[G1] Moments of Disarray
Jan. 6th, 2014 10:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dracoqueen22a/n: I started this in response to a tf-rare-pairing prompt (Bluestreak/Jazz, can you keep a secret?) weeks ago but it rapidly grew larger than I could finish in a week's time so it didn't make the cut. I consider this a prequel to the other two fics in this series.
Special thanks to fuzipenguin for the beta-work, without whom you'd be reading a fic with incoherent tenses and confusing POVs.
Title: Moments of Disarray
Universe: G1, Coping Mechanisms series
Characters: BluestreakxJazz
Warnings: elements of d/s, tactile interfacing, maybe triggery for some
Rating: M
Description: A series of flashfics, not in chronological order. Can you keep a secret? It's more than just a question; it's a promise.
Solitude was his ally, an easy way to cope. Until Jazz wandered his direction, friendly and offering a cube, plopping beside Bluestreak without hesitation.
Jazz babbled about nothing and he listened to the things Bluestreak didn't say and then he offered, “Is there anythin' I can do?”
“Can you keep a secret?” Bluestreak asked, his optics dark with overcharge, his frame emanating heat and all but humming.
Jazz laughed, his amusement off-key and tainted by high grade. “Bluestreak, my mech, I am the king of secret-keeping.”
“I'm a fraud,” Bluestreak admitted after an unsteady attempt to lift his cube to his lips. “I'm not what everyone thinks I am.”
“Then what are ya, baby blue?”
Bluestreak's field spiked, crashing into Jazz's and slamming him with a mixture of desire and pain that wasn't healthy.
“Broken.”
o0o0o
“You're not the only one, you know.”
Bluestreak's sensory panels hiked upward, and he turned to look up at Jazz, his expression betraying his inner turmoil. “What?”
Jazz dropped down beside him, legs dangling over the edge like Bluestreak's, reminding himself not to look down. It was a long way down. “Every one of us. We all lost someone, something. It's why we fight.”
Bluestreak's shoulders slumped. “You don't get it at all,” he muttered and turned away, planting one hand on the edge as though to rise.
Jazz grabbed his arm, his emotions a twisting-churning mix of guilt and regret. “You were overcharged, Bluestreak. What kind of mech would I have been if I hadn’t rejected ya?”
Bluestreak pulled free, pushing himself to his pedes. “The kind that understands.” His sensory panels remained rigid against his backstrut, a sure sign of distress.
“What were ya really sayin', Blue?”
What was Bluestreak really thinking, sitting here on the edge of a roof, looking out over a city on the brink of war, looking back toward a city that no longer existed? Jazz didn't want to believe the worst.
Silence fell like a heavy blanket. In the distance, far below, Iacon hummed and thrummed and prepared for battle.
Bluestreak cycled a ventilation, hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. “Hey, Jazz,” he said, looking at the saboteur once more. “Can you keep a secret?”
o0o0o
It's three more strides to his door. He'd evaded the Hatchet for now but come mid-shift, his luck would run out. Ratchet would track him down, haul him in, and Jazz would have no choice but to submit to several thorough, invasive scans.
His knee wobbled. Jazz staggered to the side, shoulder hitting the wall. He stayed like that, using the wall as a prop, ventilating heavily. Outwardly, he was fine, not a scratch to mar his paint.
Inwardly, it was a different story. He fought a losing battle.
Jazz's hands scraped down the wall, leaving a score in the cheap metal. A camera came into view, but a moment later he hacked into the security systems and instigated a video loop. He couldn't have Red Alert getting suspicious.
Jazz didn't want Ratchet's or Red Alert's help. He just wanted quiet. Privacy. A moment to pull himself together before the interrogations began.
Alone save for the voice inside his helm.
“Jazz?”
The quiet inquiry pierced the fog in his processing.
He laughed, but it wasn't his own,and his shoulders hunched.“Hey, Blue,” Jazz ground out, his voice at least his own. “Can you keep a secret?” he asked. He didn't dare turn around.
