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Energeon chains and stasis cuffs are all well and good, Prowl muses, but for some things only rope will do.
"Frag, Prowl, must you? You know I hate these damn doorwings."
Jazz stands in the middle of Prowl's quarters, graceful frame a slender tower of black and white bound and wound in brilliant red nylon cord.
A good choice, Prowl decides. He'd almost gone with the blue to echo Jazz's visor, but this is so much more dramatic.
"Ratchet tells me you haven't been doing proper maintenance on them," he says, double checking his knots. Jazz's knees are drawn tight together, the rope then stretching up to the roof plating on his back, winding around to pull it down and expose the delicate interface jacks usually kept hidden. Little nubs of scarlet steel; Prowl brushes his fingers over them, hums appreciatively as Jazz trembles at the touch. Traces the line of the nape of Jazz's neck.
"I happen to be painted black and white, not yellow."
"We aren't talking Sunstreaker's level of fastidiousness, Jazz. Ratchet says you barely keep the gears oiled."
"Ratchet should mind his own—ow! Oversensitive pieces of tinfoil. . ."
"Hush." Prowl smooths his hands along the bend of Jazz's arms. They arc up, wrists bound with more rope behind Jazz's helm, the cord then arrowing down to wrap around and around the struts of those hated doorwings, pulling them upright in proud display. "Calm. Thrashing about will strain the joints."
"Something I wouldn't have to worry about if you didn't have this weird Praxian fetish! Gimme one good reason not to stow them back into subspace where they belong."
"I asked you not to."
Jazz says nothing to that.
How much of Jazz's behavior is genuine and how much a show carefully designed to play into Prowl's needs and wants is always difficult to determine. When this had started . . .
. . . When this had started, Prowl had been overworked and overstressed. Idiots had infiltrated his previously impeccable Logistics network, slacking off, fumbling their instructions, running black market deals. The net result had been a cascade of shortages and mission failures as mistakes piled on mistakes, and a frantic scramble by Prowl to compensate for the sudden holes in the Autobot defense. He'd spent long orn locked in place at his desk, his processor overclocked so he could recalculate odds and resources before the Decepticons could take significant advantage of this weakness, and by the time he'd staggered from his desk, woozy from too much coolant to his cortex and not enough energon in his tank, he'd been in the blackest of moods.
He'd stopped by the medbay on his way to his quarters, desperately hoping Ratchet could do something for the grinding agony in his helm, and that's when he'd seen Jazz.
Battered and missing plates of his armour, exposed wires still sparking, smoke seeping out from under his hood, Jazz argued loudly with Ratchet.
"Would you just patch me up, already? I got places to blow and people to murder," said Jazz, squirming away from Ratchet's grasping hands.
"The only murdering that's going to get done is by me, because apparently killing you is the only way to make sure you get some rest," Ratchet snarled. "You are in no condition to go back out there! Never mind the frame damage, you've got at least six viruses from that last data retrieval mission and you've overtaxed your systems using that damn lightshow. I let you out of here and you'll have a full system meltdown within the joor."
"Ratchet-"
There it was, in Jazz's crisp black and white: the stupidity Prowl had been battling against. The complete inability to follow directions that were clearly for the benefit of everyone involved.
The anger simmering in his spark like magma had flared.
Had erupted.
He'd been across the medbay before he even registered the impulse, hands grabbing Jazz and brutally shoving him down, pinning him to the berth. "Stop," he had hissed. "You. Will. STOP."
Jazz had looked up at his with a visor gone incandescent and later, much later, Prowl had realized how close he'd come to death. In that moment, however, he'd been blank of anything but that horrible, agonizing rage, his frame trembling with the force of it, his hands locked so tight on Jazz that the joints of his fingers began to squeal from the strain.
And then Jazz's gaze had deepened and darkened to sapphire, and he had relaxed, very, very slowly, in Prowl's grip. Had gone still on the berth.
"Stay," commanded Prowl.
The corner of Jazz's mouth had quirked. "Sure."
The rage ran out of Prowl like water, leaving him empty and cold. He had staggered back from the berth only to find himself collapsing into Ratchet's arms as his systems finally went into emergency maintenance shutdown.
