sure he knows.

~A holding place for the protocols, memories and thoughts needed to hurt you,~ Prowl answered without hesitation. ~They can not exist freely in my processors for long before causing problems.~

Jazz caressed his pet's processors, expressing a very real awe at the loyalty he had stumbled into and respect at what he'd been willingly given. ~I will help you build it,~ he said softly, nuzzling against Prowl's awareness. ~But for now, remember this. Until Temperance says otherwise, until your spark is fully matured, you will not be asked to hurt me or watch me being hurt for my pleasure. It is your explicit right to stop it.~

He watched, utterly fascinated, as Prowl almost stalled. Processors went blank in a near-freeze that was embedded thickly with shock-disbelief-relief and a much smaller sensation worming through it: uncertainty. It wasn't quite distrust, but it told Jazz all he needed to know of how well promises to Prowl were typically kept. How Prowl knew what had been promised when he had no memories that contained language Jazz was less sure, but the resulting sensation was unmistakable.

~I can stop it?~ Prowl repeated, somewhere between a question and statement with intense hope fluttering behind it.

~Until Temperance says your spark is mature, yes, you may stop it,~ Jazz repeated even as he pinged Whiplash with the agreement.

Surprise came back from his Second, but no argument. Jazz had little doubt that Whiplash was relieved for the order. Prowl's reaction towards him had not been what the black mech wanted for the first morning after. Whiplash didn't have nearly Jazz's taste for pain in either position, though like every good agent he'd made good friends with it. Jazz still knew that if he never had to cause or suffer pain again, if he was only asked to perform the quite, silent kills that were his specialty, Whiplash would be pleased by it. The black mech also had a preference for lovers, those that wanted another round upon waking up with him after their first encounter.

Prowl had most definitely not wanted another round. Jazz had no doubt that Prowl would have bolted from the room if they hadn't be leaning over him at the time. It didn't matter that it would have been an interface devoid of bondage or pain and it showed in the Praxian's frame when he registered arousal in the pair.

Jazz continued to watch as the permission order sank in and propagated through Prowl's processors, creating thousands of small changes and a few significant ones in the reaction tree Prowl maintained. It was a look at how his pet thought that fascinated Jazz. He'd watched many bots think before, some that were decidedly odd, but he had yet to watch a logic and response tree that was quite so devoid of the clearly selfish aspects. The closest Prowl seemed to come was his reaction to research, but even that was very muted when doing it for its own sake.

Emotional pleasure, for Prowl, was too tied up in the needs and desires of others for Jazz's long-term comfort. It made him an excellent slave, and excellent low-ranking subordinate, but it made him all but useless as an officer or agent without a tremendous amount of work. It was work Jazz would do, even if he didn't like it.

~Master, please help me build a good partition now?~ Prowl struggled with the request for himself. Behind the words was the terrible distress and spark-code conflicts the memories of the previous night had caused him.

Jazz smiled and caressed his processors and frame with affectionate support. ~Yes. I have nowhere more important to be.~

Deep inside Prowl's processors, multiple levels of tension smoothed. He opened himself up even more and have himself fully to watching and assisting his master build the strong partition to keep him from breaking at fulfilling one spark code against another.

SxSxSxSxSxSxSxSx S===================S SxSxSxSxSxSxSxS

Prowl stood in a room he was entirely too familiar with. A place he hated and adored in equal measure.

Hated because it meant he was alone. His master was elsewhere, sometimes for more than an orn, and no one else was going to keep him company, or even keep an optic on him. He knew it was a sign of trust, but he couldn't shake the sensation of being abandoned that came with it, the subtle panic he couldn't suppress that his beloved, wonderful master would never return and he would be given to someone else. Again.

This place was adored because this was what Master referred to as a tactical room. Prowl only knew that it was full of the most incredible holo-displays that would bring to wonderful visual detail any information he wanted. There were ports where he could plug into for direct downloads.

He couldn't even begin to wrap his processors around the scope of the information Master had presented him with, but he could give his full dedication to learning each and every detail of whatever Master had listed for the orn. The schedule had been plotted out a metacycle in advance, though it was constantly being modified based on how much Prowl learned and what questions he asked Master at the end of the orn when their frames were sated.

The schedule was what he was expected to learn, but Master had made it very clear that once Prowl had that committed to memory he was free to look up anything else that he wished to. So far he had backed off any time that he encountered a firewall he wasn't authorized to pass, though he was dimly aware that at some point Master expected him to try and get through without the correct password. It made him uncomfortable for reasons he could not articulate, so he did not even try. He determined to face that challenge when it was required of him.

Until then, he would explore what he had easy access to.

The lesson this orn: frametype classes.