His knees gave out beneath him. He dropped, expecting to hit the ground with a clatter, but hands grabbed him first. A warm frame pressed against his side, field brimming with invitation.
“Yes,” Bluestreak murmured into his audial. “I can.”
o0o0o
“On your knees.”
He dropped. Stared at the floor. Focused on it. The scuff-marks. The ill attempts at polishing. The glitter of metal shavings swept against the seam of floor and wall. The paint droplets from fixing scrapes and dings.
The voice echoed in his audials. Jazz shivered.
“Hands at your sides.”
His fingers twitched. The back of his neck column prickled. Heat flushed through his lines as though getting a full systems flush only without the pain. There was a reason medics put you in medical stasis for that slag.
“Beautiful.”
He cringed.
Beauty had no part in what he was or what he did. There was necessity. There were the unfortunate means that suited the end. But there was no beauty.
A hand on his helm. The scent of gun oil and heated metal and accent paint, always sharper than a base coat.
Something coiled low in Jazz's internals. It twisted and turned and gnawed on itself. His spark strobed a beat in excitement. Or anxiety. He couldn’t tell the difference anymore.
A thumb twitched up his sensory horn, igniting a fire that surged through Jazz's circuits. A moan rumbled in his chassis, but broke at the level of his vocalizer. A shudder raced down his backstrut. He tilted into the caress, a quick intake loud in the otherwise silent room. Need yawed through him, an empty ache Jazz was desperate to fill.
“Beautiful,” the voice repeated, a soft murmur.
Maybe, Jazz thought, I can still believe that.
o0o0o
He couldn't ventilate. There was a catch in his vents. Air rushed in, cycled through his systems, but wouldn't vent out.
Errors sent screeching alarms through his processor. His thoughts crashed one into the other. Processing collapsed like a deck of cards. Huh. Strange saying that. Where had he heard it before?
His spark throbbed, pain lancing through him like a vibroblade.
His audials glitched. He heard the conversation from the room next door. He couldn't hear his own ventilations. Because he wasn't ventilating.
Primus.
He shook. His plating rattled, rose and fell, clamped down and pushed outward, and he heard none of that either.
His optics glitched. Streaks of red and blue and black and green and Decepticon purple. Fuzzy around the edges. Darkness.
The scent of energon, thick and tangy and streaked with decay. It was old on his glossa, the thick sludge of that pulled from a dead mech. Because sometimes you did what you had to do to survive and apologized later. Apologized if you actually felt sorry and maybe Primus would understand. If Primus even cared.
Memories rose to the fore. They weren't his memories but they were there anyway. Confessions and apologies and requests for forgiveness. Pride and shame and those weren't his either, but they filled up his queue. Images of death and destruction, and it wasn't fair! Good mechs died and bad mechs lived, and there was no such thing as karma.
Karma. Where had he heard that word?
A sound rose from his vocalizer but it in no way resembled a word. It crackled with static. It echoed in his broken audials.
Condensation slicked his frame. He still wasn't ventilating. Error messages cropped up faster than he could dismiss them.
Not again. Dear Primus, not again.
“Blue.”
A visor filled the entirety of his vision. Warm metal cupped his face, turned his helm, forced him to look.
He knew that voice.
“It's you and me, sweetspark,” said a voice made of all of Bluestreak's fantasies, previous and present. “Just breathe.”
Silly, Jazz. Cybertronians didn't breathe.
His whole frame jerked as his fans spun to life, ex-vents rushing out of him so fast that it hurt. There was a loud click, stabilizers locking into place.
He reached out, pawing with graceless hands, hooking one on Jazz's shoulder, the other locking on Jazz's hip.
“Jazz,” Bluestreak said, vocalizer crackling on the last syllable. “I...” Pain lanced through his helm, memories screaming at him, demanding attention. “Can you keep a secret?” he gasped out, locked knees keeping him upright but only just.
