#i thought we did the whole ''having a prey drive is evil'' song and dance like years ago and got over it

[myriadeyed]

Mutuals: there's been some rancid hot takes about whether therians can watch animal media ethically so I'm gonna set the record straight and--

Me coming out from under the rock I was under: There was what? I didn't notice. Would you like to come under this rock and hang out the soil is so damp and cool and the ecosystem is thriving

[cybertronian-cupid]

I'm feeling really uneasy having to spend the holiday season with my family, so, if that's not a problem, could I request some fluff with TFP decepticons? Like,, comforting their s/o, making sure they feel safe and happy?

You didn't specify which ones you'd like best, so *rubs back of neck* what happened was a bit of a fluff surprise story. Hopefully it makes you smile Anon, and makes the holidays atleast a little more bearable.

*squints* though I think we should have the comfort styles of the Cons written somewhere... Keep an eye out, they'll be posted as soon as they get pieced together in some semblance of sense. ~Gregoria🏩

We hope you like it, Anon, and we hope this holiday season treats you well. You deserve nothing but happiness~Mila 💟

Holiday Surprise Fluff: Poly!Reader x TFP Decepticons (sfw)

(Yes. All of them. That includes the troops.)

............ ............ ............ ............ ............ ............

Being partners with Steve had its perks. Sure, there were some drawbacks as well, but considering how close all Vehicons were, that just meant the human suddenly had a whole lot of love and support, when one of these aliens decided to zoom into their life.

And well, when Breakdown met them and saw just how close the other guys are with them, and how nice they are treated by this fleshie, who's to blame the poor mech for falling for them too?

Knockout flirted with them once, and caught feelings when they laughed and flirted right back at him.

The rest of the ship caught feelings for the little organic faster than the cosmic rust, with the High Command being the most confused and vary over trying to express their feelings about it.

After all, their human isn't just a partner of one Steve.

They are a partner of all Steves, and soon of the Insecticon troops as well, with officers falling prey to their charms one after the other. In a sense, they have the whole ship wrapped around their tiny fingers, and soon they earn the affection of the Communications officer, Second in command and the Lord of Decepticons as well.

With ALOT of compromising and weekly reminders amongst the top three, that their human loves everyone aboard the Nemesis. The whole Nemesis.

How they manage that, remains a mystery to everyone aboard and yet, the morale has never been higher, so who is going to look a gift horse in the mouth? Noone, that's who.

🔸🔸🔸🔸🔸🔸🔸🔸🔸🔸

Steve drives them through the groundbridge straight into the command center.

Sondwave greets them with a merry tune, Lazerbeak chirping happily as they are swooped up into familiar well maintained servos.

"Here you are, " Knockout kisses their face all over, before glaring at Steve. "If I remember correctly, today was MY turn to pick OUR lovely fleshie up"

"But you just did sir," Steve answers prompting a groan out of Knockout, before rushing off towards the barracks laughing.

"So, what ARE you guys planning?"

"We can't tell you just yet," Dreadwing smiles at them. Skyquake is leaning against his twin, nodding.

"It would ruin the surprise."

They pout and look at the ceiling.

"Not even an itsy-bitsy clue? Come onnnn, you guys have been driving me crazy for long enough."

Airachnid giggles, skittering off her perch and extending a welcoming servo for them to step on. She holds them close to her spark, heels clicking as she walks.

"Not even that. Orders from the Second in Command."

"I thought you were ALSO Second in command."

"Who isn't at this point," Shockwave points out when the femme places them in his servo, pressing a quick kiss before dragging the two warriors with her, off to who-knows-where. Being carried and placed from servo to servo was a thing that took some time to get used to, and yet, they are always handled with such care and love they can't really stay mad at their partners for too long.

They gaze up into the red optic staring at them.

"Shockyyyyy,"

"No,"

"Shockerrrrs,"

"The answer is still no," his voice is firm and unyielding, but his finials are wiggling in amusement.

Whatever the others are preparing is clearly going to be good.

"Come on, can't you just tell me? " they try again, genuine laughter from the Warlord snapping their attention to the entrance. Disappointment setting in when he is not actually standing there.