Settling in, relaxing his frame and locking his lower joints, Prowl called up the first series of image and datafiles: airframes.

The first subsidiary menu came up, asking which of the nine size categories he wished to learn about first. Prowl hummed with a pleasure he had no designation for and didn't care to worry about. Except for Master's absence, delving into the endless torrents of data was a bliss like no other. Not even the best overload he'd experienced came close to how good it felt to submerge himself in the data streams and give himself over to their expansiveness.

He was completely unaware of just how many individuals were watching him in one way or another.

SxSxSxSxSxSxSxSx S===================S SxSxSxSxSxSxSxS

Several levels and a world away Jazz was walking through the halls of the Prime's palace, cheerfully greeting nobles, warriors, servants and slaves alike, noting changes, new scuffs, new finishes or adornments. Sometimes out loud, mostly to himself. Yet much of his processing power was devoted to watching his pet and what he pet was looking up. He was no longer concerned that Prowl might not do what he'd been told to, or that he might find something that he shouldn't. These orns he watched because it was very enjoyable to see his pet so happy, to feel, even filtered through half a dozen systems, what the unusual mech felt when immersed in the dataflow. Prowl would be an outstanding monitor and data miner, possibly even before he was old enough to have specialized upgrades for it. He had the personality basics already, and the spark code glyph that was most critical for the function. Any mech with Know branded on their spark casing would excel in any function that involved huge amounts of data. They also tended to do well in any function that found hidden information.

He'd barely settled down in his office when he received a summons from the Prime. Or more accurately, an invitation to the Prime's hot oil bath.

A playful grin crossed Jazz's features as he shut down the systems that had just come on line for him. An invitation from the Prime was not to be ignored, but this was far more than a simple invitation. As much as the Lord High Protector despised it, the young Prime liked to indulge in the company of others, especially one minibot whom Megatron could not control and didn't care about the Prime's age or status.

He strolled from the lift into the foyer of the Prime's apartment, a gorgeous five levels tall by a convey class height and wide open from here, into the grand entry hall and out across Iacon's bright skyline through windows two levels tall. If he'd been a less common visitor there would no doubt be someone there to meet him, if not the Prime himself. But Jazz was a common sight here and knew his way around. He was allowed to move where he pleased and soon reached the top level where the Prime's berth chamber and huge, lavish washrack.

Jazz whistled his arrival, a cheerful, playful sound to greet the large, lightly armored Prime as he walked into the washrack where the highest High Priest was relaxing in simmering hot oil and looking out over the beauty of the capitol city.

The small smile on the young Prime's face was genuine, welcoming the mech that would have obeyed his summons no matter what, but that Optimus also knew enjoyed these summons as much as the Prime did when he was in this sort of mood.

"Join me." He waved to the oil and to where Jazz's preferred refreshments were arranged, the words more invitation than order as his attention switched from the outside view to studying the motion and frame of his newly arrived company.

"Anytime," Jazz grinned and made an easy, smooth dive into the deep oil, his passage barely rippling the surface with his passing. He sank to the bottom and strolled to the tiered bench that had a spot next to the Prime that was shallow enough for him to relax with his helm out of the oil. "Just wanting company, or is there a chat before the fun?"

"A little bit of a chat." The large red mech rumbled, shifting so that he was facing the silver minibot more. His relaxed field set the tone for his words, indicating clearly that it was mere curiosity driving his questions and nothing more. "I have been wondering about that new pet project of yours, and how it was coming along."

Jazz didn't have to fake any level of his pleased smile or field. "He has a lot of maturing to do and a couple serious faults, but what I've dealt with so far indicates he'll be amazing when he's trained. He's not a native curiosity and ability to process a huge dataflow that's just incredible. He loves it too. He's down in one of the unused tactical rooms now if you want a feel for him when he's reasonably calm and content."

White optics lit in momentary surprise at the report, far different from what he had expected when he had heard the initial report on the Praxian. Jazz's obviously pleasure with his new acquisition prompted Optimus to do just that, accessing the mainframe that allowed him to know what was going on in his immediate domain and feeling for the Praxian buried in the tactical room.

Jazz was there in an instant to give him the address and made sure the system allowed the Prime in without complaint. When Optimus settled in to listen and feel the Praxian from the safely shielded distance, he had a hard time believing it was the same individual.

"This is the mecha that almost killed two of Ironhide's soldiers?" Optimus Prime murmured as the smooth flow of the mind mingled with an emotional pleasure that saturated the simple act of learning.

"Yap," Jazz chirped with a grin. "It's kinda amazing what he turned into once he realized that everything moving wasn't trying to hurt him."

"A shame that such a spark was so underutilized." Optimus said as he continued to watch, seeing all that Jazz had said about the mech to be true. "A situation that I am sure you are fixing as we speak." He added, not pushing to find out exactly what Jazz had planned for the vast potential he could feel on so many levels in Prowl.