He'd woken on the berth next to Jazz. He'd been too numb to really register anything, but he still remembers how Jazz had lain facing him, wearing an expression Prowl had never seen before. Uncanny and blank. Watchful.
That same watchful undertone is present now as Prowl slowly circles Jazz. There is a patience in Jazz, an odd kind of passive receptiveness. For all his ostentatious protests and discomfort, his struggles are mere shows instead of true resistance, and Prowl's reactions to these seem carefully monitored.
It's obvious he's letting Prowl know that this happens only because Jazz allows it. It's Jazz's motivation behind that permission that's got Prowl reeling off facts and calculations even as he comes to stand behind Jazz.
"You called them oversensitive," says Prowl. Slowly, deliberately, he brings up his hands and holds them a finger length away from the inner surface of Jazz's doorwings.
The doorwings tremble against their bindings, an aborted, fluttery motion that has Prowl snatching his hands back before his fingers can brush, touch, go too far. His own doorwings spread wide for him to catch any iota of feedback from Jazz's systems but are foiled by high quality stealth mods. All he has to go on is that flutter and a great deal of silence.
"Jazz?"
A soft huff as Jazz vents. "What? You worried now? It didn't hurt," he says.
I didn't even touch you, thinks Prowl, and wonders just how sensitive those doorwings truly are. Earlier, Jazz had shivered and made a single, soft hiss as the rope looped and knotted around the struts, his face turned away. Prowl regrets that now. What would he have seen?
Would it have been anything other then that blank mask Jazz has shown him each time they've had one of these encounters? So different from his usual flirtatious smiles and cocky grins. Prowl can't decide if it's more honest or less, can't tell what Jazz means by showing it to him. Is it another deliberate tell? Or is he being allowed to see past that defensive charm to the true face of the predator underneath?
As with the doorwings, Prowl has very little to go on. All he knows for certain in this case is that Jazz has never refused him, no matter how unexpected the circumstances.
The second time they'd done something like this, for example, had been just as sudden as the first. There had been a general security update to the base which had somehow gone wrong. The comm lines were spotty at best as transmission stations refused passwords, and half the doors were malfunctioning, locking when they shouldn't and ignoring entry codes.
The door to Prowl's office had locked, trapping him inside, and he'd been radioing frantically, trying to coordinate with bots who kept being kicked off the network, until he himself wound up tagged as a hostile presence and had been subsequently shunted into radio silence.
Then, of course, the base had reacted to him as an enemy, shutting off all power and triggering the emergency locks in addition to the ones already engaged, leaving him utterly trapped in darkness.
He'd waited there in the prison of his office, pacing back and forth, back and forth, frantic with visions of Decepticons pouring in to slaughter helplessly disorganized bots.
The sound of his door opening had been the sweetest music. The sight of his rescuer, Jazz, like a vision from Primus. The light streaming in from behind him only added to the effect, though it forced Prowl's systems into painful reset at the sudden influx of stimulation.
"Still got the touch," said Jazz, flexing his fingers as he slunk over to Prowl's side. "Sorry it took so long to get here. Lemme just do a manual confirmation on your systems to clear that hostile tag."
He'd reached for Prowl and Prowl's hands had come up, locking around Jazz's forearms.
They'd stood frozen for a moment.
". . . status update?" Prowl rasped. He was wound so tight his vocalizer was clogged with static.
Jazz had cocked his helm. "You can unbind your gears. Red Alert found the problem and he's almost done clearing it up, and Blaster's got emergency comms up and running. Everything is under control."
"Good. That's good." He vented in slow cycles. Stared at his hands, bands of white around Jazz's black wrists. "I- I can't seem to let go."
And Jazz's face had once more gone strange and blank, his visor that same dark blue, and he'd said, "Yeah? You gonna pin me again?"
Prowl hadn't been able to bring himself to answer. His gaze had become trapped by Jazz's, his vocalizer apparently set on mute. But he'd taken a step forward and Jazz had moved with him, letting himself be guided off to the side. Letting himself be first pressed back against a wall, and when that wasn't enough for Prowl, turned and crammed face-first into a corner.