>>Patience, little one,<< the recording echoes from Soundwave, who steps through the groundbridge a moment later, with parting words of

"And enjoy the show."

🔸🔸🔸🔸🔸🔸🔸🔸🔸🔸

And what a show it was. Almost an hour of all fliers, spinning and looping around each other, acrobatics of transforming mid-flight to blow them a kiss, before transforming again and resuming what has clearly been practiced time and time again with how perfect their forms were.

They couldn't look away even if they tried, each segment of them all dancing in the air grander than the last, topped off by Predaking creating rings of fire for them all to fly through.

It was a spectacle of the kind they have never seen.

Their excitement has them almost jumping in place when all commanders return to the bridge, optics twinkling with glee at their s/o and their clear enjoyment and pride.

"That was just the start," Starscream smirks knowingly, with Breakdown presenting them with a thick coat.

"Just wait till you see what our Liege has in store for you,".

🔸🔸🔸🔸🔸🔸🔸🔸🔸🔸

They honestly expected a gladiator match. Hardshell, Dreadwing and Skyquake against Megatron and Soundwave. Or perhaps some sort of a firing range, or anything that would indicate a show of strength, or precision and cunning. They wouldn't be surprised if the Warlord somehow decided to do it all inside of an ice cave just for the extra challenge.

They didn't expect to be taken to one of the empty mines.

They did not expect there to be decorations put up, a mix of what they know to be Cybertronian designs with different Earth influences mixing into them all and still looking stunning in their own way.

And they did not expect every grounder of the Nemesis to be present.

"What is all this?" they ask, their eyes roaming over everyone. Their frames polished, their engines humming in sync, as they all break into a song.

A song about them.

They caught a glimpse of the title one night, when Megatron forgot to put that particular datapad away.

"Oh it's nothing," he waved their question off, settling them down in their bed above his berth.

"Megs, what are you planning?"

His grin and a tilt of his helm had them laughing, the expression on their face earning them a chuckle of his own, and yet no answer beyond the teasing "You'll see".

Any questions directed at others about what they think could be in the works, were met with the same grin and chuckles of "You'll see, it's a surprise."

Arms wrap around them from behind.

"Happy holidays," Steve says, nuzzling his helm against their head.

"Care for a dance?"

Dating Steve had many perks. Dating the whole Nemesis, has around a million more. And they have all night to count them all, as they dance and laugh with their wretched, evil, horrible, no good Decepticons.

At a house somewhere on the planet, there stands a very, very irked Makeshift, currently tangled in strings of lights, reminding himself that he is a vital part of the operation "Our Human Will Have The Best Holiday Celebration". He's been bossed around this way and that, without much rhyme or reason for a week now, and at this point, he would much prefer to listen to a certain Seeker screaming his voicebox raw, than to be listening to yet another round of 'All I want for Christmas'.

He will have someones spark if he isn't the one that gets to cuddle with The Spark of Nemesis for at least a week after his mission is complete. He knows those will be well deserved after the madness he's being put through.

[toffeetaffy]

Beast at My Side [7]

The Foolhardy Girl

Drive. Drive to the stump knotted and gnarled, blistered with evergreen moss. Turn. Turn at the fork sandy and grey, barely damp from ocean mist. Stop. Stop at the shore pebbled and light, worn by the caress of the waves.

Guided by a shadow with venom-soaked teeth. I should have questioned her motives, her sincerity, her sanity. But I had simply nodded at her direction, trembled like a child until she took her leave of me. I am weak. I am frail. I am only human, after all. The place she has led me to is beautiful beyond words. Stones, wood, ocean, and sky. Every part of it is silver and slate. If indeed this is a trap it is a most desirous one. Even with my weight on the hood the tyres barely dip into the stony sand. I lie there and let the cold wind wash over me, I lick the salt from my lips. My fear ebbs with the tide.

"You lost, Lena?" Jacob is just as I remember him: a towering wall of muscle with too-white teeth. Now flanked by a pair of wiry boys, not a shirt or shoe between them.

"It's funny you should ask," I say, "I thought I was for a while. But I followed her directions so carefully..."

