Fic
Title: Borealis 68/86: Star Light, Star Bright, Part I
Author: tainry
Disclaimer: Not mine, no money.
Rating: R
Characters/Pairing(s): Vector Prime/OC Bolo/Optimus Prime, Prowl/Jazz, Starscream/Skywarp implied
Warnings: PnP, OCs, mild angst, fluff
Summary: Wherein the Primes comfort Bolo, Prowl and Jazz get frisky and share their first memories, and Skywarp makes a request. ;D
Notes: The talented and mysterious playswithworms has provided us with a soundtrack for this section! Rhythm of Love by the Plain White T's! Eeeeeee! So perfect for the P/J stuff here! <333333
I was actually using Two Steps From Hell's Undying Love as I was writing big chunks of this Friday - for which I am indebted to kalaryx! :D
~5600 words.
BOREALIS: Star Light, Star Bright
2031 - August
"But he's not answering comms," Springer said. "I just want to talk with him. Kup, come on! That's ... that's Lord Protector Alpha Trion! His defeat of the Penstirachtatoriafelexian fleet at Wrest gave us peace for 500,000 years! Don't you want to ask him anything?" Springer paused. Sometimes Kup's young body put him off, though you couldn't forget the old mech's age, not really. Kup wouldn't let you. "I guess you knew him, before, though, huh? You could ask him what it's like in the Allspark. I mean, you might find out any breem yourself, but it doesn't hurt to be prepared!" He danced away, anticipating a swing, but Kup merely glared at him.
"Just leave him alone, kid."
"No. Not alone." Vector Prime strode toward them from the hangar entrance, his skin blinding in the bright sunlight, Optimus beside him. The two Primes smiled at Kup and Springer but passed them, smoothly flanking the rusty-looking tank sitting low on its treads in formation with about a hundred others parked south of the embassy mesa.
"Bolo," Optimus said, laying a hand gently on the tank's turret.
Bolo transformed slowly, meeting no-one's optics, and with a flash of Rhysling they were gone.
…
A high plain, windswept by a deep blue sky, surrounded by bluer mountains made of enormous sapphire crystals. No organic life existed on the planet, according to Vector, save bacterial mats in the belt of shallow seas around the equator; and the nearest spacefaring species had not discovered this mineral-rich jewel yet. The vistas around them would remain unplundered for thousands of years.
You have lost your Prime, Optimus rumbled low, pressing his forehelm to Bolo's, and I have lost my Protector. Bolo nodded and put his arms around Optimus, accepting the solace offered.
Vector expanded as though drawing breath, and wrapped himself around them both.
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
A few days later.
“WHEN IT’S TIME TO PARTY WE WILL PARTY HARD!” Sideswipe hollered, and Oratorio cranked the music to eleven.
Outside the embassy, the afternoon’s thunderstorm was in full cry; the sky green with heavy, bubbling clouds and alive with lightning. Not even Prime would go out in a storm like that. Not in root mode, anyway. The Autobots’ vehicle mode tires weren’t rubber, but they insulated like it.
Behind thoroughly insulated med-bay doors, Ratchet completed the final microweld and stepped back.
“There,” he said. “Reinitialize your primary optical system.”
“Initializing,” Prowl said. The world around him bloomed into light and color, filling the shapes and shadows and low-rez images from his chevron and door-wings with their accustomed depth. “Testing.”
Ratchet projected a standard holo pattern of 12th level complexity in all the wavelengths Prowl’s new optics had been designed to receive. Prowl’s chevron flicked upward in surprise. He was getting some high-edge radio as well as the near reaches of gamma beyond far ultraviolet. Polarization axes had also been expanded.
“Ratchet, you’ve given me Seeker optics?”
“Strake’s portside lenses were cracked,” Ratchet said. “While I was fabricating for that I thought I might as well use the design topmost on the queue for yours.”
Mirage hopped down from the repair table where he had been curled up against Prowl’s back, out of Ratchet’s way. “Oh, Prowl, they’re lovely!” he said, leaning on Prowl’s knee. The new optics were larger and a cooler, more vivid blue - what the humans would call periwinkle. The larger optics would make Prowl’s rather severe face more appealing to the humans as well, though he would probably never make it to “cute.”
“Thank you,” Prowl said, nodding to both Ratchet and Mirage, caressing Mirage’s helm. Mirage kissed Prowl’s fingertips then sauntered off to join the party.
Ratchet ran one last diagnostic via cervical cable. “Do the socket modifications feel all right?” he asked, keeping the medical link wide open in case Prowl tried to disregard what might seem to him to be a minor discomfort.
“Yes,” said Prowl. One corner of his mouth tugged upward slightly. Ratchet huffed at him and retracted the cable.
“Fine. Dismissed. I have a lot of work on Skyfire yet to do.”
“Thank you, Ratchet.”
Leaving Thundercracker and Strake to their highly modified, 3D game of “Rivers, Roads and Rails” with the Protectobots, Prowl assumed his new alt mode. The Autobots had shed their Earth forms to reach the battle with Thunderwing on Mars, returning to Earth more alien, more Cybertronian than many of them had been for decades. Choosing utility over nostalgia, Prowl had taken the semblance of the Clark County sheriff’s new Search and Rescue-outfitted Subaru Forester.
Tires quiet on the polished stone floor, Prowl rolled out into the storm, headed toward Nellis. Jazz, abandoning the party, slipped into his iridescent silver Audi R Zero form and followed.
From Nellis, they took Lake Mead Boulevard to Northshore, then to Lakeshore and on to Nevada Highway, which sent them across the Hoover Dam bypass. Jazz hardly spared a thought for the buried chambers of the old Sector 7 base, wondering instead where Prowl was going. As usual, Prowl kept precisely to the speed of traffic when there was any, and to the posted speed limits when they were in incorporated areas. But down the long, deserted stretches of road, Prowl hunkered low on his wheels and accelerated, easily passing 100 mph despite his bulk. Jazz could ask, but it was nice for once just to drive; to feel the air and rain rushing over his body, his wheels shushing on the wet, black road, with a warm body beside him when the highway split into separate north- and southbound routes. The charge in the wind made him feel bright and alive and ready for anything. He’d find out where Prowl was going when they got there. Prowl didn’t seem to have any objections.
They had left the storm behind and the afternoon light was beginning to mellow as they hung a left onto Interstate 40 in Kingman, Arizona, running south of the old Route 66. Jazz picked up the inevitable replay of the song on the radio but kept the volume down. Sunset saw them pass Petrified Forest National Park and on into New Mexico. At Albuquerque they turned north on 85, the Pan American Freeway. Night fell blue around them and the scrubby landscape; blue like Cybertronian nights had been, with two big moons and a glittering host of satellites.
The full moon rose as they got onto Route 44 at Bernalillo. Jagged hills and low mountains lifted from the desert. Right on Route 4 at the dusty little town of San Ysidro, down to two lanes with a double yellow stripe, irrigated fields unexpectedly to either side. They were just outside the Santa Fe National Forest.
Jazz considered the route. If they’d been heading for the Los Alamos lab, they would have stayed on the 85.
Inside the forest, they drove along a sere little valley, a line of hills close on their left, a dry creek-bed hidden by tired-looking, almost leafless scrub and trees on their right, silvered in the moonlight. Left on Route 126. Always climbing. The air grew cooler, the trees more numerous, with a greater percentage of evergreens. North on the indifferently-graveled Forest Service Road 376. Now they were near the western border of the Valles Caldera National Preserve; a smallish supervolcano whose geologic heritage could be easily seen in satellite images. In daylight this area would be greener, the meadows frothing with pale wildflowers at this time of year. Clouds streamed across the sky, never quite hiding the moon.
At last Prowl slowed and transformed, Jazz following. They walked across the valley meadow, wading the Jemez River - more creek than river, but water flowed, gurgling over red and buff stone - heading for a rhyolite lava dome furred with trees and grasses. As they climbed, Jazz caught the flicker of an expression on Prowl’s face.