"Yes," Jazz responded to it all with a flicker of affection in his field. "He is learning, both what I set him to and anything else that catches his attention once he's done. He'll never be a leader, but he can command in the right situation. Loyal as anything too. He'll be truly amazing when his spark matures fully."

"A mech whose loyalty you will need to keep then." Optimus observed as he withdrew from the feed and focused once more on Jazz. "How young is he? Were you able to find out more about his background?"

"A fair amount, though admittedly what I know make it all the more confusing," Jazz admitted, relaxed as he snacked on a confection. "He's a little over three vorns old, sparked, and then transferred from his original frame into that one. Temperance believes he was originally to be a very large bomber-class Seeker, or a mid-sized shuttle. Either way, right now his spark is barely large enough to support the frame he has, but give him a couple centuries and he'll have the extra spark power to handle some very serious upgrades. We know who built that frame, Shockwave, but not who acquired sparkling he came from, how it was acquired, or exactly why. We know he had regular interfacing with several previous owners, though we don't know if any of them were aware he did not have the protocols for it yet."

"Or if they cared." Optimus rumbled, that little bit of news darkening his pleasure at the progress the Praxian had been making. "I trust that you are also on alert for more of his kind, now that we have some idea of what to look for?"

This sort of thing troubled the young Prime on several levels, one even a distinct discomfort from the Matrix itself, something that Optimus did not always understand and tried to remedy as soon as possible.

"Even more than usual," Jazz rumbled in reply, relieved more than he cared to admit that this Prime was just as disturbed by the fact as he was. "Stopping that sparkling abuse is one of my pet projects. I've made good progress by all accounts. Keeping a sensor out for others like Prowl ... that's what I call him ... is easier. There aren't a half dozen beings in the entire empire capable of attempting such a transfer and at least two of them would never do so without officially recording it. Temperance is mine and I trust her. Shockwave and Firewire are the only ones I can't really touch who might try."

"So there is no way to punish him for this?" Though the question was soft, there was no way to miss the outrage that underscored it, and the slow building fury in Optimus at the idea.

Jazz sighed out his vents. "Unless I can prove who Prowl used to be, and convince his creators to testify that he was stolen, and that Shockwave didn't know that whoever paid for the transfer didn't have the right to do so, there really isn't anything in the laws against it. Right now, the most Shockwave could be charged with is failure to file the procedure. It's a fine, and not even that big a fine for him. The mech I'm almost certain paid for it was one I dealt with three vorns ago for sparkling interface abuse. I didn't know about this at the time. In all likelihood I picked him up after the transfer but before Prowl was delivered to him, leaving Shockwave to sell him to someone else. Really, the worst I can do to Shockwave is inform the first customer who bought Prowl that he didn't have interface protocols. I know her and it did not go over well when she found out that she'd been 'facing a sparkling in an adult frame. But that one's a civilian matter over misinformation on the status of goods sold, assuming she takes it to court. It's not really her style."

The fury died down to a simmer, Optimus offering a matching sigh as he sank deeper in the oil, optics going dim as he contemplated what Jazz had just told him. He was familiar enough with Shockwave to know that Jazz was right, and there was no evidence that could be found to use against the mech that would be of any value. Finally he shoved it to the back of his processor, to be worried over later, perhaps, and focused on something else that Jazz had said.

"Who are the other mecha capable of doing this, and are they being monitored?"

"Ratchet, who works at the Primus' Gift Medical Center here in Iacon," Jazz relaxed as the Prime did. "He has the skills, though I'm not worried that he might try. Mech has a code of honor backed up by a scary as the pit temper and enough contacts to keep even me at bay. The other is one of your High Priests, Soundwave. As a host he may have the skills, I'm sure he has the capacity, but there just isn't any motivation there that I can find and even I have a hard time with the idea that he'd do so without recording it. Both of them might perform the normal variation to safe a life, but the odds that they'd do so for anything like this is just ... infinitesimal. I'm watching them, and the up and coming medics, scientists and hosts. It's a very rare combination of skills to even try such a procedure. I think that's why there really aren't laws against it."

"Something that will have to be looked into, sooner rather than later." Optimus said with another sigh as his attention refocused on Jazz. "So tell me more of Prowl's progress. Was the designation his, or your idea?"