He asks who sent me, why I came, implies my presence is a mystery unto itself. So I tell him. His face gives a single violent twitch. He is not as well-versed in composure as the Cullen family, or perhaps he does not care to be. Every emotion my tale elicits flickers plainly across his eyes, his lips, until I have spoken my very last word. He grips my shoulder tightly, his fingers squeezing with a strength I am not sure he knows he possesses.

"And you just did what she told you? Even knowing what she is?"

"At least I know what she is."

Guilt is the next thing to contort his expressive features. His hand falls away. His lackeys wander off. We sit in silence. Eventually the sun dips low, pink and orange smear across the sky, traces of it diluted in the water - still and dark. When I start to shiver he inches closer, pressing against me until he fits. He is warm. So warm. Too warm. The heat of his body is an invasion—my bones were born for the cold—but he has kind eyes and a pretty smile, and the only people close to me now are corpses. Bella's arms around my shoulders. Jasper's lips against my wrist. Luc's hand knotted in my own.

"Tell me something, Jacob." The words put distance between us, distance I need to clear my muddled heart.

"What should I tell you?"

"Tell me something that will save me."

I expect him to laugh, to shrug off my raw, earnest appeal. But he does not. Instead, he tells me the story of a boy desperately in love with a girl who is sworn to another, a girl who dies because she loved the wrong man. The cast are easy enough to discern: Jacob as the lovesick boy, Bella as the foolhardy girl, and Edward as the very definition of the wrong man. He seems oddly unembittered.

When I lay back he lays back with me, and I stretch my fingers out towards the fire-coloured sky. I probe and pull at the invisible force tethering me to the world, my hands aching to grasp gravity, to cast off its shackles and see once and for all if the weight of my heart is all that keeps me here. But I cannot. So I lie still. Still beside the boy whose warmth is as constant as the waves. Right now we are the only two people in the world, so he tells me another story. But this time it's cruel and dark. It kicks me, and keeps on kicking. This story is about a boy who is a wolf, who is a warrior. This story is about a creature who stalks the forest, tearing monsters limb from limb, his fangs and his fur bloodied and black. I want to ask if he is the boy, the wolf, the warrior. But this truth is a dangerous thing. These beasts all violently romantic are not poetry and song; they are darkness and wrath.

As I make to leave his hand grips me again—forceful and firm—and my skin starts to itch like prey at the hunt. "You can't trust them," he says.

"But I can trust you?"

He says that I can, and his smile is as bright as stolen silver. I know what he's trying to tell me: he is the lesser of two evils. But Bella is strong and her heart is true. If I cannot put my faith in her then coming here was for naught.

"Thanks for the concern, Jacob, but I'll be okay." I place my hand on his, pry his fingers from my arm. "Better the devil you know."

His laugh is barely loud enough to pierce the encroaching twilight. For the first time I see him as Bella had described: younger, softer, blushing and beautiful. I wonder just who took that innocence away from him: the wolf or the warrior. He asks if he can tell me one more thing. Not a story, he says, but a truth he has learnt from a hard life lived.

"My mom died when I was young," he says, "and it left a kind of... hole inside me. I spent years trying to fill it up. I was so damn busy trying to make myself whole, make myself normal again, that I didn't even notice it had stopped hurting. It just... didn't ache anymore. You might think being with Bella is the best way to stop feeling so... hollow but it's not. They can't fix you. They wouldn't know how. The best a human can hope for in that house is a quick death." He walks away taking the last of the heat, the sun, and the colour in the sky with him.

Inside the car I turn the heat on low. Navigating the streets of La Push is a simple affair, away from the beach there is a single road to follow. It slopes gently between the trees and soon the smell of salty air gives way to the gentle scent of pine. Ghastly shadows dance about the underbrush, flickering in the corner of my eyes, silently stalking alongside me. I hear something strange—like a hum—and then a piercing trill. My phone. I pull off the road, the car dipping dangerously into the menacing gloom.

Another flash. Another shake. A familiar name lights up the amber display.