Was that a smile? Jazz grinned. A lot of mechs (and most humans) thought Prowl was hard to read. Life in the battalion had made him close in on himself, wielding his natural reserve like an active shield. His body language was subtle, Jazz felt, not absent.
Rising from the top of the dome hill was a jut of red rock, smoothed by wind and winter ice. A reminder that the bones of this place lay close to the surface, only lightly hidden by its fragile green cover. Jazz scampered to the very top and sat on a ledge, dangling one leg, the other foot curled against the opposite knee. Prowl stood below and to one side, arms loose at his sides, gazing out into the long, curving valley to the east, the creek glimmering in gentle curves and wide loops along its floor. Heat sources among the trees edging the valley indicated sleeping elk.
A good place to wait for sunrise, Jazz thought, pleased. Then he noticed Prowl had a target lock on his swinging foot.
“Swear to Primus, you sure you never been an alpha-class?” Jazz said, stilling his foot despite himself. “That prey-drive…”
“It is not prey-drive,” Prowl said, hastily cancelling the lock. Cybertronians had never hunted and killed for nourishment. They manufactured, mined or absorbed it directly from suns. He had merely been trying to calculate what Jazz would do if he yanked on that foot. Jazz was fast enough the grab might miss. Prowl might get swatted, kicked or jumped on, but getting shot was highly unlikely.
“F’you say so,” Jazz said, smirking. He leaned back on his right arm, the left wrapping unconsciously about his midsection as his torso stretched.
“Are you in pain?” Prowl asked softly.
“No.” Jazz jerked his left arm away from his body. Then, reconsidering, placed his hand over the spot where Thunderwing had shot him. “Not physical pain,” he admitted. “It’s nothing. Those new optics look great. How they seeing?”
“Both macro and zoom functions have been improved,” Prowl said, allowing the diversion for a moment. “Power consumption efficiency increased 44 percent. Mirage likes them.” He turned and looked up at Jazz. “Making light of your suffering does not always help to overcome it. You were killed, Jazz; that is no trivial matter.”
“Yeah, well, being dead ain’t so bad; it’s the dying that ain’t fun.” For half a nanosecond he regretted speaking. At the other half he reckoned it was like talking about gestalts with Red in the room. Red was so far past his trauma the subject held no more and no less interest for him than for any other non-gestalted mech. Yet Prowl had only hung twenty-three years beneath his particular geas.
Prowl levered himself up and settled close behind Jazz. “Ah. The view is better here.”
“Right. Your head’s a whole meter higher than it was.” Prowl’s warmth felt good, though. And Jazz liked the way Prowl slipped one arm so gently around his waist, snugging him in closer, that hand covering the latest welds. He and Prowl were like the overlapping shields of a Greek phalanx. Thigh to neck; not just their own, but Prime’s, regardless of the height differences. Jazz placed his hand over Prowl’s, as he had on Mars. “Come seventy-seven years what will you do?”
“Strake and Thundercracker’s parole will still be in effect. I must stay with them, unless Prime reassigns me.”
“And after that?”
“I don’t know.”
“What? Mr. Predictive Software on Legs doesn’t have a plan for the next couple millennia?”
“Will the war be over by then?”
“Hmm.”
What if the Decepticons learn of spark merging? Right now Thundercracker and Strake think Prime is using the Allspark to kindle new people.
“Which he is, sometimes.” TC’s said before the Cons have noticed there are unfamiliar faces in our ranks. Take a few thousand years to breed our numbers back up and then we have at it all over again. Primus that’s depressing.
“It is. I don’t think Prime will let it happen again. I think he’ll …do something drastic before that.”
“Yeah.” Jazz pressed his forehelm into the space between Prowl’s shoulder and cheek flange. “Yeah he will.” Question is, what?
Evac…Volant’s solution to Thunderwing comes to mind, Prowl whispered. Much as he tried to stifle it, a high, thin wail of fear threaded his subharmonics. Jazz hugged Prowl’s arm hard.
Went right for the worst case scenario, Jazz said.
You’ve thought of it as well.
Yep. Means Optimus has, too. And he hasn’t told me, which means he’s keeping it the ace up his sleeve. I don’t like it any more than you do. He drew away slightly to get a better look at Prowl. Prowl’s fields had drawn in tight, dampened as though he was trying to stealth. His chevron flattened against his helm and his door-wings canted downward at a deeply unhappy angle. “Listen,” Jazz said softly, stroking Prowl’s fingers. “Hey, we’ve got plenty of time to worry about that, yeah? Relax. Even Prime’s at a party tonight.”
“Very well.” Prowl’s door-wings lifted, though not enough for Jazz’s liking.
“I got a question for ya. Why’d you drive way the slag out here?”
Prowl was about to answer, but paused. Jazz liked puzzles, liked figuring people and situations out for himself. And he liked games. “Why do you think?” Prowl asked, genuinely curious.
“I’m guessing to get away from the party. But you could have holed up with Red in the security office like you usually do.”
“Yes.”
“Maybe you also bailed to give TC and Strake and yourself a break from each other.”
“Hm.”
“Ah. Or you wanted somewhere peaceful to watch your first sunrise with the new optics.”
“Yes.”
“Huh. And what else?”
“I would be a poor prognostitician indeed if my own behavior was entirely predictable.”
Jazz rotated his torso ninety degrees to stare at him. “You…”
“I had a randomization subprogram pick a direction.”
“So at each turn…”
“Yes. Until we came to Albuquerque, at which point I felt the National Forest might be worth exploring. I have not been to this part of the planet before.”
“You logically decided it was time to do something random.”
The sequence of words seemed familiar. Ah. Not an exact match, but close. Miles had explained once that the proper response was to name the episode. “’The Galileo Seven’,” Prowl said.
“Geek,” Jazz said, amused. He knew exactly who had coached Prowl on certain human behaviors and thought it was funny as slag.
Prowl cocked his head slightly. “And also because you came with me.”
Oh ho! Jazz grinned. “Why d’you suppose I did that?”
“Primary hypothesis is curiosity. This is only 25% likely to be the sole reason, as you rarely miss parties, or leave alone once one has started.”
“Uh huh.”
“Secondarily; you enjoy your new alt mode and are pleased to employ it at any opportunity.”
“You got that right. Sweet set of wheels is what I am, baby!”
“I must admit I am at a loss as to what the other reason or reasons might be.”
“Your voice, for one thing.”
“My…”
Jazz reached up and touched Prowl’s mandibular hinge. “You haven’t slagged it lately. After Mars? That gives Optimus a concern.”
Prowl’s chevron flicked back then forward. He gazed out at the moonlit valley before them. “I don’t know what to think of Mars,” he said. “The Decepticons, Galvatron, this war, are becoming less and less…”
“Sane?”
“Comprehensible?”
Jazz laughed. “All right. Fair enough.”
“I have not…reverted. I understand that my former habits of self-harm are no longer acceptable.”
“Good.”
They settled again into companionable silence; watching the wheel of stars overhead, trying to feel the turning of the planet as deep-Seekers did. The wild, bright moon sailed westward, gathering clouds netting it with rainbows and silver veils. The clouds held Earth’s warmth and scents rose around them, filtering into the sensors in Jazz’s legs, sending their myriad data up through his body to rouse his CPU.
“I also followed,” Jazz murmured, “because seventy-seven local years ain’t a long time. Didn’t want you thinking I wasn’t gonna like you until your sentence was up.” They’d learned better than to let opportunities escape. Long-lived as they were, time had become as much an enemy as the Decepticons.
“Ah.” Prowl nodded slightly, and the end of the nod brought his lip components to within centimeters of Jazz’s right primary antenna.
Jazz tilted his head, the complex, non-Euclidean geometries involved in Cybertronian intimacy swiftly and joyfully calculated in his CPU. Seven millimeters separated their mouths. Jazz liked the unbridged proximity, the potential. This state of not yet having kissed Prowl. Jazz lifted his chin slightly. Four millimeters. Water vapor in the air struck as steam off their bodies. Prowl’s face was shadowed but for the glow of his optics; Jazz felt the mass of him solid, warm, beside and around him, the hand at his waist shifting measure by measure upwards, fingertips stroking the small armor plates beneath Jazz’s chest.
