Chapter Text
☆ The funny thing about Earth is that it had a lot of little ways to get under your plates. The obvious ones, of course, being the dust that never really washed out of your seams, the dirt that lingered in the tracks of your tires, the smudges that just kept reappearing on the glass of your windows. But less obvious were the ones that were less physical. The sound of music, so vastly different to what your kind had called song, the sheer variety of organic existence, even just rubbing your back against hot stone for the first time had been incredible. It would never be home, no, you were a Decepticon to your spark and there would never be a place so beloved to you as Cybertron, but... a vacation here sometimes would be nice. If this war ever ended.
You'd been starting to doubt that recently. That this war would ever end. Or if it did, that it wouldn't really be worth it anymore. Megatron, once Megatronus, had been so powerful, so persuasive, protective of her army of war frames, of slaves, and miners and gladiators, but it was getting harder and harder to remember that. Now, she just... hissed and growled and tried to claw her way to Optimus Prime. Like she could fit in his chest, or something, if he just held still long enough. Maybe that's what it was, in the end. Not the decimation of your kind, not the loss of your fellows, not even the loss of your world, but the loss of her. Seeing her pacing, barking nonsense at no one, your once-great leader driven half mad by a wanting you couldn't understand. There wasn't anyone to follow anymore. Not really. You wouldn't be caught dead taking orders from Starscream, after all.
You would always be a Decepticon. Always. You could not stand with a regime that had simply decided that half of its kind was stupid and lesser for no reason other than they liked the taste of the power. But it was so damn hard to keep caring about this war when your leader was mad, your army destroyed, and your home so far out of reach.
So that's probably why you'd first accepted Jazz's offer to dance, all those years ago now. And then kept accepting them, following him through city streets, through thick forests, across great plains of snow or sand or grass. You'd seen so much of this world with him and it had burrowed a place for itself under your plates in the same way that he himself had. All wrapped up in you until so much made you think of him. And it was stupid, you already knew, stupid and unintelligent and foolish and whatever other synonym, to be so willingly close with the Autobot's perfect spy, the only mech alive that could meet Soundwave on anything like an equal playing field, but you really just couldn't help yourself.
He was the only thing that made you feel something like hope anymore.
Shaking off the thoughts, you snuck into the massive, empty warehouse he'd comm'd you the location of, carefully sniffing at the air and getting nothing but metal and concrete left on its lonesome. You crept through towers of abandoned shipping crates, seeking out your illicit partner. The soft, trilling chirp that made its way out of your vocalizer was as unintential as it was embarrassing, but when Jazz turned to look at you, that sweet face lit by his smile, you thought maybe it was worth it. His doorwings twitched a happy hello, and you let your own mirror the motion, pressing eagerly into his waiting arms with a deep, relieved purr of your engine. "Fuck, you have no idea how much I missed you. Hook's been a pain in the ass recently."
"Hey, baby." His digits slipped easily into the weak points on your armor, ghosting over wires and pressing to the places he knew made your purr come shaky and heavy. It had been too easy to fall into something warm with him. To find yourself relying on the soft cadence of his gentle voice to calm the prickling in your spark. When he slips a digit under your chin, prompts you to raise your helm, it is the easiest thing in the world to kiss him and forget what he is.
It had been your deal from the start. As long as you were together, you could stop being a Decepticon and an Autobot. Could focus on everything else you were instead. Didn't stop either of you from, rarely, making your case for defection, but it was always short lived and quickly dropped. You cared too much for the abused Seekers, the beaten down miners, to be anything other than theirs, and he loved his Prime, trusted him beyond words, far too much to ever leave him behind. Optimus Prime was different than his predecessors, you could admit though, the only nice thing Jazz had ever gotten you to admit about his faction. Well, that and it had him in it.
His hands slid, warm and adoring, down your arms till he could lace his digits with yours, pulling away only to tug you back with him. He led you to one of the massive metal shipping crates, nudging open the door with a grin and a flourish, to show you the nest he'd put together inside. A mess of textiles and pillows from who knows where, enough that it would work as a makeshift berth for you both. He'd gotten little lights from somewhere, strung them up everywhere, enough that you could pick your way to the nest when he dragged the doors shut behind you, safe and hidden.
"How long did it take you to set this up?" You started to turn, optics cycling wide in the low light, but his arms wound around your waist before you could.
"Don't worry about that. Long enough that I expect you to enjoy it to the fullest." You could feel the shape of his smile against the cabling of your neck as he pressed kisses to your throat. Lingering over the primary energon line, sharp teeth grazing your lifeline. His purr was low, a gentle vibration that carried from his frame to yours as his hands wandered in familiar patterns of adoring affection. "Got you somethin' special tonight."
"Ooh, so this is for interface!" He smacked you gently on the hip for that, tugged you down with him, and you went willingly. Settled in the nest he'd made with his chest to your back, one hand tapping out the notes to whatever song he was composing in his head.
Jazz looked for something for a moment, warbled a high note you'd long learned was his version of a whoop of victory, and then with a click of a button some projector you hadn't noticed against the wall sent a holovid against the adjacent. "It's for movie night. If my darling conjux-to-be can behave."