He'd twisted his head to one side, a sliver of that glittering blue gaze visible to Prowl. He'd flexed his fingers again, but allowed his wrists to be locked behind him in one of Prowl's hands, and when Prowl used the other to grip the nape of Jazz's neck, he'd allowed that, too. Prowl had rubbed his thumb against Jazz's throat, grateful and seeking to reward this easy compliance, and Jazz had chuckled and arched into the hold.
Prowl's systems slowed their frantic calculations. His joints loosened, his frame relaxed. There was no threat, he knew, because Jazz would not let himself be pinned like this if there was.
They'd stood there in the dark like that for barely a breem. Both of them quiet, both of them still, a tiny oasis of calm as outside Prowl's office the base slowly returned to normal. And yet, short as it was, by the time Prowl had stepped away he'd regained his internal balance.
Jazz had turned and done the manual confirmation without any comment. Then he'd flitted out of the office, a smile on his face and a bounce in his step, and Prowl had gone back to his console and started catching up on damage reports.
It wasn't the last time. As the war stretched on for interminable vorn, Prowl found himself faced time and again with the mounting stress of his position. Many of those times he was forced to face alone, the gear grinding stress sending him to Ratchet for system overhauls and forced defrags. But every so often he'd be fortunate enough to have Jazz on hand, and when he did, well, it didn't take much.
Pressing Jazz up against the wall, cramming him into corners, pinning him facedown over Prowl's desk. It didn't matter as long he could keep Jazz still. It was . . . soothing. And it might have stayed at only that if unit Tekar233 hadn't decided to get creative.
Primus, just the memory of it still makes Prowl grit his denta, his gears grinding sharply together.
Jazz's doorwings flick towards him. "Prowl?"
"It's nothing." He forces coolant through his systems, wrenching his thoughts away from memories of the past. Instead he turns to the inspection of Jazz's doorwings.
Jazz's fame is lush with smooth curves and pleasant angles. His paint is matte black and white, impeccably waxed, and his scarlet accents are ruby-rich and flawless. But his doorwings are deep grey and pale smoke, with chips in the paint and a few fine cracks in the metal. They'd be respectable on another bot, but on Jazz they are decidedly shabby.
A thorough cleaning first. Then some sealant for the cracks, some polish. It's a pleasant routine Prowl has helped other Praxians with many times. Jazz is a non-standard model, however. It's obvious he hasn't let anyone but Ratchet touch these, and then only to do the most basic of upkeep. High sensitivity and lack of acclimatization to handling is a terrible combination.
With that in mind he rummages through the cleaning kit on his berth for the softest of his cloths, a microfiber terry weave, and a bottle of his mildest solvent.
"Tell me if I cause you any pain."
He's half expecting a glib retort, a disdainful flick of Jazz's fingers, but all he's met with is stillness, silence. Jazz has returned to that strange, blank creature, leaving Prowl to do as he wishes. A retreat from the situation, or a reaction to his earlier concern over Prowl's rising tension? Questions, questions.
The first touch of the damp cloth gets no response. Prowl wipes a long, wet swipe along the inner surface of Jazz's doorwing as gently as he can. A second pass, and Jazz might as well have been a statue. A third.
He's midway through the fourth when Jazz's fingers twitch.
He leans in and blows softly on the wetness.
Jazz yelps. His reflexive flinch tugs on the bindings, forcing him to go still again, but this time he's trembling, twitching, and it makes a warm kind of satisfaction spool through Prowl's systems. This is, he feels, a genuine reaction. The first sign of surprise Jazz has ever shown during their times together, in fact.
He'd kept his cool when pinned to a medic bay berth, when crammed into countless corners and against whatever wall was handy. He'd even stayed composed in the aftermath of that damn Tekar233 incident when Prowl had been worked up enough to put Jazz in the brig.
That, of course, had marked the true turning point of their odd sessions into something more formal.
The captain of unit Tekar233 had been a hothead with more lead then sense. He'd somehow managed to gain access to scouting reports above his grade and decided to get a little creative with his interpretation of the command ‘patrol'.
What had followed was one of the most staggering instances of ruinous stupidity Prowl had ever had to suffer through. Unit Tekar233 had immediately gotten into trouble, attacking a bunker far stronger than they could deal with and forcing them to call in reinforcements. It had pulled troops away from Prowl's carefully managed defensive screen, attracting the attention of the Decepticon army and starting a massive unplanned conflict in the area. Decepticon patrols had taken gleeful advantage of the chaos, and the Autobots had lost at least a half dozen supply depots, a major base, and countless lives due to the actions of one imbecile.
