Llama

My works;

Not an exhaustive list because I am horrifically lazy - just what I'm actively working on atm & special guests!

Domino Milkshake - (Yes, that one!) Fake dating AU, Jazz/Prowl. Complete!

One day at a time - An AU of the Mecha AU by Keferon where every mech is powered by a ghost... on purpose. Swerves into darker territory. First Aid/Vortex, Jazz/Prowl, Onslaught/Blast Off. Ongoing!

The Judge - Superhero AU. Prowl tries his best (and fails miserably). Jazz/Prowl. Ongoing!

Recoding the spark - Vampire AU. It's the reverse of The Language of Energon, a story I wrote for a zine (and then expanded on). Jazz/Prowl. Ongoing - minor hiatus!

I don't mind waiting for you - Heat cycle fic. Yeah. Sorry. NSFW. First Aid/Vortex, Brawl/Thundercracker, Onslaught/Blast Off. Ongoing!

Strawberry Milkshake - not as cute as Domino! First Aid is himself in a hostage situation. NSFW. First Aid/Vortex. Ongoing!

Ulterior motives - The Accidental Knock Up fic. Enemies to lovers when? NSFW. Jazz/Prowl. Ongoing - minor hiatus!

Make it Real - Fake date! Jazz/Prowl, Brawl/Thundercracker as the focus + others on the side. Human AU. Ongoing!

You can see a full list here! I mostly write Jazz/Prowl, First Aid/Vortex, Brawl/Thundercracker, and Onslaught/Blast Off. I like it when men are pathetic for each other.

Thundercracker first witnessed this with the arrival of Megatron and his group. Sensing an opportunity, they had risen up and swept in where governments were losing their hold, where they had stepped back and surrendered the land to let it rot and collapse at the hands of the Quintesson forces that had arrived there nearby. They were sacrifices, the distraction meant to buy time for them to scramble together a defence for the things and the people they considered to be valuable. They weren’t meant to survive and take the story of how they had been abandoned out with them.

But with Megatron there, many of them did survive. And with their survival came their loyalty.

Thundercracker was at first loyal. He believed their cause. How dare they leave their own people to rot? How dare they not give them the choice and instead thrust upon them such responsibility? You must die for the greater good. You do not have the right to object. Their own homes were the altars on which they were to lay themselves down and offer themselves to ravenous beasts set on consuming everything they had to offer. It was barbaric. A safe place for living had become their coffin. He would have preferred being dragged out down the street and to somewhere unknown and unfamiliar rather than tarnish the memory of his home.

It was when Megatron stopped saving people and started subjugating them that Thundercracker felt his loyalty waver. That wasn’t right - that hadn’t been what the deal was. He’d joined them to resist and to fight - what were they doing marching into people’s homes and making these demands for? Why did they have to submit or die? The explanations were long winded and charismatic but boiled down to not actually telling anyone much. They were liberating them. They were being freed. It didn’t feel much like liberation when they looked at him with abject fear and disgust whenever he walked by bearing the symbol of their so-called saviour. It didn’t feel much like liberation when they were oppressed and subject to new laws and rules that restricted their freedoms, all in the name of a peace that they didn’t know. Megatrons conquest was starting to leave a sour taste in his mouth. How long was he going to accept this? To tolerate it?

There were contacts of theirs who were less than savoury, but it was the less than savoury people who had the connections. Everything they did and operated on relied on trust and being able to stand on your own two feet should things go tits up. It was these connections that Thundercracker knew he would need to get himself out of the mess he’d gone and gotten himself tangled into.

It was one of Starscream’s groups who’d caught his attention. Thundercracker didn’t know why, but he thought it may have been something to do with how none of them bore any particular loyalty to them and seemed to have nothing but outright contempt for Megatron, only there for the money and for the work that kept their hands busy and their gears oiled. They scratched backs and very much expected the same in return. We’ll do this if you pay us this much and give us passage through here. We’ll do it, but you need to do this for us. Those kinds of deals. The ones where you couldn’t get things done for money alone. As much as they held them in contempt, they were stunningly good at what they did and always got the job done, very rarely did they return to them with bad news.

They’d be his best bet at getting out of there, he was willing to wager.