An energy field washed over him, familiar and welcome and taking off the edge.
“Yeah, babe,” Jazz said, bringing their forehelms together. “Lay it on me”
o0o0o
Jazz groaned, hands scrabbling over Bluestreak's back, his frame arching as Bluestreak slammed against him. The clash of metal on metal was grating noise to a human, but music to a mech. There was a rhythm to it, a beat, one that Jazz welcomed with open arms.
He and Bluestreak both would need their paint touched up. But later. Jazz only wanted to think about now.
“Harder,” he panted, bucking against the larger frame, heat pouring from his vents, dumping into the air.
Jazz tossed his helm back, pushing against the berth. His circuits burned, energy crackling along his frame like a lightning storm.
Denta nibbled at his throat, scraping the cables. Pleasure streaked like fire through his lines.
“More,” Jazz demanded, writhing beneath Bluestreak, feeling their plating catch and slide in dissonant bursts.
Hands slid along his arms, grabbed his wrists and then pinned them to the berth. The grip was unshakeable, fingers squeezing to the point of pain. His joints creaked in warning and Jazz sucked in a ventilation. It felt indecently good and the cravings rose in his core, seeking satiation.
“Harder,” Jazz urged. “Harder.”
Make it all go away. Make it all disappear. Make it vanish to the Pit.
Take his secrets and bury them where no one, not even Jazz, could ever see them.
Overload struck like lightning to the spark. Jazz's vision glitched, vocalizer spitting static, charge erupting from beneath his plating.
His processor went blessedly blank and Jazz sagged, all energy stripped from his limbs. He felt like collapsing, but it was okay, because Bluestreak was there to catch him, easing him down to the berth, the static from his own unresolved arousal a soft buzz against Jazz's plating.
And even that, too, was okay.
o0o0o
He fired, round after round, felt the vibrations through his fingers, along his arm, up into his shoulder, across his chassis. It echoed around and around his spark. The sound pulsed in his audials, a steady cadence.
He fired and he fired, long after he ran out of ammunition, when his blaster clicked empty at him and his finger locked on the trigger.
There was a cycle, a loop, and sometimes, he got caught in it. There was an imperative – protect – and when he was caught, nothing else mattered.
The scent of discharged energy stung his olfactory senses. The silence had a presence, wrapping around him from helm to pede, clogging his ports. His plating rattled.
His blaster clicked.
And then it was lowering, a hand gentle as it rested on the barrel, pushing down and down, toward the floor.
“Reload,” Bluestreak said, and the harsh quality of his vocals surprised even himself.
“Not this time,” Jazz replied and he took the blaster from Bluestreak, motions slow and careful, like cornering a rabid Insecticon.
Weren't all Insecticons rabid? A bark of laughter rattled across Bluestreak's intake and went no further.
Fingers pressed against his own, uncurling them, stroking down the length of them. The shudder that took Bluestreak seemed to travel from his chevron to his knees. Something ground within him like unoiled gears.
“Sometimes, we just need someone else ta tell us ta stop,” Jazz said.
Bluestreak laughed. He laughed and laughed until it caught up inside of him and he choked on it. He sank down to the floor and Jazz sank with him and it was okay, because Jazz was good at keeping secrets and Bluestreak had plenty to spare.
o0o0o
They couldn't share a berth.
Bluestreak split his quarters with another Autobot; Jazz was in high command. Forget Autobot politics. There were too many reasons that the arrangement between them couldn't come to light.
It worked out better that way, Jazz supposed.
He wasn't a mech who recharged well. Or quietly. Or still.
He had purges from time to time. Replays of the things he'd done, the things he'd seen, the choices he'd made. Regret tended to compound itself. Old pain sought to be relived.
Sometimes, that solitude helped. Kept him from revealing his weaknesses to others. Not that he believed one of his fellow Autobots would use it against him. But there was always a niggling worry. Jazz didn't want anyone to see him losing control. Control was all he had. Controlling the little things since the war had stripped away all sense of control otherwise.