Prowl had been so enraged his frame had overheated and his fans had to kick in hard enough to make him rattle. He'd been furious and shaken and scared, fragging terrified at how fragile all the plans and backups he'd built truly were.
Plans had been set in motion and the situation was back to a semblance of order, but Prowl was still caught up in the whirl of his emotions with no real release except-
-except Jazz.
He'd sent out a location ping. Stalked down the halls to his quarry who met him outside the medbay.
Jazz had obviously just come back from doing damage control on the battlefield. He'd been battered and dirty, but Ratchet wouldn't let Jazz linger outside the medbay if Jazz was truly wounded.
That's what Prowl told himself as he grabbed Jazz by the arm and started to drag him down the hall. Jazz hadn't said anything, hadn't resisted, had just trotted along at Prowl's side with that blank look that was becoming so familiar.
He'd taken Jazz all the way to the base's brig, hustled him past the pair of startled guards, and down to the first maximum security cell he found free.
He'd shoved Jazz into it and punched the control for the forcefield hard enough to make the button's plastic shatter, and Jazz had lain on the floor of the cell, still and silent and it wasn't enough. It wasn't enough.
Rage and guilt swirled within him. This was no kind of reward for someone who'd come back after cleaning up that mess out there, but Prowl need it so much. Had tried to explain it, but all he got out was "Jazz . . . " before he lapsed into angry, confused silence.
Jazz had flipped over onto his back, rolled his helm to look at Prowl, and smiled. "It's cool, Prowl. I need the recharge." He'd stretched out to settle himself properly. "Go ahead."
And so Prowl had pushed the button for stasis containment.
The field had sprung to life instantly, frosting the interior of the cell a pale blue. Jazz systems were frozen, the energy sucked out of them and shunted away until he was the next best thing to lifeless on the floor, helpless in a way only a spark prison could have outdone.
Prowl had been so relieved he sobbed. He pressed his hands to the field, pressed his face to it and stared in at Jazz's motionless form. He was well and truly trapped. No longer a variable. A certainty.
He stayed there, the tension slowly leaving his frame, joor after joor as the main shift slowly wound down and bots went off duty, as the guards outside were replaced, then replaced again, and still he stood there, staring at Jazz and gradually falling into a sort of partial shutdown.
Until Ratchet jolted him back to his senses with a firm slap upside the helm. "Idiot. Didn't it ever occur to you to take him to your quarters to play these games?"
Prowl's systems scrambled to reassess, caught between aborted threat assessment from the blow and officer protocols insisting that the CMO be obeyed and submitted to.
Ratchet had solved his problem by thrusting a cube of energon into his hands. "Drink that," he ordered. Simple and easy to understand.
Prowl drank it.
"Don't put Jazz in stasis lock. His systems are delicate due to all that specialization, and they don't react well to forced lock. Take him to your quarters and stuff him in a box or something. Primus, take some of the brig restraints and go wild, but don't bring him down here again."
"Yes, Ratchet." His voice had been barely audible. He'd hoped Ratchet would take it as a sign of low energy and no recharge, but the medic's knowing look had made it all too clear his embarrassment was just as obvious from the outside as it felt from the inside.
"Good. Ping me when you've let him out. Fragger's due for maintenance, and he might try and skip out if we're not careful."
Prowl had had to weather some knowing looks from Ironhide and a few worried ones from Optimus, and the rest of his fellow officers had watched him with suspicious, narrowed optics for a time, but since Jazz never made a protest they were forced to let it lie. And since the brig guards were chosen for discretion as well as diligence, it never went farther down the chain of command then that.
Embarrassing as it had been, though, Ratchet's advice was obviously sound. The next time Prowl found himself wound too tight, he sent an email to Jazz requesting his presence in Prowl's room.
It wasn't the last time Ratchet poked into the relationship, either. His meddling is actually why Prowl has Jazz trussed up like this.
"Good," he'd said with deep satisfaction the last time Prowl had been in for a maintenance checkup. "Your systems are showing much less ware from overheating and stress induced gear grinding. Figured you'd do better once you got a hobby. Now see if you can do something about Jazz's doorwings."