Getting the opportunity to talk to them without prying eyes was difficult but not impossible. You just had to catch them in both a sociable mood and at a time where they’d be hanging around for a bit. They were usually so quick to go, always moving onto the next thing. Sometimes, though, they’d stick around for a short while before leaving. This was what Thundercracker waited for, obediently continuing his tasks and doing what was expected and anticipated from him so as to not rouse any suspicion, and it happened on a day when the sun was shining brightly and the sky a bright blue that you could just fall into. It wasn’t fitting weather for a betrayal. It was warm and pleasant and the wind was the perfect temperature to complement the heat. It should have been grey and dingy and miserable. Rain should have been lashing down and wind should have been ratting the windows hard enough to break them.

It allowed for them to sit outside. Thundercracker scanned the benches on the shaded side – no sign of them. That was okay. They were still there and apparently wouldn’t be leaving for a few days – Starscream had said something about a negotiation and them needing to borrow Vortex’s expertise. Thundercracker didn’t pry. He walked around to the sunny side, keeping to the shade, and began to look again. Maybe they’d be inside and out of the heat? Didn’t they live out in the desert? The cool interior of the building was probably a treat for them.

Brawl was the easiest one to talk to. Onslaught and Blast Off were difficult in their own ways - Onslaught didn’t much want for company at the best of times, and Blast Off was. Well. Blast Off. Swindle was near impossible to get alone, the man a social butterfly and always with someone. That, and he seemed to view every interaction as a chance for a transaction and he would be selling you shit you didn’t realise you were buying up until the bank cards came out. Vortex was easy to talk to but you were always left feeling like you’d put your hand on chewed up gum that was still wet under a table afterwards, and when he got comfortable and let the mask slip it was just. Unsettling. So he didn’t actually want to talk to him, especially now that Vortex seemed to know that the dead look in his eyes made him uneasy and that the way he assessed him as if he were looking for weak spots made him squirm and did it on purpose for his own amusement.

So that left Brawl. And while that wasn’t to say he was perfectly fine and completely normal and there was nothing at all wrong with him, because he absolutely did have a few screws loose and his temper was extremely easy to trigger, he actually seemed to want to talk to people and didn’t consider him to be a nuisance. Or in the case of Swindle and Vortex, prey.

The only problem was his default speaking voice was yelling.

He’d need to take him elsewhere. He couldn’t risk anyone overhearing - he just. Couldn’t. It wasn’t worth the risk. It lead to the conclusion that he would have to invite him off base, and now he would need to find an excuse to get him out and away from anywhere Megatron had eyes and ears.

Why is it so hard to think when I really need to?

The same brain that kept him up at night with incessant thoughts and ideas and realisations was now frustratingly quiet. Thundercracker scanned the outdoor area for a familiar figure, frowning into the crowd that had come to enjoy the good weather. No sign of him. Disappointment filled his chest at the same time as relief - he had more time to think of an excuse, but if he didn’t find him in time…

“Oh, good, you are here!”

Thundercracker just about jumped out of his skin as Brawl materialised behind him. He wasn’t sure how he managed it given he was literally audible as he walked, jingling all the way with his earrings and the keychains on top of how his feet pounded the ground.

Brawl continued. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you. Stay still, will you?”

“You’ve been looking for me?”

Brawl had something in his hand and he lifted it to show him with a wide grin. It looked like a bundle of fireworks - maybe firecrackers?

“Wanna go set these off together?”

Oh, Brawl, you genius.

“Yes!” He responded a little too eagerly.

They couldn’t set off the firecrackers too close to base, so they’d had to go further out to do it. People had seen Brawl and Throwable Explosives and promptly decided that they actually didn’t fancy going and seeing what the fuss was about, and so they remained very much undisturbed as they went out to their secluded spot.

Fireworks were a rare novelty these days. Explosives were pretty much reserved for military use - recreational explosives were so highly restricted and regulated that they didn’t exist any more to the common man. Those who had access to the raw materials could make their own, but…

Brawl was taking a lighter out of his pocket when Thundercracker put his hand on his hand to stop him.

“Actually, I need to talk to you about something first.”