And he never felt more out of control than when his own frame turned against him, attacking him with memories and trapping him in recharge. Worse still was the wish, the hope, that he wouldn't have to face this alone. That he could roll over in his berth, someone would be beside him, to help bear the load.
He never gave Bluestreak his door code.
Somehow, the gunner cracking it and all of his protections around it, didn't surprise Jazz in the least. It should have, but it didn't.
So when he burst out of a memory purge, gasping and clawing at empty air, desperate to convince himself he was no longer burning from the inside out, he didn't startle at the arms that wrapped around him. He knew, without looking, that it was Bluestreak. The field that smothered his own violent one was immediately familiar. The voice whispering in his audial, so confident and calm and understanding, further reassured.
Jazz clung to those arms like he did nothing else, confident that his weakness would not be used against him.
“It'll be our secret,” Bluestreak murmured and Jazz soaked in that promise.
He relaxed from helm to pede, surrendering to the comfort of those arms.
o0o0o
Jazz never asked for anything.
Bluestreak learned to be observant.
He watched and he waited and he learned when to be harsh, when to be gentle, and when to be something in between. He knew when to push and when to wait. He knew how to coax and how to force. And he gave Jazz what he needed because sometimes, the giving was what Bluestreak needed, too.
He recognized the signals, varied by necessity. A casual brush of fingers in the common room. A well-worn joke told in passing by the hallway. A stern reprimand for a crime he hadn't committed and a punishment he wasn't expected to carry out.
Jazz came to him a fortress on the outside, but shattered on the inside. Bluestreak knew that look all too well, though in reverse. Everyone saw the babbling outside and assumed him damaged, but sometimes, looking at his fellow Autobots, Bluestreak wondered if he wasn't the most sane of the lot of them.
Jazz never asked for what he needed. Which was all right because Bluestreak could reason it out for himself.
The Enforcers had never known what they needed either. It had been Bluestreak's task to discern their needs and then provide them.
At least, with Jazz, it meant something more. And as much as he wished it was entirely unselfish on his part, it wasn't. He hated doing what he did, but felt incomplete without drawing on that experience.
In many ways, he was helping himself as much as he was helping Jazz.
And so it was that the first move was Bluestreak's to make. He watched for clues. He read the signs. And he reacted.
Jazz moaned beneath him, energy field winding around Bluestreak in a restless twist as though he couldn't settle, couldn't focus. Energy crackled and spit along his frame, biting against Bluestreak's like a rejection but only just. His hands clenched in and out of fists and there was a desperation there, buried beneath.
Bluestreak noticed and he wondered and he took a chance. He cycled a ventilation, prayed that he was right, that his training had been worth something, and he grasped Jazz by the wrists. He wrapped his fingers firmly around them, thumbs digging into a particular gap that would send a burst of numbness through Jazz's hands. And then he pressed them down, pinned them to the berth to either side of Jazz's helm, and he bore down with his weight.
His frame followed, a greater pressure, until Jazz was pinned beneath him. Trapped. Immobilized.
Something in Jazz's chassis burst out with a whine. His visor flared. His field went ragged around the edges, startled.
Bluestreak held his ventilation, waiting for Jazz to lash out. He was special operations, after all. He had to know at least half a dozen ways to break Bluestreak's hold and cause serious damage.
But he didn't.
Jazz cycled a ventilation, in and out, frame taut beneath Bluestreak. And then his cooling fans clicked on with a loud whirr that rattled the berth. His ventilations burst, his frame surged as though struck with a bolt of energy, and his field went utterly quiescent. Tame. Vibrating on the edges with anticipation.
Bluestreak, tentative, leaned down and nuzzled his helm against Jazz's, a slow slide of metal against metal, feeling Jazz shiver with delight beneath him, soft and obedient. Something within Bluestreak's processor quietly clicked into place.
And Bluestreak knew he had been right.
