Ep0.5 – Stabilize – Closed

[Deleted]

Jazz stared down at Steeljaw blankly. "But...I could've...it...." I could've been solely responsible for letting Megatron into the base. It could have killed you and Primus knows how many others...could have lost us the WAR...all for two mechs.

Jazz's cortex felt like it was going to glitch itself. Too many ethical variables. Too much. He helplessly terminated the threads before they could lock up.

He vented, long and slow, helm falling down to thunk against Steeljaw's. "I...thanks." His hands rested on Steeljaw's foreshoulders, holding tight. He had no idea what his field was doing, probably something inappropriate. "Thanks. Sorry...for...this. Just kinda...runnin' blind here. No more spoons. Sorry."

[Deleted]

There were still unmentionable THINGS caked into the seams of Steeljaw's plating, but it was nothing that a thorough and blissfully long soak in perpetually recycled solvent wouldn't correct. What was flickering through Jazz's field was far worse, the mech leaning heavily on the symbiont which was, Steeljaw concluded, fair enough in as much as ONE of them had four pedes to the other's inefficient two.

He shoved his helm back against Jazz's and very deliberately swiped a lick up the center of the mech's faceplates, between his optics. It made Jazz jerk back, focusing on him. "Move back," Steeljaw told him firmly, and then, when the mech was sluggish to move, "back, that way, yes. Go on. Back to the wall, if you please, you're too heavy for me to push. Back, back, back..." He kept repeating it, glyphs nudging for compliance and offering assistance, until Jazz had scooted back across the floor to rest his dorsal plates against the wall. "There! Good. Hold still."

Jazz looked like he wanted to ask questions but was still trying to scrape together enough processor threads and spoons to figure out what to ask. Steeljaw took advantage of the lapse by rearing up to plant his forepedes firmly on the saboteur's shoulders and it was only at the last moment that his own threat assessment kicked in like a shot to the helm. He took a moment and a grimace to rethink what had been a nearly automatic response, but a quick review didn't shake the feeling of need that drove it. Huffing, he shook his helm, audials flicking back. "I will take this kindly," he told the spec ops mech firmly, "if you don't shoot, stab, flail, or otherwise try to harm one or both of us, please. This is supposed to be friendly."

It took longer than it should and parts of it, quite frankly, brought unpleasant stabs of pain from joints and systems locked too long in one configuration protesting the move to another. Everything still worked, Steeljaw was pleased to note, but it was out of use and in some disrepair, transformation tesselations happening in chunks rather than as a smooth fluid motion. At the same time it was right, painfully so, to tuck away optics and audials and other surface level sensors and mold himself up and over Jazz's chestplates, hooked around the saboteur's shoulders and hips in a loose full body approximation of a hug by a golden frame that no longer looked anything like a quadrupede.

Slow. Awkward. Ill fitting, given that Steeljaw's original configuration had been sized for a mech larger than the Autobot head of spec ops was. All the same, there was something almost blissful in pressing himself to the bipedal mech, his own spark casing coming to rest against Jazz's central seam with only the thinnest of plating between them. The tease of warmth was there and Steeljaw fed it back into his own field, modulating his output to synch with his momentary pseudo-host's in a steady pulse of comfort and reassurance.

And when he hadn't been stabbed, shot, torn off, flailed at, or otherwise created a harmful reaction, Steeljaw released his held ventilation and opened a tight beam private comm. ::Ironhide? Washrack. Now, please. Your cohortmate is larger than I can drag up off the floor.::

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As few free threads as Jazz had at the moment, it took him longer than it should to realize what Steeljaw was doing. Then, once he realized what he was doing, it took him longer to figure out why. "Steeljaw" and "transforming" just didn't go together in his processor, and he'd never really thought about what Steeljaw might transform INTO.