Aah Primus! Jazz moaned, protoform surging in a tide beneath armor, pulling Prowl’s face down that last distance to seal the old universe behind them with lips and minds and fields and open a new one. Just this, Jazz thought, throwing temporary firewalls between himself and his chronometer; just now.
They drowned the night in long, slow kisses, in hands moving like constellations in stately hours-long arcs. Their bodies bowed and swayed, balanced on the rhyolite spar as on the prow of a storm-flung seaship.
Connection via cables, when it came, was going to be cosmically processor-blowing, Jazz knew. He partitioned charge, feeling little curls of plasma spin off his fingertips and antennae, and opened his ports, extending cables so hot they hissed on contact with the air.
Prowl drew back. “Rangers,” he whispered.
“Wha-?” Jazz dragged his processors unwillingly back to the outside world. What were humans doing out here so early? Oh. It wasn’t that early. Dawn had come and the morning waxed and waned and neither of them had been watching. “Slag.”
They fled silently from the rhyolite hill, ghosting across meadow and stream to the road well behind the rangers’ jeep, and transformed, running their engines in stealth mode, softening their tires. Jazz laughed to himself. Sneaking home like a couple of human teenagers.
…
A sandstone butte across the road from the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it town of Perfection seemed to promise adequate cover.
“Whoops,” said Jazz. “Boy Scouts.” The way they were digging it looked like they were hunting for fossils. Jazz wished them joy. “Topo map says there’s a gulley just big enough for you and me two klicks south.”
“No,” said Prowl. “Cows.”
“Huh,” Jazz grumbled. “Wouldn’t want to deep fry ‘em before their time.”
…
“Campers.”
“You gotta be kidding me.”
The end of summer vacation approached, and a lot of families were on the road. Prowl and Jazz contented themselves with riding each other’s bumpers, brushing side panels, meshing fields. Good fun at 120 mph, but more frustrating than satisfying.
When they reached the embassy, Smokescreen intercepted Jazz to deliver a report on the goings-on there while the two senior officers were away. Prime was in New York attending meetings with the UN and other world leaders. Report completed, Smokescreen leaned conspiratorially on Jazz’s shoulder.
“So. What were you two really up to out there in Santa Fe?”
Jazz forbore to glare at him, maintaining a neutral expression. “What’s on the list?”
“Covert ops at Los Alamos, covert shagging, PR stunt set-up, PSA filming, covert racing, tracking Lockdown, Something Sekret and Personal for Prime, and covert retrieval of a ‘happy fun-time organic sample’ for Perceptor.”
“Tell ya what, Smokey,” Jazz said, pulling Smokescreen closer by his chest plate. “What you really oughta be betting on is whether Prowl can make it to the oil bath without getting tackled.”
Prowl’s door-wings stood straight up as he considered his options for 0.08 milliseconds. Then he bolted for the bath at a flat sprint. Jazz retracted his toes and speed-skated after him.
“That answers that,” Smokescreen said, grinning. He pointed at half the mechs in the hangar, and posted messages to a dozen more. “Pay up!”
By the time Jazz cleared the end of the curve and came to a sliding halt on the ramp leading down into the bath, there were only ripples to show where Prowl had submerged. Jazz adjusted his visor and could see him quite plainly. The tactician was waiting for him on the bottom. Like a shark.
Like I said, Jazz tight-beamed. Prey-drive. You walk into a room and first thing you think of is NOT “how shall I pose so Jazz cannot resist my hottitude.” No. You arrange an ambush!
Prowl surfaced, contrite. “I’m sorry. I did not intend it that way.”
Jazz waded in, leisurely, watching the oil drip down Prowl’s upper body. “I’m teasing you, Prowl. Okay?”
“…I see.”
“Yeah, that is not the mood I want you in.” The slope of the pool set them on a good level to resume what they’d been doing in New Mexico.
clangCRASH! This time it was Prowl doing the tackling.
O Primus, Jazz thought, Prowl’s mouth on him, Prowl extending his neatly sharpened denta to draw patterns on armor, nibble on more delicate structures. Yeah, so good like this oh Primus yes. Jazz shivered, knowing Prowl would taste Prime’s metal on the edges of his armor. Jazz had sent Prime off to the East Coast with his own special kind of flourish. Everyone expressed their love and devotion in individual ways.
Jazz laughed and moaned and shouted, sending tactical magnetic pulses through Prowl’s body, driving him wilder. Prowl clawed his own chest open, prominences from the spark corona writhing and snapping across Jazz’s fields.
Want… Wannnt… Prowl growled, too far gone for coherence.
Two million years of a passionate spark imprisoned. Jazz shuddered. Slag cables! By main strength Jazz pulled them up the ramp, mostly out of the oil, rolling them over. Straddling Prowl’s arching body, he ran his hands over Prowl’s gaping chest, dipping fingertips inside, hanging on tight with his legs as Prowl bucked.
Never deny you this, Jazz said fiercely, the halves of his spark chamber springing apart eagerly, without reservation. Overload took them hard, stone and oil scorched, lightning-struck, thirty thousand amperes spinning them into the soothing dark.
…
That part, that little swirl, that was from mine, Jazz said, tracing the bright comet of metal on Prowl’s spark chamber with a fingertip and honed fields.
Jazz. Prowl jerked his armor and protoform wider, helm striking sparks from the stone floor. Jazz… Lapsing into formal Cybertronian with full harmonics and subharmonics, half singing as the name demanded. Jazz normally eschewed the complication, but Prowl’s formality wasn’t stuffy or tradition-bound. Prowl meant it in absolute honor, deepest respect and regard. It was his own hue of profound affection. Jazz…
And to hear Prowl, singing his name, delirious with longing, that predatory body spread beneath him open and vulnerable…
Mmhmm, Jazz thrummed. Don’t be expectin’ restraint from me this time either.
…
Jazz came online smooth and slow, easy as blues, with the goodly hot weight of a mech on top of him. They lay on the ramp near a wall, immersed up to Jazz’s audials. He kept his visor and optics off, enjoying the tactile sensations. Warm oil sloshing gently around his body. Light touches of fingertips around his helm and face, followed by the barely-felt slick drip of oil down from the touches. What on Earth was Prowl doing?
Praxians were known for their even temperament and sound, practical logic. They did not, as a rule, dabble in the arts; happy to leave such endeavors - as most Cybertronians did - to the Towers. Wordlessly, Prowl lent Jazz his optical feed by way of explanation. The bathing oil, when overlaid on Jazz’s specially coated armor, created a vivid, swirling iridescence that was eerily luminous in the cavern’s dim light.
Jazz kept whatever quips he might have composed regarding face-painting behind firewalls. He did not want Prowl to stop. Instead, he let his hands drift over Prowl’s sides, slipping in the oil, not questing for new places to delve but keeping to a slow rhythm, up and down, over the back, skimming the hips, deliberately avoiding for the moment door-wings and their attachments.
First memory? he asked. It was a fairly common thing to exchange, the first time one interfaced with someone. Jazz had a trove of such treasures - even Perceptor’s, though only as filtered through Beachcomber’s recollection.
Cables at last linked them as Prowl acquiesced, settling down through the layers of their minds.
…
5.2304 million years ago.
“The Fission Blade is to be decommissioned and salvaged. The AI node designated ‘Lance’, sub-node of the AI lineage designated ‘Sigma-47’, is to be neither decommissioned nor dispersed to the nets nor reassigned to a new battleship. In consideration of numerous heroic actions and displays of unique personality algorithms, it has been decided that the AI node ‘Lance’ shall best serve the Cybertronian Empire by being embodied and kindled; forthwith to be programmed as a Counselor of Law; replacement for Heliodor of Praxus.”