He, surprisingly, listened intently. Thundercracker tip-toed around his dissatisfaction but Brawl was blunt and to the point with his own. He didn’t like working with Megatron and neither did his boss; if it screwed him over even a little bit, they would do it. Apparently they were looking to bounce themselves in the near future. Something was getting hotter than they liked and they knew their time was limited - what was it if they took an extra head with them in the chaos? They could probably use the help. It was a promise that had Thundercracker linking his little finger with Brawl’s and closing his eyes, the ancient gesture of a pact that sealed itself where skin met skin. He would be coming back for him.

The firecrackers danced across the sand as they loudly cracked and banged. Their cheers echoed against the rock face.

Every time they fought and bickered, Brawl always followed it up with an angry last word that Thundercracker could never find a response to. I’m still coming back for you, a finger sternly pointed to him. A reassurance. This doesn’t change anything. We promised each other.

People were starting to get the wrong idea about what he meant, but neither of them corrected it. How could they explain what he actually meant? It was impossible.

Maybe part of the difficulty was because Thundercracker didn’t want it to be just a rumour - they’d had a few flings together, sure, the brief periods of time they had and the lack of privacy didn’t allow for much more, but it would have been. Nice. If it was something more. Permanent. Maybe. Thundercracker thinks, anyway - he’d always found that he wasn’t sure what he wanted when it came to other people. They’d suddenly vanished into thin air one day. Nobody had heard a thing about them or what had happened - communications just suddenly stopped and all of their sources said the same thing. They were there one day, and weren’t there any more the next. Poof. Gone, as if they’d never existed. That kind of thing just didn’t happen. Whole teams of mercenaries as notorious as them didn’t just wipe themselves clear off of the surface of the Earth without someone talking about it, but nobody knew where they had gone.

Did they do it? Did they get away? Or did it catch up to them?

It was a question that hung around him and clung to the back of his mind as he did his best to rework and plan his own escape. He couldn’t turn to them any more. For whatever reason, Brawl hadn’t kept good on his promise to him. He’d be figuring it out on his own.

----------------------------------------------------

Hot Spot, for all intents and purposes, had quite a normal childhood. Growing up in Scotland, he had the luxury of being able to avoid the worst of the invasions and he didn’t actually see a Quintesson until he was thirteen years old. It had washed up dead on the beach. People died from coming into contact with its blood before the authorities could step in and block off access, and he still had vivid memories of the blue that stained their sclera bright cyan and poured from their noses. The first time he saw a live one he was sixteen - and by then he knew that he didn’t want to stay on the farm for the rest of his life anyway. He couldn’t be a pilot - having not been conscripted as a child due to his vital worker status he just didn’t have the experience required and was on a severe back-foot compared to his classmates - but he could go into the search and rescue branch. With the emergency services as stretched as they were, he’d spent every single summer since he was big enough to reach the pedals driving tractors with huge water tanks to put out fires on the farm, and when he was a little older still he went out to the neighbouring farms to help them whenever he saw smoke on the horizon. Nobody ever reached them in time. It was up to them to do it themselves, and Hot Spot found that he loved it.

Doing it in the city wasn’t much different. They couldn’t always rely on their alert systems being powered, especially when the heat of the summer kicked in full force and the national grid struggled to cope with it, so they relied a lot on visual cues. First Aid had a sensitive nose. Whenever he paused with his nose up in the air, Hot Spot was quick to grab the binoculars and scan the skyline.

It was summer. The day was hot and the climate control in the mech only did so much when he was working so hard - sweat dripped down his forehead and dampened his under layers and he couldn’t wait for a shower.

The quintesson fell down dead into the sea with a splash that lapped up at the thighs of the mech – of Onslaught. Hot Spot could feel the tactile sensation of the water on his skin and shivered. There wasn’t a way to describe how it felt. It was weird, but refreshing – it took him back to being a kid and wading into the loch on the days when it was just too hot to do anything. He’d walk past a strawberry bush and swipe some on his way under his parents noses to snack on as he sunk his toes into the cool silt beneath the water.