That had been a shock. Prowl always knew, in some dim, unexamined way, that Jazz had doorwings. It was obvious during his transformation. But Jazz had never displayed them - not once in the hundreds of vorn Prowl had known him, in fact.
A tantalizing little mystery, one that Prowl picked over orn after orn until curiosity had him calling Jazz to his quarters.
He'd been nervous when he made his request, but Jazz had only stared at him with a gaze empty of any hint of his own feelings and bent gracefully to Prowl's will.
Now, though-! Ah, now he's very much out of that impassive shell, and Prowl drags a finger along the upper sweep of one of Jazz's doorwings simply to watch his squirm.
"That isn't cleaning," Jazz protests, his rich voice gone breathy. His fingers knot around each other behind his helm, one of the few movements allowed by this style of binding.
"Oh? How would you know what the proper procedure is for cleaning? You barely maintain these." On a hunch, he leans in close as he dares, a breath away from pressing his lips to inner curve of one of Jazz's doorwings and whispers, "Or have you been watching my fellow Praxians and I in the wash racks?"
The reaction is delightful, Jazz fluttering those doorwings and crooning in pleasure, his racer's engine rumbling in basso counterpoint. "You cheating . . . Ratchet told you, didn't he?"
"That your hypersensitive doorwings are especially vulnerable to sound? Don't be ridiculous. Anyone with a working cortex and any kind of knowledge of your proclivities could have figured it out. Which is, I suppose, why you've kept them hidden so long."
Jazz doesn't answer him, but this time it's not because of any blank mask. His engine is purring steadily. His doorwings can't keep still. And Prowl can see the vents in Jazz's armour gaping wide to let out heat, can feel it as his doorwings pick up the change in temperature, the first indication they've been able to find that Jazz is even in the room.
"What I can't understand," he continues, still murmuring into the vulnerable shell of a doorwing, "is why you've left them this sensitive when Ratchet could readjust the settings."
"Prowl-!"
His designation in sweet, sobbing tones. Prowl allows himself a smile and pulls away. Now that he has Jazz properly sensitized, the rest of the cleaning should be extremely satisfactory.
So it proves. The next swipe of the cloth make Jazz moan and writhe, something Prowl hadn't thought possible in these bindings. But then, Jazz is much, much more flexible than a Praxian model, turning what's traditionally a pose of elegant lines and perfect angles into a sinuous form with dipping curves. He can actually curve his back more then Prowl had ever thought possible, arching with aft thrust out, hood pushed up high.
Prowl can't help himself. He slips a hand along the tight curve Jazz's back has become. There's just something about him that invites touch.
He leaves it there as he goes back to wiping down Jazz's doorwings, soft circular motions as he scrubs away the grime. Dirt, soot, flakes of old sealant come away under his gentle ministrations, and all the while Jazz whimpers and croons and twitches as he fights to get away and come closer at the same time.
The solvent starts to steam as Jazz's temperature ticks steadily upwards. Prowl can feel it against his palm, is finally registering it with his doorwings, Jazz's shape drawn from thin air in lines of heat and crackling electricity. Sparks dance along Jazz's wires, nip at Prowl's fingers, leap and drift in the air about them, pale blue and bright white.
Prowl chuckles. "Very charming."
"Sadist. S'like . . . S'like you're rubbin' all my finish off," groans Jazz, a sound strangely out of focus, one voice fractured into many.
"I don't doubt it feels that way. You realize this cloth is black with all the grime I've cleaned off of you?" It is, too. Prowl doesn't even bother with the idea of cleaning it, simply tosses it into the rubbish bin and goes into his kit for another. This time he gets to clean the front of Jazz's doorwings. Tease him. Watch Jazz's face while he does so. . . "Feeling a little raw?"
Jazz's mouth hangs open to help vent the heat of his frame. His visor glows that odd, deep sapphire Prowl has come to know so well and sparks catch and glitter on its crystal edges. His chest thrusts up toward Prowl and his motor growls appealingly, the only answer he makes to Prowl's question.
"Don't worry. Once I have you clean I'll lay on some fresh sealant. It'll help ease the ache."
Is it wrong to feel such delight at Jazz's despairing little whimper, to love the way he licks his lips to try and cool the sensitive components? How can it be when they're such pretty things?