The old Counselor was retiring to the mining planet Arenest II, where he would supervise a section of automated equipment and drones, even engaging in physical labor himself if he wished. It was a common mode of retirement, respected and contemplative. Mining worlds and asteroids were often beautiful in their austere, peaceful way, and one could communicate easily enough with friends throughout the empire via subspace. Heliodor even now was being feted and congratulated on his decision.
But, Lance thought, I don’t want to be embodied. I want to be installed on one of the new Laser-class cruisers. He erased the quantum tunnels of the thought immediately, though the sentiment would reappear in his algorithms fourteen more times before they brought the logic sink aboard the Fission Blade’s listing hulk to take him away.
…
Echo of thunder chest hot heavy compact solid center of gravity wrong wrong all wrong legs feet only two when he was used to five sets of landing gear hands so isolated single pair of stereoscopic optics field of vision so narrow so alone alone alone alone!
“Easy there, easy, we’ve got you.”
“I’m going to connect via cervical cable, all right?”
Something clicked in his neck and the world expanded sight broadened four other minds enfolded him - only four! - Heliodor’s former cohort - and encouraged him and gave him images of his new self the new body they’d had built for him; slim and tall, black and gold, with golden sensory vanes fanning out from the elegant central processor cooling vent on his forehelm. The expression on that unfamiliar face was one he recognized, he thought, but everything was happening so slowly…
“Welcome! Come down, yes one foot at a time, very good, gently now.”
“Slag I wish they didn’t throw them in so fast, poor thing.”
“No, it’s better this way. You know AIs think ten times faster than the embodied. See? Just like Spiral did, he’s picking it up already.”
“Yes, Aequitas, ha ha, I remember.”
“What’s your name, young one? You can choose a new one - we didn’t think you’d want to be called ‘Lance’ any more. Spiral here used to be an AI, too, so it’s all right, you’ll be fine. We understand.”
Step by step they were leading him from the Simfur temple, towards the shining road that would take them south to Praxus. Home. He’d never had a home before, unless one counted Cybertron as a whole. No hangar would ever equal the reaches of space.
He looked down at his hands. Black enamel palms, fingers sheathed in sensitive bronze, brightly polished. “We…I… I would like to be called Warrant.”
“Mmm, nice!” said Spiral, winking.
Aequitas, now the cohort’s senior partner, took his hands and leaned close to touch forehelms. “Welcome to our cohort, Warrant.”
…
2031 - August
Oh man, ooh man, Jazz whimpered. Your first body was hot, too! He wriggled and snuggled against Prowl’s chest, marginally overheated. Didn’t Aequitas go the other way, later? He had himself copied as an AI, after the war started. Spiral and the others, and Aequitas’ embodied self were all dead. Jazz sometimes found he knew things like that, even when he had not intended to access his memories of his span within the Allspark.
Yes. Prowl knew who he had lost with his city-state. Jazz squeezed him gently.
Last I heard, one of the neutral groups had one of his sub-nodes. They got away clean, far as I know, Prowl.
That corresponds with the information I have, Prowl said, nuzzling Jazz’s helm. Your turn.
…
9 million years ago.
Aaaahhhhh mmmm warm hello sunlight! Hello platform! Hello feet! Hello gravity! Hello world! Optics - hello optics! - on, that’s better. Oooohh, hello there, Legs! I mean Optimus Prime!
The beautiful silver-blue mech handing him down from the kindling platform laughed - a wonderful sound that thrilled through every circuit. His larger twin, silver and steel, pretended to glower but winked to give the game away, knowing himself to be a little bit frightening. Lord Protector Megatron. Mmmmm, another kind of thrill. The Lord and the Prime were new, too, themselves only kindled a few orns ago.
“My name’s Jazz!” Jazz sang, slipping into the immensity of Cybertron’s communications nets. “I’m your information-gatherer/companion/party host/spy/partner in emotional tension-easing mischief/secret bodyguard/other things!” He swarmed up the Prime’s body, wrapped his arms around Prime’s neck and kissed him. Hello kissing!
“You certainly are,” Optimus Prime said, laughing again.
…
2031 - August
“Hello, kissing,” Prowl murmured and put the idea into practice, kissing the mouth that had been designed for kissing Prime. He meant to ponder a translation for Jazz’s original function, but Jazz’s hands wandered cleverly and the kiss lingered. Jazz hummed into his mouth, petting his door-wings. Prowl was about to open his spark chamber again when they heard heavy footsteps stumping down the ramp.
Ratchet shuffled by them, energy signatures almost nonexistent. A little smear of energon had dried on his face.
“Ratchet?”
“’M fine,” Ratchet said, trundling into the bath. “Just wanted to soak a minute. Skyfire’s repairs are done.” He submerged, sinking to the bottom, crouching there, letting the heat seep into his joints. He’s in recharge now, will be for a couple of days I think. And yes I told Silverbolt already.
I think old doc-bot could use a snuggle, Jazz tight-beamed to Prowl. Prowl’s engine revved and he sat up. Jazz pushed him back down.
No, no, lean back like this…right, and pull one knee up…yeah. It’s sexy, trust me!
Prowl lifted an orbital ridge but did as he was told. The pose did draw the optics to the chest.
(The Protectobots had found that moving their armor and protoforms in an approximation of human respiratory effort was deemed by most of the other Autobots to be shockingly erotic. Then Streetwise had commented on Hot Spot’s “heaving bosoms” and the whole experiment had dissolved into howls of laughter for a solid fifteen minutes.
Making a determined effort, Prowl managed to set that memory aside.)
When Ratchet emerged from the oil, Jazz and Prowl looked like they were ready for a mechaphile magazine’s centerfold photo shoot.
“Jazz…” Ratchet was practically stumbling with weariness. He wasn’t unwilling - far from it - he just really needed to shut down for a few hours.
Surging to their feet, Jazz and Prowl locked their forearms behind his waist and pulled Ratchet’s arms over their shoulders. “Hush,” Jazz said. “Hush. We’ll take care of you, Ratch. You don’t have to do anything.” They maneuvered him with military precision into the med-bay and onto a recharge berth, configuring it for three and climbing up to join him.
Cables slithered, armor slid and clanked, sparks whirred lullabies. Prowl cupped Ratchet’s helm, pressing his other hand flat against Ratchet’s chest, conscious of the forging of those hands as Ratchet pulled the one on his chest up to nibble the fingertips. Hands, spark chamber, optics.
Prowl, my dear friend, Ratchet said, kissing the hard angle of Prowl’s cheek flange. He knew how to use full harmonics, too.
“D’awwww. Sweet recharge, us!” Jazz sang, and flooded the link with everything he and Prowl had felt and thought and said and done over the past day and night.
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
Starscream, Skywarp warbled, pulling himself closer, rubbing their cockpits together. Not quite fully out of recharge. Starscream, I don't want a third.
Mmwha?
Skywarp tucked his head into Starscream's neck. I don't want a third anymore. We don't need one. It was just you and me at first, remember? Before he came out of CR. Just you and me were good enough to beat everyone else in the air. Gloomy old TC had been a weight on their wings for millennia. They were better off without him, and anyway, Skywarp liked having Starscream to himself. He went on before he lost momentum. We could go get upgrades. Galvatron is so wrapped up in Shocky's toys he won't notice we're gone. There's this guy on Sheol; he pretends to be Neutral, even sometimes wears the Autobrand, but really he's a Con. He's a genius, always has new designs nobody's seen or used before. When we got back, Galvatron wouldn't know what our new limits were; we'd have the advantage! Please, Starscream? Please? You have to take over soon! Galvatron's going to get us all killed, and Shockwave doesn't care about anything but that thing he's building.
Hm. You really have been giving this a lot of thought, haven't you? For you, Starscream murmured, petting Skywarp's helm indulgently. I’ll give it some thought, too, shall I?
=======================================================================
A/N: Hahaha, Perfection got snuck in there solely because I've watched Tremors recently. XDDD
/dork
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Table of Contents
.