"Don't be scared," the caller says, and a slender shadow weaves its way out of the trees and into the harsh glow of the headlights, before slipping silently into the passenger seat. Though her warning did little to ease my thundering heart, Bella's appearance is a welcome one. "Thought you'd appreciate the warning; heard you had a run-in with Volturi road-side assistance earlier."

I spare little time being astonished by her apparent clairvoyance before I launch in to my retelling. I've barely begun when she stops me with a gentle shush. My encounter with the cloaked stranger, she tells me, isn't a surprise at all.

"You were never in any danger. I promise."

She reaches across and takes my hand. I believe her every word.

___

When I wake the house is dim and grey, silent but for the birds. I lie in bed, slipping through the minutes, drinking in the air until the tips of my fingers grow cold. Eventually, I muster something that can pass for courage and make my way downstairs. There's a pleasant smell in the kitchen. Today there is no attempt to play at perfect families, to pose themselves like models in a catalogue; there is only Bella and the matriarch chatting quietly over the stove top. Perched at the counter with my messy hair, my bleary eyes, my dead brother's sweatshirt, I feel a flop in my stomach. Such a simple thing. So familiar. It's nervous and warm and makes my heart flutter. I assume she's heard the sound of it when Bella turns to me, a strange grin in place, and asks if I'm feeling well. I am. That's what the flop is. Contentment.

Esme pours tea from a dainty white pot. Bella serves me French toast with brown sugar. We wash dishes as the sunlight grows golden.

I dress in boots and a coat with a mind for adventure. My own thoughts distract me from the sound: ever decreasing until there's nothing more than a whisper of wind, a rattle of rain. I call for Bella, once. Once more. One final time. The first sign of life comes when I fling open the front door. Jasper sits on the steps—shoulders hunched, fingers locked together—a look so carefully composed I almost mistake it for nonchalance. But it is theatre. It always is. No matter how tempting it can be to imagine otherwise. I ask him if he's seen her, my Bella, faded into morning fog.

"Actually, I'd hoped you might spend the day with me."

Seated beside him I can plainly see all the reasons I should not: his eyes, his hands, his teeth all conspire to undo me. It takes every ounce of self control to wrench my gaze from his. Try as I might to remain aloof, the truth comes spilling out. "I'm not so sure I should."

"I'm not so sure myself."

We agree he's a danger I cannot afford. All I need to do is walk away but I find my body unwilling, my traitorous legs fixed firmly beside his.

"Thing is," he continues, "this is my last chance. I tell you any later and it all goes to shit."

There's something fizzing through my veins, a morbid curiosity that makes my skin itch. But not a single question has time to fully form, to reach my lips before he drops the bomb. Alice. He tells me she has seen my futures, that of every possible outcome this one, on this day is the most favourable. To whom, I ask. To him, he replies. Something gnaws at me, a tiny suspicion that gives itself voice.

"When did you last speak with Alice?"

"Two minutes after you did."

The girl. The shadow. The eyes like mulled wine. You were never in any danger. It answers one question and raises ten more. And though I ache to know why she seeks out my future, I am determined to be more than my desperation. Standing in the pinch of a hairpin curve, two clear roads to choose from. "So what is it you have to tell me," I ask, "before 'it all goes to shit'?"

"Who I am, what I did, and why you'll leave here hating me."

He holds his palm up in a gesture that could be either invitation or placation, and begins his story. It's all noise and silence in gentle waves. A perfect ebb and flow. He tells me he wanted a battlefield, to march off to war, to fight and to die. Youngest major in the Texas Cavalry. A flicker of a smile. Pride. Next was Maria: he loved her, he hated her, he smeared the night with blood for her. Each man he destroyed, each woman and child, destroyed a piece of himself. His gift is his curse. Their pain is his pain. He watched armies fall, sent streams of soldiers from this world to the next, painted the ground red. Red, red, and a little more red. When he was done carving he was scored and scarred, crowned with ruinous sin. Without him, Maria's empire fell to dust and ash.