Onslaught gave him the impression of a man who was angry, defeated, and yet still defiant. The embers had burned low but they still had a warm glow that was ready to ignite at a moments notice. The wind just needed to change and the flame would catch. He didn’t talk all that much in the beginning, mostly one word answers – but slowly Hot Spot could feel him warm up to him. They would never be friends, but they could work together, and that suited him just fine. Patrols were passed with stories of shared experiences, or of things that the other could never imagine their team getting up to. A lot of Onslaught’s sounded downright illegal. Onslaught said that his team sounded like they would have been rejected as kids from the military, so it was probably a good thing they didn’t end up conscripted. It raised his hackles but there wasn’t a malicious thread in his thoughts on the matter – more an observation.

The sore spot came with his team. Specifically, Blast Off. He’d made the mistake of referring to him as Jean-Luc once. It was not a mistake he would be repeating, the back of his head still smarting where Onslaught had whipped it with the back of the chair.

He was painstakingly being repaired by their team still – they’d found more damage than initially expected and were taking the time to reinforce his abdomen so that they’d have a harder time getting in and taking the mech down again. Swindle had a grim face stained with guilt whenever he looked at him and he’d overheard him talking to Cosmos about how he should have designed him better, how he’d never been a close-combat fighter and he should have had more armour. Whenever he went out on a drop with Onslaught he felt bare, like he was missing something. It left a sick feeling deep pit in his stomach and he could feel a memory teasing at the back of his head that slipped between his fingers whenever he reached out for it. Something about Jean-Luc and him getting hurt – getting hurt bad. To the point where they weren’t sure if he’d be coming back. It lasted as long as it took for Onslaught to hastily rip it away from him and left him reeling to catch his breath.

“It’s the kind of weather that makes you wish you had strawberries, doesn’t it?” Hot Spot asked as they waded back through the ocean and towards the Shatterdome. Vortex was somewhere behind them splashing in the waves – apparently he liked to jump on the corpses to see how they burst underwater. Onslaught easily dismissed it but Hot Spot found it a bit harder when he thought about First Aid in the cockpit.

A memory slipped free from Onslaught’s side of the connection. A young boy – young enough that he couldn’t possibly have been of conscription age – sitting in a garden on a swinging bench and eating the biggest, juiciest strawberries Hot Spot had ever seen.

“They still grow?” Onslaught asked.

“Did you struggle to get them?”

“I haven’t seen a fresh one since I was nineteen.”

Oh. That was sad. Hot Spot had learned early on that if he showed the pity on his face he’d feel Onslaught whacking him on the forehead so he kept his expression politely neutral.

“I guess MRE’s didn’t prioritise fresh stuff, did they? I don’t remember seeing anything that resembled a fresh fruit or vegetable in the ones they gave us.”

“Defeats the point of an MRE.”

“True.” He wistfully sighed. “They could have tried to make them nicer, though.”

“I think they wanted some of us to starve. The only person I know who actually liked them is Vortex, but he’s not a standard to be held to.”

Hot Spot couldn’t stop the change in his expression as he grimaced. “Yeah, no thanks. No offence.”

“None taken, he is a nutcase.”

Hot Spot snorted. “I don’t think you should talk about your team like that.” He chided. He felt the sensation of a shrug and of someone folding their arms over their chest.

“He knows full well what we all think of him and he embraces it.”

“He sounds like Blades.” Hot Spot began pressing buttons to initiate their return to base – adjusting the radio, making sure their weapons systems were fully offline, beginning the protocols that would let Onslaught properly shut down. Onslaught hadn’t quite fully figured out how to do the controls himself yet, so had begrudgingly acknowledged that he needed to step aside to let Hot Spot take on the task. “Do you think they’d get along?”

“I think Vortex would eat him alive.”

“I think you’re underestimating Blades – he’d give him a run for his money. The only thing keeping him in line is me and the fact he doesn’t have a mech.”

“Sounds like quite the wildcard.”

“He really is.” He input the final code as they got to the dock. “God forbid anything happen to First Aid, but if Blades ever had to step in for him I don’t think we’d have a Shatterdome any more.”

Onslaught laughed and the corners of Hot Spots lips curled up.

“Yes, that would be quite bad.”

“I got you to laugh.”

The man faltered, and then-