***
a/n: Will there be more to come from these two? Most assuredly. I have a follow-up to Collateral Damage that I'm currently writing and I'm sure there will be more. Blue/Jazz is becoming one of my top OTPs. :)
Feedback is welcome and appreciated! I do hope you enjoyed.
Special thanks to fuzipenguin for the beta-work, without whom you'd be reading a fic with incoherent tenses and confusing POVs.
Title: Moments of Disarray
Universe: G1, Coping Mechanisms series
Characters: BluestreakxJazz
Warnings: elements of d/s, tactile interfacing, maybe triggery for some
Rating: M
Description: A series of flashfics, not in chronological order. Can you keep a secret? It's more than just a question; it's a promise.
Solitude was his ally, an easy way to cope. Until Jazz wandered his direction, friendly and offering a cube, plopping beside Bluestreak without hesitation.
Jazz babbled about nothing and he listened to the things Bluestreak didn't say and then he offered, “Is there anythin' I can do?”
“Can you keep a secret?” Bluestreak asked, his optics dark with overcharge, his frame emanating heat and all but humming.
Jazz laughed, his amusement off-key and tainted by high grade. “Bluestreak, my mech, I am the king of secret-keeping.”
“I'm a fraud,” Bluestreak admitted after an unsteady attempt to lift his cube to his lips. “I'm not what everyone thinks I am.”
“Then what are ya, baby blue?”
Bluestreak's field spiked, crashing into Jazz's and slamming him with a mixture of desire and pain that wasn't healthy.
“Broken.”
“You're not the only one, you know.”
Bluestreak's sensory panels hiked upward, and he turned to look up at Jazz, his expression betraying his inner turmoil. “What?”
Jazz dropped down beside him, legs dangling over the edge like Bluestreak's, reminding himself not to look down. It was a long way down. “Every one of us. We all lost someone, something. It's why we fight.”
Bluestreak's shoulders slumped. “You don't get it at all,” he muttered and turned away, planting one hand on the edge as though to rise.
Jazz grabbed his arm, his emotions a twisting-churning mix of guilt and regret. “You were overcharged, Bluestreak. What kind of mech would I have been if I hadn’t rejected ya?”
Bluestreak pulled free, pushing himself to his pedes. “The kind that understands.” His sensory panels remained rigid against his backstrut, a sure sign of distress.
“What were ya really sayin', Blue?”
What was Bluestreak really thinking, sitting here on the edge of a roof, looking out over a city on the brink of war, looking back toward a city that no longer existed? Jazz didn't want to believe the worst.
Silence fell like a heavy blanket. In the distance, far below, Iacon hummed and thrummed and prepared for battle.
Bluestreak cycled a ventilation, hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. “Hey, Jazz,” he said, looking at the saboteur once more. “Can you keep a secret?”
It's three more strides to his door. He'd evaded the Hatchet for now but come mid-shift, his luck would run out. Ratchet would track him down, haul him in, and Jazz would have no choice but to submit to several thorough, invasive scans.
His knee wobbled. Jazz staggered to the side, shoulder hitting the wall. He stayed like that, using the wall as a prop, ventilating heavily. Outwardly, he was fine, not a scratch to mar his paint.
Inwardly, it was a different story. He fought a losing battle.
Jazz's hands scraped down the wall, leaving a score in the cheap metal. A camera came into view, but a moment later he hacked into the security systems and instigated a video loop. He couldn't have Red Alert getting suspicious.
Jazz didn't want Ratchet's or Red Alert's help. He just wanted quiet. Privacy. A moment to pull himself together before the interrogations began.
Alone save for the voice inside his helm.
“Jazz?”
The quiet inquiry pierced the fog in his processing.
He laughed, but it wasn't his own,and his shoulders hunched.“Hey, Blue,” Jazz ground out, his voice at least his own. “Can you keep a secret?” he asked. He didn't dare turn around.
His knees gave out beneath him. He dropped, expecting to hit the ground with a clatter, but hands grabbed him first. A warm frame pressed against his side, field brimming with invitation.