Then came Peter and Charlotte. The pair preached coexistence. Coexistence, he says, is a constant battle. Restraint is key. In their company he slew fewer people but there was still no reprieve from his gift. Each death was weighed fairly, his pain was deserved. Before long he shed his infatuation with destruction and embraced salvation. Alice—his perennial protector—gave him a new family, a new life. Alice gave him peace. He speaks of the following years fondly but with little detail until finally there are no words left to speak. His story is exactly what I expect. It is cruel, and bloody, and flooded with rage.

Beside me, his profile sparkles dully in the sun like unpolished quartz. How long we have sat I do not know, but the rain has long since passed. My knee aches. My back aches. My chest aches. Standing and stretching does little to clean the cold from my bones but I'm overcome with the need to do something. He stares, unblinking, all painted in gold as he rises beside me. Too tall. Too close. This must be the part where I ask my questions, or voice my displeasure. Perhaps this is where I comfort him.

"I kissed you." Disappointment taints each word.

"You did. But you knew what I was."

He sounds angry and sharp but whether the rage is his or mine, I cannot yet tell. It keeps growing - redder and hotter until I ball my fists in his shirt, until I shake at his chest. I wish he would bruise. I wish he would break.

"Why would you tell me this? What do you expect me to say?"

"Tell me," he says, "how much of that story can you forgive?"

There's gravel in my mouth, lead in my lips. "I won't be your absolution."

He's dark, and ruined, and crumbling beneath my fingers. It isn't fair. But nothing is. I cannot carry the weight of this while my brother still rests upon my shoulders. So I give him the truth, dig to the root, cut myself open, and lay it all bare. I tell him there is strength in what he did, what he became. Man kills for survival and for sport; his kind does the same. They are the pinnacle of the food-chain but still struggle to do better, to be better. In that, there is no shame.

"It's what you were before. What you were when you had a choice. You looked so... proud."

"Because I fought for the South?" Pity doesn't suit him. He has the gall to wear it anyway. "I remember little of my life before the change. I've no real memory of my family, my friends, or even of the man I was." The change does that to them eventually, he tells me, takes any memory they don't hold tight. "But I remember signing on. Too young, too dumb to see the bigger picture. I fought to defend my home, not to to keep men in chains."

He reaches out with tendrils of calm: slick and smooth, seeking to quell my fury. I bury it deeper. I cage it in my ribs and let it burn out of control. This knowledge should hurt, he has no right to take it from me. My eyes sting, my face blushes and throbs. Perhaps I am angry at myself. Perhaps I built a bridge between us with my lips and hands, conjured reciprocation from fabrication. Perhaps I imagined it all.

The space between us closes. His fingers are in my hair, on my neck, holding me still while the heat escapes my chest. He digs my hatred out, leaves me drowning in gravity. Then I am numb. By the time his body retreats from mine all I have left is a ghost of my anger. It costs him something to steal this from me, leaves him painted in sadness. Now I am no more than stone—heavy and unfeeling—left to shoulder the burden of his corpses, his history, his absent pulse without so much as an emotion of my own. I am tired. I am broken. I am ripe for ruin.

"You said I'd leave here hating you."

"And don't you?"

"I can't if you won't let me." I won't if you don't make me.

I feel the weight of his stare on my retreat.

I'm in my van, turning onto the main road when I feel it: the elastic snap of his gifts expiration. It floods my lungs, crushes my heart, stings my eyes. Each dry sob leaves me shaky and breathless, wondering if I should have just stayed with him, just stayed numb. But this fury is like any other. Soon enough it will seep in to my skin and rest inside my bones.

The road I follow slopes and sways, bending gently toward a destination I have yet to choose. I'll know it when I get there. I always do.

A muddy blue river snakes beneath a bridge, rushing away as I look on enraptured. Either side is covered in trees: all thin and white, adorned with yellow leaves. I park on the shoulder and walk to its bank; its stones are shiny, slippery, and glisten in the sun. Here, I could lose time. I could stay and stare until the river rises, until the whole world washed away. One minute becomes two. Then five or ten. Before long, an odd sense of dread washes over me, prickles at my scalp. There's a whisper in my ears, static creeping through my skull. My vision darkens, narrows, and then just fades away. I wipe at my face, stumble and sway. When I crash into the water I feel wet and cold. Then, I feel nothing at all.

___

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