The answer to that was, evidently, a breastplate. Despite the size difference, Jazz was actually kind of impressed that it could still fit as well as it could. It startled him how the transformation put Steeljaw's spark all but pressed against Jazz's. It was a symbiont thing, he guessed. And though it startled him, but he couldn't regret it. It wasn't QUITE like the obvious comparison. Not here, not now, not with their moods and fields the frequencies they were.

Now...now it just felt really good. Care and affection and reassurance sinking through armor and plating to wrap around his spark. It felt really, really good.

Thank you was more a spark-whisper than words or glyphs. He'd evidently run out of those along with his spoons.

Jazz wrapped his arms around Steeljaw and held him as close as they could get without poking each other somewhere uncomfortable and just...existed...for a bit.

[Deleted]

::Ironhide?::

He was in motion before the 'who' or 'what' of the comm actually registered, tight wound battle protocols on edge after too long sitting and too little news. Base wide alert, explosive arrival of additions, medical emergency so slagged they'd called in Cleaver... and nothing to do that needed a gun other than to stay on alert. It had kept Ironhide pacing the base corridors long after he should have been able to retire for recharge, systems twitching with a pent up need to have a proper target.

The comm, he realized belatedly after the first few steps, wasn't a renewed alert. It was from Steeljaw, but the location ping was the washracks, not the monitors, and the content... cohortmate. Cleaver was still in medbay, so far as he knew, and THAT wasn't widely publicized through the base gossip anyways, which meant Jazz.

The frontliner was too big to pull the 'racing through the halls' trick some of the younger mechs liked to indulge in, but he could move creditably fast when necessary. Two kliks later he swung into the washracks, skidding slightly for traction as his pedes hit the damp of the solvent spray. "Steeljaw? Jazz? What..."

'What' was apparently his cohortmate, sitting on the floor with his back to the wall, and holding a... wrapped in a... Ironhide cycled his optics and refocused, but the image hadn't changed and it took him a long moment to correlate gold plating with the symbiont it was normally seen on versus the secondary plate set that was currently wrapped around the saboteur. "....huh. Is that his alt?"

Two Cybertronian signatures on his scanners, correlated with location pings, confirmed it, but Jazz was blinking up at him with blown optics leaking too much light behind his visor. Ironhide rumbled softly, crossing the room to kneel down beside his cohortmate. "Hey - how yeh doin'?"


<<skipping Jaws, if Jazz wants to reply>>

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Jazz blinked up at Ironhide blearily, the familiar hum of Ironhide's field taking a bit to get through Steeljaw's.

"Hide...." He said it again, waking up a bit. "Hide." He reached out, hand hesitating in midair, another wave of guilt washing through him. He could have killed...frag, he could have killed Ironhide. It was too easy to see, too fragging easy....

But Ironhide was cohort, Ironhide was stability and safety, and even if Jazz'd fragged up, even if Hide was torqued at him, he was COHORT. And that was what cohort was: they stuck with you even when you made really, really slagging stupid mistakes.

Jazz finished reaching out, hand finding and gripping Ironhide's arm. "I fragged up, Hide. I really fragged up, and I...it...." His voice trailed off into soft static. He offlined his optics, voice lost and almost too soft to be heard over the solvent. "I'm sorry. I was just tryin' to help.... I'm sorry...."

[Deleted]

"Hey now, no, shhh, none of that," Ironhide rumbled softly. "Yeh did fine, Jazz luv. Ain't nobody dead or dyin', nothin' fragged. All worked out, yeah?"

It wan't that simple, not really, but there were two live mechs in the medbay where there assuredly wouldn't have been if not for a risky call and that, in Ironhide's estimation, was the perk and curse of being an officer all at once - making the risky calls, for better or worse. Jazz, for his first plunge into that Pit, had pulled off a minor miracle.

There was an awkwardness to it, what with a symbiont already wrapped around the saboteur, but Ironhide settled himself onto the solvent slick floor and tugged the smaller mech into his lap, Jazz's back pressed to his chest, his own arms looping around to cover where Steeljaw couldn't. "Don't go lookin' at might have's, luv. Ain't nothin' ever came from a might have. Only thing that matters is what went down, an' yeh pulled it off, all of it."