“Yes,” Bluestreak murmured into his audial. “I can.”
“On your knees.”
He dropped. Stared at the floor. Focused on it. The scuff-marks. The ill attempts at polishing. The glitter of metal shavings swept against the seam of floor and wall. The paint droplets from fixing scrapes and dings.
The voice echoed in his audials. Jazz shivered.
“Hands at your sides.”
His fingers twitched. The back of his neck column prickled. Heat flushed through his lines as though getting a full systems flush only without the pain. There was a reason medics put you in medical stasis for that slag.
“Beautiful.”
He cringed.
Beauty had no part in what he was or what he did. There was necessity. There were the unfortunate means that suited the end. But there was no beauty.
A hand on his helm. The scent of gun oil and heated metal and accent paint, always sharper than a base coat.
Something coiled low in Jazz's internals. It twisted and turned and gnawed on itself. His spark strobed a beat in excitement. Or anxiety. He couldn’t tell the difference anymore.
A thumb twitched up his sensory horn, igniting a fire that surged through Jazz's circuits. A moan rumbled in his chassis, but broke at the level of his vocalizer. A shudder raced down his backstrut. He tilted into the caress, a quick intake loud in the otherwise silent room. Need yawed through him, an empty ache Jazz was desperate to fill.
“Beautiful,” the voice repeated, a soft murmur.
Maybe, Jazz thought, I can still believe that.
He couldn't ventilate. There was a catch in his vents. Air rushed in, cycled through his systems, but wouldn't vent out.
Errors sent screeching alarms through his processor. His thoughts crashed one into the other. Processing collapsed like a deck of cards. Huh. Strange saying that. Where had he heard it before?
His spark throbbed, pain lancing through him like a vibroblade.
His audials glitched. He heard the conversation from the room next door. He couldn't hear his own ventilations. Because he wasn't ventilating.
Primus.
He shook. His plating rattled, rose and fell, clamped down and pushed outward, and he heard none of that either.
His optics glitched. Streaks of red and blue and black and green and Decepticon purple. Fuzzy around the edges. Darkness.
The scent of energon, thick and tangy and streaked with decay. It was old on his glossa, the thick sludge of that pulled from a dead mech. Because sometimes you did what you had to do to survive and apologized later. Apologized if you actually felt sorry and maybe Primus would understand. If Primus even cared.
Memories rose to the fore. They weren't his memories but they were there anyway. Confessions and apologies and requests for forgiveness. Pride and shame and those weren't his either, but they filled up his queue. Images of death and destruction, and it wasn't fair! Good mechs died and bad mechs lived, and there was no such thing as karma.
Karma. Where had he heard that word?
A sound rose from his vocalizer but it in no way resembled a word. It crackled with static. It echoed in his broken audials.
Condensation slicked his frame. He still wasn't ventilating. Error messages cropped up faster than he could dismiss them.
Not again. Dear Primus, not again.
“Blue.”
A visor filled the entirety of his vision. Warm metal cupped his face, turned his helm, forced him to look.
He knew that voice.
“It's you and me, sweetspark,” said a voice made of all of Bluestreak's fantasies, previous and present. “Just breathe.”
Silly, Jazz. Cybertronians didn't breathe.
His whole frame jerked as his fans spun to life, ex-vents rushing out of him so fast that it hurt. There was a loud click, stabilizers locking into place.
He reached out, pawing with graceless hands, hooking one on Jazz's shoulder, the other locking on Jazz's hip.
“Jazz,” Bluestreak said, vocalizer crackling on the last syllable. “I...” Pain lanced through his helm, memories screaming at him, demanding attention. “Can you keep a secret?” he gasped out, locked knees keeping him upright but only just.
An energy field washed over him, familiar and welcome and taking off the edge.