Author: tainry
Disclaimer: Not mine, no money.
Rating: R
Characters/Pairing(s): Vector Prime/OC Bolo/Optimus Prime, Prowl/Jazz, Starscream/Skywarp implied
Warnings: PnP, OCs, mild angst, fluff
Summary: Wherein the Primes comfort Bolo, Prowl and Jazz get frisky and share their first memories, and Skywarp makes a request. ;D
Notes: The talented and mysterious playswithworms has provided us with a soundtrack for this section! Rhythm of Love by the Plain White T's! Eeeeeee! So perfect for the P/J stuff here! <333333
I was actually using Two Steps From Hell's Undying Love as I was writing big chunks of this Friday - for which I am indebted to kalaryx! :D
~5600 words.
BOREALIS: Star Light, Star Bright
2031 - August
"But he's not answering comms," Springer said. "I just want to talk with him. Kup, come on! That's ... that's Lord Protector Alpha Trion! His defeat of the Penstirachtatoriafelexian fleet at Wrest gave us peace for 500,000 years! Don't you want to ask him anything?" Springer paused. Sometimes Kup's young body put him off, though you couldn't forget the old mech's age, not really. Kup wouldn't let you. "I guess you knew him, before, though, huh? You could ask him what it's like in the Allspark. I mean, you might find out any breem yourself, but it doesn't hurt to be prepared!" He danced away, anticipating a swing, but Kup merely glared at him.
"Just leave him alone, kid."
"No. Not alone." Vector Prime strode toward them from the hangar entrance, his skin blinding in the bright sunlight, Optimus beside him. The two Primes smiled at Kup and Springer but passed them, smoothly flanking the rusty-looking tank sitting low on its treads in formation with about a hundred others parked south of the embassy mesa.
"Bolo," Optimus said, laying a hand gently on the tank's turret.
Bolo transformed slowly, meeting no-one's optics, and with a flash of Rhysling they were gone.
…
A high plain, windswept by a deep blue sky, surrounded by bluer mountains made of enormous sapphire crystals. No organic life existed on the planet, according to Vector, save bacterial mats in the belt of shallow seas around the equator; and the nearest spacefaring species had not discovered this mineral-rich jewel yet. The vistas around them would remain unplundered for thousands of years.
You have lost your Prime, Optimus rumbled low, pressing his forehelm to Bolo's, and I have lost my Protector. Bolo nodded and put his arms around Optimus, accepting the solace offered.
Vector expanded as though drawing breath, and wrapped himself around them both.
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
A few days later.
“WHEN IT’S TIME TO PARTY WE WILL PARTY HARD!” Sideswipe hollered, and Oratorio cranked the music to eleven.
Outside the embassy, the afternoon’s thunderstorm was in full cry; the sky green with heavy, bubbling clouds and alive with lightning. Not even Prime would go out in a storm like that. Not in root mode, anyway. The Autobots’ vehicle mode tires weren’t rubber, but they insulated like it.
Behind thoroughly insulated med-bay doors, Ratchet completed the final microweld and stepped back.
“There,” he said. “Reinitialize your primary optical system.”
“Initializing,” Prowl said. The world around him bloomed into light and color, filling the shapes and shadows and low-rez images from his chevron and door-wings with their accustomed depth. “Testing.”
Ratchet projected a standard holo pattern of 12th level complexity in all the wavelengths Prowl’s new optics had been designed to receive. Prowl’s chevron flicked upward in surprise. He was getting some high-edge radio as well as the near reaches of gamma beyond far ultraviolet. Polarization axes had also been expanded.
“Ratchet, you’ve given me Seeker optics?”
“Strake’s portside lenses were cracked,” Ratchet said. “While I was fabricating for that I thought I might as well use the design topmost on the queue for yours.”
Mirage hopped down from the repair table where he had been curled up against Prowl’s back, out of Ratchet’s way. “Oh, Prowl, they’re lovely!” he said, leaning on Prowl’s knee. The new optics were larger and a cooler, more vivid blue - what the humans would call periwinkle. The larger optics would make Prowl’s rather severe face more appealing to the humans as well, though he would probably never make it to “cute.”
“Thank you,” Prowl said, nodding to both Ratchet and Mirage, caressing Mirage’s helm. Mirage kissed Prowl’s fingertips then sauntered off to join the party.
Ratchet ran one last diagnostic via cervical cable. “Do the socket modifications feel all right?” he asked, keeping the medical link wide open in case Prowl tried to disregard what might seem to him to be a minor discomfort.
“Yes,” said Prowl. One corner of his mouth tugged upward slightly. Ratchet huffed at him and retracted the cable.
“Fine. Dismissed. I have a lot of work on Skyfire yet to do.”
“Thank you, Ratchet.”
Leaving Thundercracker and Strake to their highly modified, 3D game of “Rivers, Roads and Rails” with the Protectobots, Prowl assumed his new alt mode. The Autobots had shed their Earth forms to reach the battle with Thunderwing on Mars, returning to Earth more alien, more Cybertronian than many of them had been for decades. Choosing utility over nostalgia, Prowl had taken the semblance of the Clark County sheriff’s new Search and Rescue-outfitted Subaru Forester.
Tires quiet on the polished stone floor, Prowl rolled out into the storm, headed toward Nellis. Jazz, abandoning the party, slipped into his iridescent silver Audi R Zero form and followed.
From Nellis, they took Lake Mead Boulevard to Northshore, then to Lakeshore and on to Nevada Highway, which sent them across the Hoover Dam bypass. Jazz hardly spared a thought for the buried chambers of the old Sector 7 base, wondering instead where Prowl was going. As usual, Prowl kept precisely to the speed of traffic when there was any, and to the posted speed limits when they were in incorporated areas. But down the long, deserted stretches of road, Prowl hunkered low on his wheels and accelerated, easily passing 100 mph despite his bulk. Jazz could ask, but it was nice for once just to drive; to feel the air and rain rushing over his body, his wheels shushing on the wet, black road, with a warm body beside him when the highway split into separate north- and southbound routes. The charge in the wind made him feel bright and alive and ready for anything. He’d find out where Prowl was going when they got there. Prowl didn’t seem to have any objections.
They had left the storm behind and the afternoon light was beginning to mellow as they hung a left onto Interstate 40 in Kingman, Arizona, running south of the old Route 66. Jazz picked up the inevitable replay of the song on the radio but kept the volume down. Sunset saw them pass Petrified Forest National Park and on into New Mexico. At Albuquerque they turned north on 85, the Pan American Freeway. Night fell blue around them and the scrubby landscape; blue like Cybertronian nights had been, with two big moons and a glittering host of satellites.
The full moon rose as they got onto Route 44 at Bernalillo. Jagged hills and low mountains lifted from the desert. Right on Route 4 at the dusty little town of San Ysidro, down to two lanes with a double yellow stripe, irrigated fields unexpectedly to either side. They were just outside the Santa Fe National Forest.
Jazz considered the route. If they’d been heading for the Los Alamos lab, they would have stayed on the 85.
Inside the forest, they drove along a sere little valley, a line of hills close on their left, a dry creek-bed hidden by tired-looking, almost leafless scrub and trees on their right, silvered in the moonlight. Left on Route 126. Always climbing. The air grew cooler, the trees more numerous, with a greater percentage of evergreens. North on the indifferently-graveled Forest Service Road 376. Now they were near the western border of the Valles Caldera National Preserve; a smallish supervolcano whose geologic heritage could be easily seen in satellite images. In daylight this area would be greener, the meadows frothing with pale wildflowers at this time of year. Clouds streamed across the sky, never quite hiding the moon.
At last Prowl slowed and transformed, Jazz following. They walked across the valley meadow, wading the Jemez River - more creek than river, but water flowed, gurgling over red and buff stone - heading for a rhyolite lava dome furred with trees and grasses. As they climbed, Jazz caught the flicker of an expression on Prowl’s face.