You snorted, settled yourself closer. "Yeah, well-" and then the words hit you. Your own staticked out into silence, your throat working but producing no sound, until you coughed out a bleat of nonsense. Twisting to look at him, you got nothing but that familiar, calm gaze, his visor snapping back to show the loving set of his narrowed eyes. "... Jazz?" He trilled softly, his arm tightening around your waist. "Is that- Did you just propose to me? Seriously?"
"I think it was more of a statement," he murred, leaning forward to kiss a line along your slack jaw.
Conjux. Of course you'd thought of it. But it had been in the context of a world beyond your war, a fancy daydream you could not really afford. Belonging to him in a way that no one could deny. Of course you'd wanted it. How could you not? But there had always been the endless list of reasons why it was a bad fucking idea, number one being that the sparkmerge it required would show him all of you. Everything. Including the pieces that you could not afford to let slip free, even to him, because the moment he left your side he was not your Jazz anymore, but an Autobot officer.
He was so close. Kissing down your neck, servos tracing transformation seams, shifting lower until he could kiss at the sensitive places where your doorwings hooked into your back. So hard to think with his EM field winding into yours, broadcasting a loving adoration so strong that you could not think beyond the shimmering color of it against the stream of your code. And it was a bad idea. It was a very, very bad idea, but you didn't want to think that far. Didn't want to think beyond the steady pressure of his warm kisses, the soft thing in your spark that purred and sang, because he wanted you. Not just a fling, not just something to waste time, Jazz wanted you for life. Till the end of everything. And besides, you could simply be his to-be until the war was over. You could keep that, surely. The promise of something worth fighting for.
"Yeah. Yeah, okay." And he purred so hard that it shivered his soft laugh. You did not bother to stop your smile when he came up to kiss you on the mouth again, just laid your hand to his cheek and held him closer. Yours. He was yours.
You could barely focus at first, when he snuggled you close and gently turned your attention to the movie he'd gotten for you. Something human, you didn't pay attention to the title card, but he knew you too well by now. So many joors spent purring against his chest, talking about your lives before the war as if they were something still in reach. The scenes of car chases and perfectly timed turns was right up your alley, your attention eventually riveted. You could probably do all that, you mused, but it was astonishingly impressive for a little human to have managed it, and your attentive purr was interrupted only by Jazz's occasionally wandering hands, painting the rhythm of his music onto your armor.
It was part of what had drawn you to him, his tactile nature. Whatever you did, wherever you were, his servos would find themselves against your frame. You could almost read his thoughts in the rhythm of his touch by now, your attention occasionally drawn to the way he drew absent, looping spirals over the plane of your stomach, claws occasionally testing the seaming of your abdominal plating. Deep in thought, or concentrating hard on something. He was usually half lost in his head, though, a thousand branching threads running in that beautiful processor.
You laid your hand over his, letting your attention slip for a moment from the movie. When it was over and the credits were rolling, you thought, you'd turn over and ask him what he was thinking about. More often than not, when you asked that question, he'd smile that gentle smile and tell you it was nothing, which meant it was something Autobot that you weren't allowed to know. So you'd tell him to start thinking of something, that having a head full of nothing was no good for anyone, and he would laugh that beautiful laugh and say okay. Find something to talk to you about in that too-smart head of his.
A near-miss on the makeshift screen and your doorwings flared in time with your chirp. Awesome!! Seriously awesome!!!!
Jazz made a sound that was almost a laugh against your throat, pressing distracted kisses to you, a habit you hoped he would never break. His lips brushed over seaming, against cording and wire, eventually ending with him just mouthing at the shape of one of your medical ports. It felt good, warm and familiar, while his digits rubbed circles over a biolight in your side. By the time the credits were rolling, you'd forgotten about asking him for his thoughts. You'd forgotten about most things that weren't the press of his kiss and the heat of his touch.
A sharp denta caught in your port seaming, easing it open, and you could not be bothered to snap it back shut when his mouth sealed warm over the opening, soft against the exposed prongs and hooking inside. His glossa nudged at the gap and your purr stuttered, optics offlining in comfortable wanting.
All data class frames have cables and cording hiding in every nook and cranny of their bodies. Even Optimus Prime retained his cables after his ascension. Jazz was no different. It was the last clear remembrance you had when he jammed one into your medical port, the connection snapping into place with a shock of nausea and alarm, a disquieting rush of fear that felt so out of place here. Jazz shifted, the image of him hazy and blurred as your optics refused to come back online properly, watching you struggle to ask him what was happening.
"It's okay, baby." That melodic voice, so familiar, so loved, so surely safe. "It's okay. Just let me in, sweetspark, it's okay. You're alright. It's just me. There you go. That's perfect, baby, thank you." You couldn't stop it. Couldn't stop him. He was in the totality of you, plugged straight into the core pieces of your functionality. When he told your frame to go offline, it simply obeyed.
You weren't awake to notice when he carried you away, back towards his Autobot home.