“Yeah, babe,” Jazz said, bringing their forehelms together. “Lay it on me”
Jazz groaned, hands scrabbling over Bluestreak's back, his frame arching as Bluestreak slammed against him. The clash of metal on metal was grating noise to a human, but music to a mech. There was a rhythm to it, a beat, one that Jazz welcomed with open arms.
He and Bluestreak both would need their paint touched up. But later. Jazz only wanted to think about now.
“Harder,” he panted, bucking against the larger frame, heat pouring from his vents, dumping into the air.
Jazz tossed his helm back, pushing against the berth. His circuits burned, energy crackling along his frame like a lightning storm.
Denta nibbled at his throat, scraping the cables. Pleasure streaked like fire through his lines.
“More,” Jazz demanded, writhing beneath Bluestreak, feeling their plating catch and slide in dissonant bursts.
Hands slid along his arms, grabbed his wrists and then pinned them to the berth. The grip was unshakeable, fingers squeezing to the point of pain. His joints creaked in warning and Jazz sucked in a ventilation. It felt indecently good and the cravings rose in his core, seeking satiation.
“Harder,” Jazz urged. “Harder.”
Make it all go away. Make it all disappear. Make it vanish to the Pit.
Take his secrets and bury them where no one, not even Jazz, could ever see them.
Overload struck like lightning to the spark. Jazz's vision glitched, vocalizer spitting static, charge erupting from beneath his plating.
His processor went blessedly blank and Jazz sagged, all energy stripped from his limbs. He felt like collapsing, but it was okay, because Bluestreak was there to catch him, easing him down to the berth, the static from his own unresolved arousal a soft buzz against Jazz's plating.
And even that, too, was okay.
He fired, round after round, felt the vibrations through his fingers, along his arm, up into his shoulder, across his chassis. It echoed around and around his spark. The sound pulsed in his audials, a steady cadence.
He fired and he fired, long after he ran out of ammunition, when his blaster clicked empty at him and his finger locked on the trigger.
There was a cycle, a loop, and sometimes, he got caught in it. There was an imperative – protect – and when he was caught, nothing else mattered.
The scent of discharged energy stung his olfactory senses. The silence had a presence, wrapping around him from helm to pede, clogging his ports. His plating rattled.
His blaster clicked.
And then it was lowering, a hand gentle as it rested on the barrel, pushing down and down, toward the floor.
“Reload,” Bluestreak said, and the harsh quality of his vocals surprised even himself.
“Not this time,” Jazz replied and he took the blaster from Bluestreak, motions slow and careful, like cornering a rabid Insecticon.
Weren't all Insecticons rabid? A bark of laughter rattled across Bluestreak's intake and went no further.
Fingers pressed against his own, uncurling them, stroking down the length of them. The shudder that took Bluestreak seemed to travel from his chevron to his knees. Something ground within him like unoiled gears.
“Sometimes, we just need someone else ta tell us ta stop,” Jazz said.
Bluestreak laughed. He laughed and laughed until it caught up inside of him and he choked on it. He sank down to the floor and Jazz sank with him and it was okay, because Jazz was good at keeping secrets and Bluestreak had plenty to spare.
They couldn't share a berth.
Bluestreak split his quarters with another Autobot; Jazz was in high command. Forget Autobot politics. There were too many reasons that the arrangement between them couldn't come to light.
It worked out better that way, Jazz supposed.
He wasn't a mech who recharged well. Or quietly. Or still.
He had purges from time to time. Replays of the things he'd done, the things he'd seen, the choices he'd made. Regret tended to compound itself. Old pain sought to be relived.
Sometimes, that solitude helped. Kept him from revealing his weaknesses to others. Not that he believed one of his fellow Autobots would use it against him. But there was always a niggling worry. Jazz didn't want anyone to see him losing control. Control was all he had. Controlling the little things since the war had stripped away all sense of control otherwise.
And he never felt more out of control than when his own frame turned against him, attacking him with memories and trapping him in recharge. Worse still was the wish, the hope, that he wouldn't have to face this alone. That he could roll over in his berth, someone would be beside him, to help bear the load.