"Technically mine, but it's his own," Jazz chuckled. "I called him Stormcloud for a while. After digging around in his processors I found out he'd lied about not having an internal designation for himself, so when an opportunity came up to call him something new, I went with what he thought of himself as. He's amazingly adaptable. Probably the two most important things to know about handling Prowl are that he responds in a similar way to how he'd approached and he's a spark-coded beta. If you're violent, he is back. Which is what happened when we found him. The slavers used violence to try and control him so that's what he replied with. The soldiers used force to subdue him, and he fought back. He calmed down when I spoke to him because I was being calm. Though I'm sure that actually understanding the meaning of the sounds I made helped too," he gave a grin. "Basically, he's one of those that responds best to approval. I don't have to be harsh to get him to comply. He wants to make his master happy, and it's on a spark-code level. Even as a free mech he'd seek a master, a stronger mecha, to follow and serve. He's sweet, really, especially after all he's been through."

Optimus hummed, regarding his friend. "What are his spark-glyphs?"

"Serve, Protect, Know," Jazz flashed Prime a grin. "I don't think a better spark could have been called for a smart slave if you tried."

Optimus chuckled softly in agreement, his field indicating a deeper level of interest now, as well as approval for both Jazz and the Praxian. "So he will hopefully be able to fully overcome everything that was done to him. You seem to like him well enough."

"I do, Jazz admitted, unashamed but a touch wary of the fact. "He's been through the pit, hurt worse than most POWs, and all he wants is a strong mech to serve and approval from that mech." He sighed softly through his vents. "I've been in his processors, watched how he deals with pain, trauma and internal conflict, and I still don't understand how he can let go of it all so easily. Once he decided he was safe and I was keeping him, everything before me just stopped being important. Strangest thing I've ever seen."

"And not necessarily a good thing in a mecha, if loosing you will send him into chaos until he settles on someone else." Optimus observed. "Is there anything I can do to aid his progress?"

Jazz stilled, really thinking about it. "I'm fairly sure he'll latch onto Whiplash or Temperance if I'm gone. They're both strong personalities, strong mecha and they have political power he knows about. From what I've gathered, while he's psychopathically loyal to his master, he also transfers loyalties easily once that master is classified as gone." He considered the Prime again. "It wouldn't hurt for him to get to know you, if you have some time. I'm much rather he turn to you than Megatron, or any of the other nobles around here."

"Once you deem him acceptable company I should like to meet him." Optimus replied, indicating his interest in seeing the Praxian but leaving all of the details to Jazz's discretion. There was no point in the pushing the small silver mech with his pet project, not when Optimus himself wanted to see Jazz succeed. "Are you planning to have any special upgrades made to his frame when he can handle it?"

Jazz nodded. "Temperance said it'll be at least a couple hundred vorns, possibly much longer. So it's somewhat a matter of what's available and what specialty he's training for by then. He's already the top candidate for a premium tactical processor system, but if he takes to flying well I might try to get a teleportation system for him. He could handle triple-changer upgrades too, or possibly even more." He laughed and shook his helm. "So the short answer is, yes I'm planning to have some special upgrades installed. No, I have no real idea what yet. He has the spark to handle anything."

Optimus laughed as well, one hand reaching out to gently brush over the silver helm affectionately. "And what about you? How are you doing?" He asked, the tone taking on a softer and more intimate note.

Jazz trilled and leaned into the touch and the rich, powerful field that could only belong to the Prime. It suffused him, thick and alive and ancient and healing just in accepting it to wash through him unresisted. "I'm good, Optimus," he smiled, knowing that he was one of the very, very few to call the Prime by designation and the big mech liked it. He knew exactly what he was being asked about; whether he was still being tortured for his pleasure. It distressed the young Prime, and for that alone Jazz was a bit sad. "I have many mecha who watch out for me. But you," he paused to move close enough to stroke the thick glass of the big mech's chestplates. "You have so few you can relax and just be a mech with."

"All the more reason for me to take care of those few." Optimus replied, wrapping and arm around Jazz and pulling the other mech closer, his field loose, warm and welcoming the mech next to him. "I do worry," he added. Even softer, but not pushing any harder.

"I'm good, Optimus," Jazz promised. "I know what works for me." He cracked a grin and slipped his claws into fine seams that no other lover could manage. "I've been enjoying pleasure in all its forms for a very long time."

The regal looking red mech moaned at the touch, optics dimming in appreciation as he tipped his helm to kiss the silver mech gently. "Including this one?" He purred.

"Oh yes," Jazz purred, the truth of it bright, clear and warmly welcoming in his field. "I very much enjoy what we do." His fingers ghosted across fine plating that didn't really deserve to be called armor. "You feel so good inside me, stretching me. But you field..." he shivered in memory of it. "Oh, my dear Optimus, you have no idea how incredible your field feels when you overload with me."

SxSxSxSxSxSxSxSx S===================S SxSxSxSxSxSxSxS

Another chapter with graphic smut. See my Ao3 account for the full version.

archiveofourown dot org/works/562319/chapters/1101040