Was that a smile? Jazz grinned. A lot of mechs (and most humans) thought Prowl was hard to read. Life in the battalion had made him close in on himself, wielding his natural reserve like an active shield. His body language was subtle, Jazz felt, not absent.
Rising from the top of the dome hill was a jut of red rock, smoothed by wind and winter ice. A reminder that the bones of this place lay close to the surface, only lightly hidden by its fragile green cover. Jazz scampered to the very top and sat on a ledge, dangling one leg, the other foot curled against the opposite knee. Prowl stood below and to one side, arms loose at his sides, gazing out into the long, curving valley to the east, the creek glimmering in gentle curves and wide loops along its floor. Heat sources among the trees edging the valley indicated sleeping elk.
A good place to wait for sunrise, Jazz thought, pleased. Then he noticed Prowl had a target lock on his swinging foot.
“Swear to Primus, you sure you never been an alpha-class?” Jazz said, stilling his foot despite himself. “That prey-drive…”
“It is not prey-drive,” Prowl said, hastily cancelling the lock. Cybertronians had never hunted and killed for nourishment. They manufactured, mined or absorbed it directly from suns. He had merely been trying to calculate what Jazz would do if he yanked on that foot. Jazz was fast enough the grab might miss. Prowl might get swatted, kicked or jumped on, but getting shot was highly unlikely.
“F’you say so,” Jazz said, smirking. He leaned back on his right arm, the left wrapping unconsciously about his midsection as his torso stretched.
“Are you in pain?” Prowl asked softly.
“No.” Jazz jerked his left arm away from his body. Then, reconsidering, placed his hand over the spot where Thunderwing had shot him. “Not physical pain,” he admitted. “It’s nothing. Those new optics look great. How they seeing?”
“Both macro and zoom functions have been improved,” Prowl said, allowing the diversion for a moment. “Power consumption efficiency increased 44 percent. Mirage likes them.” He turned and looked up at Jazz. “Making light of your suffering does not always help to overcome it. You were killed, Jazz; that is no trivial matter.”
“Yeah, well, being dead ain’t so bad; it’s the dying that ain’t fun.” For half a nanosecond he regretted speaking. At the other half he reckoned it was like talking about gestalts with Red in the room. Red was so far past his trauma the subject held no more and no less interest for him than for any other non-gestalted mech. Yet Prowl had only hung twenty-three years beneath his particular geas.
Prowl levered himself up and settled close behind Jazz. “Ah. The view is better here.”
“Right. Your head’s a whole meter higher than it was.” Prowl’s warmth felt good, though. And Jazz liked the way Prowl slipped one arm so gently around his waist, snugging him in closer, that hand covering the latest welds. He and Prowl were like the overlapping shields of a Greek phalanx. Thigh to neck; not just their own, but Prime’s, regardless of the height differences. Jazz placed his hand over Prowl’s, as he had on Mars. “Come seventy-seven years what will you do?”
“Strake and Thundercracker’s parole will still be in effect. I must stay with them, unless Prime reassigns me.”
“And after that?”
“I don’t know.”
“What? Mr. Predictive Software on Legs doesn’t have a plan for the next couple millennia?”
“Will the war be over by then?”
“Hmm.”
What if the Decepticons learn of spark merging? Right now Thundercracker and Strake think Prime is using the Allspark to kindle new people.
“Which he is, sometimes.” TC’s said before the Cons have noticed there are unfamiliar faces in our ranks. Take a few thousand years to breed our numbers back up and then we have at it all over again. Primus that’s depressing.
“It is. I don’t think Prime will let it happen again. I think he’ll …do something drastic before that.”
“Yeah.” Jazz pressed his forehelm into the space between Prowl’s shoulder and cheek flange. “Yeah he will.” Question is, what?
Evac…Volant’s solution to Thunderwing comes to mind, Prowl whispered. Much as he tried to stifle it, a high, thin wail of fear threaded his subharmonics. Jazz hugged Prowl’s arm hard.
Went right for the worst case scenario, Jazz said.
You’ve thought of it as well.
Yep. Means Optimus has, too. And he hasn’t told me, which means he’s keeping it the ace up his sleeve. I don’t like it any more than you do. He drew away slightly to get a better look at Prowl. Prowl’s fields had drawn in tight, dampened as though he was trying to stealth. His chevron flattened against his helm and his door-wings canted downward at a deeply unhappy angle. “Listen,” Jazz said softly, stroking Prowl’s fingers. “Hey, we’ve got plenty of time to worry about that, yeah? Relax. Even Prime’s at a party tonight.”
“Very well.” Prowl’s door-wings lifted, though not enough for Jazz’s liking.
“I got a question for ya. Why’d you drive way the slag out here?”
Prowl was about to answer, but paused. Jazz liked puzzles, liked figuring people and situations out for himself. And he liked games. “Why do you think?” Prowl asked, genuinely curious.
“I’m guessing to get away from the party. But you could have holed up with Red in the security office like you usually do.”
“Yes.”
“Maybe you also bailed to give TC and Strake and yourself a break from each other.”
“Hm.”
“Ah. Or you wanted somewhere peaceful to watch your first sunrise with the new optics.”
“Yes.”
“Huh. And what else?”
“I would be a poor prognostitician indeed if my own behavior was entirely predictable.”
Jazz rotated his torso ninety degrees to stare at him. “You…”
“I had a randomization subprogram pick a direction.”
“So at each turn…”
“Yes. Until we came to Albuquerque, at which point I felt the National Forest might be worth exploring. I have not been to this part of the planet before.”
“You logically decided it was time to do something random.”
The sequence of words seemed familiar. Ah. Not an exact match, but close. Miles had explained once that the proper response was to name the episode. “’The Galileo Seven’,” Prowl said.
“Geek,” Jazz said, amused. He knew exactly who had coached Prowl on certain human behaviors and thought it was funny as slag.
Prowl cocked his head slightly. “And also because you came with me.”
Oh ho! Jazz grinned. “Why d’you suppose I did that?”
“Primary hypothesis is curiosity. This is only 25% likely to be the sole reason, as you rarely miss parties, or leave alone once one has started.”
“Uh huh.”
“Secondarily; you enjoy your new alt mode and are pleased to employ it at any opportunity.”
“You got that right. Sweet set of wheels is what I am, baby!”
“I must admit I am at a loss as to what the other reason or reasons might be.”
“Your voice, for one thing.”
“My…”
Jazz reached up and touched Prowl’s mandibular hinge. “You haven’t slagged it lately. After Mars? That gives Optimus a concern.”
Prowl’s chevron flicked back then forward. He gazed out at the moonlit valley before them. “I don’t know what to think of Mars,” he said. “The Decepticons, Galvatron, this war, are becoming less and less…”
“Sane?”
“Comprehensible?”
Jazz laughed. “All right. Fair enough.”
“I have not…reverted. I understand that my former habits of self-harm are no longer acceptable.”
“Good.”
They settled again into companionable silence; watching the wheel of stars overhead, trying to feel the turning of the planet as deep-Seekers did. The wild, bright moon sailed westward, gathering clouds netting it with rainbows and silver veils. The clouds held Earth’s warmth and scents rose around them, filtering into the sensors in Jazz’s legs, sending their myriad data up through his body to rouse his CPU.
“I also followed,” Jazz murmured, “because seventy-seven local years ain’t a long time. Didn’t want you thinking I wasn’t gonna like you until your sentence was up.” They’d learned better than to let opportunities escape. Long-lived as they were, time had become as much an enemy as the Decepticons.
“Ah.” Prowl nodded slightly, and the end of the nod brought his lip components to within centimeters of Jazz’s right primary antenna.
Jazz tilted his head, the complex, non-Euclidean geometries involved in Cybertronian intimacy swiftly and joyfully calculated in his CPU. Seven millimeters separated their mouths. Jazz liked the unbridged proximity, the potential. This state of not yet having kissed Prowl. Jazz lifted his chin slightly. Four millimeters. Water vapor in the air struck as steam off their bodies. Prowl’s face was shadowed but for the glow of his optics; Jazz felt the mass of him solid, warm, beside and around him, the hand at his waist shifting measure by measure upwards, fingertips stroking the small armor plates beneath Jazz’s chest.