He never gave Bluestreak his door code.
Somehow, the gunner cracking it and all of his protections around it, didn't surprise Jazz in the least. It should have, but it didn't.
So when he burst out of a memory purge, gasping and clawing at empty air, desperate to convince himself he was no longer burning from the inside out, he didn't startle at the arms that wrapped around him. He knew, without looking, that it was Bluestreak. The field that smothered his own violent one was immediately familiar. The voice whispering in his audial, so confident and calm and understanding, further reassured.
Jazz clung to those arms like he did nothing else, confident that his weakness would not be used against him.
“It'll be our secret,” Bluestreak murmured and Jazz soaked in that promise.
He relaxed from helm to pede, surrendering to the comfort of those arms.
Jazz never asked for anything.
Bluestreak learned to be observant.
He watched and he waited and he learned when to be harsh, when to be gentle, and when to be something in between. He knew when to push and when to wait. He knew how to coax and how to force. And he gave Jazz what he needed because sometimes, the giving was what Bluestreak needed, too.
He recognized the signals, varied by necessity. A casual brush of fingers in the common room. A well-worn joke told in passing by the hallway. A stern reprimand for a crime he hadn't committed and a punishment he wasn't expected to carry out.
Jazz came to him a fortress on the outside, but shattered on the inside. Bluestreak knew that look all too well, though in reverse. Everyone saw the babbling outside and assumed him damaged, but sometimes, looking at his fellow Autobots, Bluestreak wondered if he wasn't the most sane of the lot of them.
Jazz never asked for what he needed. Which was all right because Bluestreak could reason it out for himself.
The Enforcers had never known what they needed either. It had been Bluestreak's task to discern their needs and then provide them.
At least, with Jazz, it meant something more. And as much as he wished it was entirely unselfish on his part, it wasn't. He hated doing what he did, but felt incomplete without drawing on that experience.
In many ways, he was helping himself as much as he was helping Jazz.
And so it was that the first move was Bluestreak's to make. He watched for clues. He read the signs. And he reacted.
Jazz moaned beneath him, energy field winding around Bluestreak in a restless twist as though he couldn't settle, couldn't focus. Energy crackled and spit along his frame, biting against Bluestreak's like a rejection but only just. His hands clenched in and out of fists and there was a desperation there, buried beneath.
Bluestreak noticed and he wondered and he took a chance. He cycled a ventilation, prayed that he was right, that his training had been worth something, and he grasped Jazz by the wrists. He wrapped his fingers firmly around them, thumbs digging into a particular gap that would send a burst of numbness through Jazz's hands. And then he pressed them down, pinned them to the berth to either side of Jazz's helm, and he bore down with his weight.
His frame followed, a greater pressure, until Jazz was pinned beneath him. Trapped. Immobilized.
Something in Jazz's chassis burst out with a whine. His visor flared. His field went ragged around the edges, startled.
Bluestreak held his ventilation, waiting for Jazz to lash out. He was special operations, after all. He had to know at least half a dozen ways to break Bluestreak's hold and cause serious damage.
But he didn't.
Jazz cycled a ventilation, in and out, frame taut beneath Bluestreak. And then his cooling fans clicked on with a loud whirr that rattled the berth. His ventilations burst, his frame surged as though struck with a bolt of energy, and his field went utterly quiescent. Tame. Vibrating on the edges with anticipation.
Bluestreak, tentative, leaned down and nuzzled his helm against Jazz's, a slow slide of metal against metal, feeling Jazz shiver with delight beneath him, soft and obedient. Something within Bluestreak's processor quietly clicked into place.
And Bluestreak knew he had been right.
a/n: Will there be more to come from these two? Most assuredly. I have a follow-up to Collateral Damage that I'm currently writing and I'm sure there will be more. Blue/Jazz is becoming one of my top OTPs. :)
Feedback is welcome and appreciated! I do hope you enjoyed.