[Deleted]

Steeljaw suffered the jostling, pressed warm and close to Jazz's plating, his own field wordlessly pulsing reassurance. Ironhide's care of a cohortmate obviously fell under 'TLC as performed by rough frontliners' but provided it picked the normally upbeat mech up off the floor and helped to still the tremors in the saboteur, Steeljaw wouldn't complain.

The picking up was perhaps a little more literal, and Steeljaw didn't really care for being squished into the bundle of cohort, very aware that he was not. He pulsed a small 'hands off' polite request at Ironhide and settled himself more carefully against Jazz, micro transformations trying to settle his own plates more neatly against the mech's frame. ::He's right. No one's dead. Your friends are alive. It's fine.::

[Deleted]

Jazz's processor stuttered, still throwing up objections (they didn't understand, surely they just didn't UNDERSTAND how badly he'd fragged up), then just...gave out. Threw up its hands in the time-honored military tradition of "fine, FINE, whatever you say, sir".

Jazz's helm thunked back against Ironhide's shoulder, his arms settling around Steeljaw (and not grabbing, because that would be bad, no squishing the feline overlord) as he just...stopped fighting it, letting their reassurance and care soften the frazzled spikes in his field. His spark, so close to Steeljaw's and only slightly farther away from his mate's, settled slowly, eased by the steady hum of cohort on one side and family/friend on the other.

"Thanks," he mumbled into Ironhide's neck, his glyphs taking in them both. "I...thanks." He vented long and felt abruptly like he'd been fighting on circuit speeders for three days. "M'wiped. Gonna recharge on ya, 'kay?"


<<Poor tired Jazz is exhausted. Anything else we want to do? One more round from Steeljaw and Hide, and they can puppet him falling asleep/being moved to his quarters?>>

[Deleted]

Ironhide rumbled a low sound of amusement, tucking Jazz more securely against his plates. "'s fine," he assured, field pulsing love and wordless reassurance in an endless cycle. "That's what Ah'm here for. Yeh can recharge on meh all yeh want."

His wrist, where his arm was wrapped around Jazz's chassis, was pressed by necessity to one of Steeljaw's plates. Ironhide waited a beat, then another, listening to his mate's systems cycle down, and then sent a very quite comm flickering from frame to frame. ::Thanks for th' assist. Think yeh can move without wakin' him?::

The symbiont sent an affirmative and slowly - paintstakingly slowly and Primus, the little mech sounded like he needed more maintenance and some of Ratchet's attention with the way his plates grated and the chunk sound of his t-cog - extricated himself, one tesselated motion at a time, until the oddly shaped armor settled one more as a quadruped symbiont in Jazz's lap. The smaller mech met Ironhide's optics for an instant, audials arching in what he took for a nod, and leaned in to press the flat of his helm beneath Jazz's chin. "Jazz? Jazz, I'm going to soak for a little longer. I think you'd better go back to quarters with Ironhide before you fall into recharge on the floor."

The saboteur's visor flickered, barely lit, and whatever he mumbled might have been something along the lines of "...wouldn't be the first time...". Ironhide chuckled softly and gathered up an armful of mate, Jazz's helm tucked beneath his chin and the saboteur's frame curled against his chassis. "C'mon, then. Past time for everyone t' be rechargin'."

They were going to be leaving drips of solvent halfway down the corridor but no one at that hour was likely to care. Ironhide burst a line of gratitute to Steeljaw, who nodded politely and jumped down to the floor to go submerge himself beneath the solvent spray, plates loose and shaking himself from helm to tail tip to work the solvent beneath them. Climbing to his feet, Ironhide waited a klik for the worst of the pooled liquid on plate and joint to drain away and, checking to make sure that the humm of Jazz's systems was steady, made for the door.



<<fin?>>