"Do you make these sounds for Ratchet when he does your maintenance?"
The word comes rolling out, the sound a chorus instead of a voice, "Jealous?"
Prowl considers carefully as he finishes getting the last of the dirt off Jazz's doorwings. They're no longer faded to odd shades of grey and off white, but the paint lacks the satin richness of the rest of Jazz's finish. ". . . I think so."
And there it is as Prowl expected: that watchful, calculating blankness breaking through despite the tremble of Jazz's limbs, despite the inviting curl of his glossa against the corner of his mouth, despite the sparks that crackles and arc lightning along the curve of his arms, the restrained pillar of his legs.
Caught and bound? No. This is a predator at the centre of its web, the scarlet ropes mere accessories in its hunt.
But does one confront such a thing or leave it unremarked?
He turns the question over and over in mental hands as his physical ones lay the first stripe of sealant in a long, practiced brush stroke on the upper line of Jazz's doorwing. It has to be cold to Jazz's overheated frame but it only seems to make him burn hotter, the pitch of his motor rising from rumbling base to rich baritone to bright tenor, and the tang of ozone fills the air as electricity snarls across his frame in sheets, crackles up the brush and curls around Prowl's fingers.
Each slow stroke of the brush becomes a caress. First across the pale arc of the outer shells, then along the dark curve of the backs of those doorwings, urging the charge higher and higher, until Jazz's stealth mods are finally overpowered and overridden and he is there, right there for all to see and hear, the sound of his fans joining the song of his engine, his spark signature flaring brilliant to Prowl's sensors.
Soft static catch of Jazz's voice - he croons in primitive modular tones as he's revealed, spreads his doorwings as wide as the bindings allow, beautiful and shining on display like the lost crystals gardens of Parxus.
This time Prowl doesn't stop himself. He lets the sealant brush fall and presses his palms to the spread of Jazz's doorwings.
Jazz overloads.
The electricity arcs between them, sparks scattering everywhere in firework blossoms, overwhelming Prowl's sensitive systems and yanking them into the circuit of Jazz's pleasure. They cry out together, voices mingling, Prowl's HUD flashing warnings at him and his engine revs and roars at the secondhand pleasure. It rushes through him like lightening.
It's gone almost as quickly.
The sudden cutoff is like a blow. He stumbles back, his hands smarting from the electrical charge, his doorwings flapping frantically as they recalibrate to find what's suddenly been lost: Jazz.
He can't help it. He gapes, jaw hanging lose as facial programing stalls alongside his cortex.
Jazz's systems are shedding heat so quickly there's moisture beading on his frame. His chest heaves, vents open to their fullest, but his fans have gone silent. His spark signature has vanished as well.
And his face is as blank as Prowl's readings.
Jazz has allowed Prowl to lead every step in this dance. Never has he sought Prowl out, never has he made requests, never has he refused an overture. For the first time, Prowl wonders if that odd passivity is actually the point of this for Jazz.
All he knows for certain is Jazz will not act, only react.
So he comes forward with shaky limbs and cups Jazz's face with scorched fingers and leans in to press their foreheads together. His gaze is filled with nothing but the bottomless blue of Jazz's visor. "I cannot decide which I find more alluring," he whispers to this creature before him. "Binding you, or the fact that you allow me to do so."
There is the slightest uptick to the corners of Jazz's mouth, a thing of millimetres. ". . . That's quite the compliment."
"Considering how quickly your systems just rebooted, I have to assume that the only reason your stealth mods failed in the first place is because your allowed- no, you must have forced it."
Jazz laughs at that, a beautiful sound of rich harmony. He tips his head so his lips are temptingly close to Prowl's. "You always pay such close attention to me," he purrs.
"You're extremely compelling."
"You ain't so bad yourself." Then Jazz turns his face away and Prowl takes the hint, stepping back and allowing the other his space.
But before he can retrieve the sealant brush from the floor, he's given one more thing:
"I like the attention. But I like the silence better. That's the most important part of music, Prowl. Silence."
He frowns and turns back to Jazz. "I'm not sure I understand."
Jazz's face is still turned away, but Prowl can hear the smile in his voice. "Yeah, you do. It's why I'm here."