Aah Primus! Jazz moaned, protoform surging in a tide beneath armor, pulling Prowl’s face down that last distance to seal the old universe behind them with lips and minds and fields and open a new one. Just this, Jazz thought, throwing temporary firewalls between himself and his chronometer; just now.
They drowned the night in long, slow kisses, in hands moving like constellations in stately hours-long arcs. Their bodies bowed and swayed, balanced on the rhyolite spar as on the prow of a storm-flung seaship.
Connection via cables, when it came, was going to be cosmically processor-blowing, Jazz knew. He partitioned charge, feeling little curls of plasma spin off his fingertips and antennae, and opened his ports, extending cables so hot they hissed on contact with the air.
Prowl drew back. “Rangers,” he whispered.
“Wha-?” Jazz dragged his processors unwillingly back to the outside world. What were humans doing out here so early? Oh. It wasn’t that early. Dawn had come and the morning waxed and waned and neither of them had been watching. “Slag.”
They fled silently from the rhyolite hill, ghosting across meadow and stream to the road well behind the rangers’ jeep, and transformed, running their engines in stealth mode, softening their tires. Jazz laughed to himself. Sneaking home like a couple of human teenagers.
…
A sandstone butte across the road from the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it town of Perfection seemed to promise adequate cover.
“Whoops,” said Jazz. “Boy Scouts.” The way they were digging it looked like they were hunting for fossils. Jazz wished them joy. “Topo map says there’s a gulley just big enough for you and me two klicks south.”
“No,” said Prowl. “Cows.”
“Huh,” Jazz grumbled. “Wouldn’t want to deep fry ‘em before their time.”
…
“Campers.”
“You gotta be kidding me.”
The end of summer vacation approached, and a lot of families were on the road. Prowl and Jazz contented themselves with riding each other’s bumpers, brushing side panels, meshing fields. Good fun at 120 mph, but more frustrating than satisfying.
When they reached the embassy, Smokescreen intercepted Jazz to deliver a report on the goings-on there while the two senior officers were away. Prime was in New York attending meetings with the UN and other world leaders. Report completed, Smokescreen leaned conspiratorially on Jazz’s shoulder.
“So. What were you two really up to out there in Santa Fe?”
Jazz forbore to glare at him, maintaining a neutral expression. “What’s on the list?”
“Covert ops at Los Alamos, covert shagging, PR stunt set-up, PSA filming, covert racing, tracking Lockdown, Something Sekret and Personal for Prime, and covert retrieval of a ‘happy fun-time organic sample’ for Perceptor.”
“Tell ya what, Smokey,” Jazz said, pulling Smokescreen closer by his chest plate. “What you really oughta be betting on is whether Prowl can make it to the oil bath without getting tackled.”
Prowl’s door-wings stood straight up as he considered his options for 0.08 milliseconds. Then he bolted for the bath at a flat sprint. Jazz retracted his toes and speed-skated after him.
“That answers that,” Smokescreen said, grinning. He pointed at half the mechs in the hangar, and posted messages to a dozen more. “Pay up!”
By the time Jazz cleared the end of the curve and came to a sliding halt on the ramp leading down into the bath, there were only ripples to show where Prowl had submerged. Jazz adjusted his visor and could see him quite plainly. The tactician was waiting for him on the bottom. Like a shark.
Like I said, Jazz tight-beamed. Prey-drive. You walk into a room and first thing you think of is NOT “how shall I pose so Jazz cannot resist my hottitude.” No. You arrange an ambush!
Prowl surfaced, contrite. “I’m sorry. I did not intend it that way.”
Jazz waded in, leisurely, watching the oil drip down Prowl’s upper body. “I’m teasing you, Prowl. Okay?”
“…I see.”
“Yeah, that is not the mood I want you in.” The slope of the pool set them on a good level to resume what they’d been doing in New Mexico.
clangCRASH! This time it was Prowl doing the tackling.
O Primus, Jazz thought, Prowl’s mouth on him, Prowl extending his neatly sharpened denta to draw patterns on armor, nibble on more delicate structures. Yeah, so good like this oh Primus yes. Jazz shivered, knowing Prowl would taste Prime’s metal on the edges of his armor. Jazz had sent Prime off to the East Coast with his own special kind of flourish. Everyone expressed their love and devotion in individual ways.
Jazz laughed and moaned and shouted, sending tactical magnetic pulses through Prowl’s body, driving him wilder. Prowl clawed his own chest open, prominences from the spark corona writhing and snapping across Jazz’s fields.
Want… Wannnt… Prowl growled, too far gone for coherence.
Two million years of a passionate spark imprisoned. Jazz shuddered. Slag cables! By main strength Jazz pulled them up the ramp, mostly out of the oil, rolling them over. Straddling Prowl’s arching body, he ran his hands over Prowl’s gaping chest, dipping fingertips inside, hanging on tight with his legs as Prowl bucked.
Never deny you this, Jazz said fiercely, the halves of his spark chamber springing apart eagerly, without reservation. Overload took them hard, stone and oil scorched, lightning-struck, thirty thousand amperes spinning them into the soothing dark.
…
That part, that little swirl, that was from mine, Jazz said, tracing the bright comet of metal on Prowl’s spark chamber with a fingertip and honed fields.
Jazz. Prowl jerked his armor and protoform wider, helm striking sparks from the stone floor. Jazz… Lapsing into formal Cybertronian with full harmonics and subharmonics, half singing as the name demanded. Jazz normally eschewed the complication, but Prowl’s formality wasn’t stuffy or tradition-bound. Prowl meant it in absolute honor, deepest respect and regard. It was his own hue of profound affection. Jazz…
And to hear Prowl, singing his name, delirious with longing, that predatory body spread beneath him open and vulnerable…
Mmhmm, Jazz thrummed. Don’t be expectin’ restraint from me this time either.
…
Jazz came online smooth and slow, easy as blues, with the goodly hot weight of a mech on top of him. They lay on the ramp near a wall, immersed up to Jazz’s audials. He kept his visor and optics off, enjoying the tactile sensations. Warm oil sloshing gently around his body. Light touches of fingertips around his helm and face, followed by the barely-felt slick drip of oil down from the touches. What on Earth was Prowl doing?
Praxians were known for their even temperament and sound, practical logic. They did not, as a rule, dabble in the arts; happy to leave such endeavors - as most Cybertronians did - to the Towers. Wordlessly, Prowl lent Jazz his optical feed by way of explanation. The bathing oil, when overlaid on Jazz’s specially coated armor, created a vivid, swirling iridescence that was eerily luminous in the cavern’s dim light.
Jazz kept whatever quips he might have composed regarding face-painting behind firewalls. He did not want Prowl to stop. Instead, he let his hands drift over Prowl’s sides, slipping in the oil, not questing for new places to delve but keeping to a slow rhythm, up and down, over the back, skimming the hips, deliberately avoiding for the moment door-wings and their attachments.
First memory? he asked. It was a fairly common thing to exchange, the first time one interfaced with someone. Jazz had a trove of such treasures - even Perceptor’s, though only as filtered through Beachcomber’s recollection.
Cables at last linked them as Prowl acquiesced, settling down through the layers of their minds.
…
5.2304 million years ago.
“The Fission Blade is to be decommissioned and salvaged. The AI node designated ‘Lance’, sub-node of the AI lineage designated ‘Sigma-47’, is to be neither decommissioned nor dispersed to the nets nor reassigned to a new battleship. In consideration of numerous heroic actions and displays of unique personality algorithms, it has been decided that the AI node ‘Lance’ shall best serve the Cybertronian Empire by being embodied and kindled; forthwith to be programmed as a Counselor of Law; replacement for Heliodor of Praxus.”
The old Counselor was retiring to the mining planet Arenest II, where he would supervise a section of automated equipment and drones, even engaging in physical labor himself if he wished. It was a common mode of retirement, respected and contemplative. Mining worlds and asteroids were often beautiful in their austere, peaceful way, and one could communicate easily enough with friends throughout the empire via subspace. Heliodor even now was being feted and congratulated on his decision.
But, Lance thought, I don’t want to be embodied. I want to be installed on one of the new Laser-class cruisers. He erased the quantum tunnels of the thought immediately, though the sentiment would reappear in his algorithms fourteen more times before they brought the logic sink aboard the Fission Blade’s listing hulk to take him away.
…
Echo of thunder chest hot heavy compact solid center of gravity wrong wrong all wrong legs feet only two when he was used to five sets of landing gear hands so isolated single pair of stereoscopic optics field of vision so narrow so alone alone alone alone!
“Easy there, easy, we’ve got you.”
“I’m going to connect via cervical cable, all right?”
Something clicked in his neck and the world expanded sight broadened four other minds enfolded him - only four! - Heliodor’s former cohort - and encouraged him and gave him images of his new self the new body they’d had built for him; slim and tall, black and gold, with golden sensory vanes fanning out from the elegant central processor cooling vent on his forehelm. The expression on that unfamiliar face was one he recognized, he thought, but everything was happening so slowly…
“Welcome! Come down, yes one foot at a time, very good, gently now.”
“Slag I wish they didn’t throw them in so fast, poor thing.”
“No, it’s better this way. You know AIs think ten times faster than the embodied. See? Just like Spiral did, he’s picking it up already.”
“Yes, Aequitas, ha ha, I remember.”
“What’s your name, young one? You can choose a new one - we didn’t think you’d want to be called ‘Lance’ any more. Spiral here used to be an AI, too, so it’s all right, you’ll be fine. We understand.”
Step by step they were leading him from the Simfur temple, towards the shining road that would take them south to Praxus. Home. He’d never had a home before, unless one counted Cybertron as a whole. No hangar would ever equal the reaches of space.
He looked down at his hands. Black enamel palms, fingers sheathed in sensitive bronze, brightly polished. “We…I… I would like to be called Warrant.”
“Mmm, nice!” said Spiral, winking.
Aequitas, now the cohort’s senior partner, took his hands and leaned close to touch forehelms. “Welcome to our cohort, Warrant.”
…
2031 - August
Oh man, ooh man, Jazz whimpered. Your first body was hot, too! He wriggled and snuggled against Prowl’s chest, marginally overheated. Didn’t Aequitas go the other way, later? He had himself copied as an AI, after the war started. Spiral and the others, and Aequitas’ embodied self were all dead. Jazz sometimes found he knew things like that, even when he had not intended to access his memories of his span within the Allspark.
Yes. Prowl knew who he had lost with his city-state. Jazz squeezed him gently.
Last I heard, one of the neutral groups had one of his sub-nodes. They got away clean, far as I know, Prowl.
That corresponds with the information I have, Prowl said, nuzzling Jazz’s helm. Your turn.
…
9 million years ago.
Aaaahhhhh mmmm warm hello sunlight! Hello platform! Hello feet! Hello gravity! Hello world! Optics - hello optics! - on, that’s better. Oooohh, hello there, Legs! I mean Optimus Prime!
The beautiful silver-blue mech handing him down from the kindling platform laughed - a wonderful sound that thrilled through every circuit. His larger twin, silver and steel, pretended to glower but winked to give the game away, knowing himself to be a little bit frightening. Lord Protector Megatron. Mmmmm, another kind of thrill. The Lord and the Prime were new, too, themselves only kindled a few orns ago.
“My name’s Jazz!” Jazz sang, slipping into the immensity of Cybertron’s communications nets. “I’m your information-gatherer/companion/party host/spy/partner in emotional tension-easing mischief/secret bodyguard/other things!” He swarmed up the Prime’s body, wrapped his arms around Prime’s neck and kissed him. Hello kissing!
“You certainly are,” Optimus Prime said, laughing again.
…
2031 - August
“Hello, kissing,” Prowl murmured and put the idea into practice, kissing the mouth that had been designed for kissing Prime. He meant to ponder a translation for Jazz’s original function, but Jazz’s hands wandered cleverly and the kiss lingered. Jazz hummed into his mouth, petting his door-wings. Prowl was about to open his spark chamber again when they heard heavy footsteps stumping down the ramp.
Ratchet shuffled by them, energy signatures almost nonexistent. A little smear of energon had dried on his face.
“Ratchet?”
“’M fine,” Ratchet said, trundling into the bath. “Just wanted to soak a minute. Skyfire’s repairs are done.” He submerged, sinking to the bottom, crouching there, letting the heat seep into his joints. He’s in recharge now, will be for a couple of days I think. And yes I told Silverbolt already.
I think old doc-bot could use a snuggle, Jazz tight-beamed to Prowl. Prowl’s engine revved and he sat up. Jazz pushed him back down.
No, no, lean back like this…right, and pull one knee up…yeah. It’s sexy, trust me!
Prowl lifted an orbital ridge but did as he was told. The pose did draw the optics to the chest.
(The Protectobots had found that moving their armor and protoforms in an approximation of human respiratory effort was deemed by most of the other Autobots to be shockingly erotic. Then Streetwise had commented on Hot Spot’s “heaving bosoms” and the whole experiment had dissolved into howls of laughter for a solid fifteen minutes.
Making a determined effort, Prowl managed to set that memory aside.)
When Ratchet emerged from the oil, Jazz and Prowl looked like they were ready for a mechaphile magazine’s centerfold photo shoot.
“Jazz…” Ratchet was practically stumbling with weariness. He wasn’t unwilling - far from it - he just really needed to shut down for a few hours.
Surging to their feet, Jazz and Prowl locked their forearms behind his waist and pulled Ratchet’s arms over their shoulders. “Hush,” Jazz said. “Hush. We’ll take care of you, Ratch. You don’t have to do anything.” They maneuvered him with military precision into the med-bay and onto a recharge berth, configuring it for three and climbing up to join him.
Cables slithered, armor slid and clanked, sparks whirred lullabies. Prowl cupped Ratchet’s helm, pressing his other hand flat against Ratchet’s chest, conscious of the forging of those hands as Ratchet pulled the one on his chest up to nibble the fingertips. Hands, spark chamber, optics.
Prowl, my dear friend, Ratchet said, kissing the hard angle of Prowl’s cheek flange. He knew how to use full harmonics, too.
“D’awwww. Sweet recharge, us!” Jazz sang, and flooded the link with everything he and Prowl had felt and thought and said and done over the past day and night.
<{>~~~<(o)>~~~<}>
Starscream, Skywarp warbled, pulling himself closer, rubbing their cockpits together. Not quite fully out of recharge. Starscream, I don't want a third.
Mmwha?
Skywarp tucked his head into Starscream's neck. I don't want a third anymore. We don't need one. It was just you and me at first, remember? Before he came out of CR. Just you and me were good enough to beat everyone else in the air. Gloomy old TC had been a weight on their wings for millennia. They were better off without him, and anyway, Skywarp liked having Starscream to himself. He went on before he lost momentum. We could go get upgrades. Galvatron is so wrapped up in Shocky's toys he won't notice we're gone. There's this guy on Sheol; he pretends to be Neutral, even sometimes wears the Autobrand, but really he's a Con. He's a genius, always has new designs nobody's seen or used before. When we got back, Galvatron wouldn't know what our new limits were; we'd have the advantage! Please, Starscream? Please? You have to take over soon! Galvatron's going to get us all killed, and Shockwave doesn't care about anything but that thing he's building.
Hm. You really have been giving this a lot of thought, haven't you? For you, Starscream murmured, petting Skywarp's helm indulgently. I’ll give it some thought, too, shall I?
=======================================================================
A/N: Hahaha, Perfection got snuck in there solely because I've watched Tremors recently. XDDD
/dork
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Table of Contents
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