'things you said too quietly' (driftrod)

04 December 2018

But the killing always comes. He’s got a piece of his sparkchamber missing; the killing is part and parcel, even if it’s not his sword. He’s folded between the flowers anyway.

“Hey, you believe in curses and stuff, right?” Rodimus says from next to him, laid out long in the grass, weathered but still blazing over the green. It would look disrespectful, but it isn’t, quite. When Rodimus stretches his arms over his head he brushes the flowers but doesn’t break them. He rolls onto his side and props his head up on a hand.

“And stuff,” Drift agrees, tipping his head to look down at Rodimus. Again. Which is a strange deja vu, now that it’s been so long. They walked a long path side by side and then the cobblestone dissolved under Drift’s feet, and he clambered back up the cliff face until he was back in step with Rodimus. Here he is, now. “Why? And you can’t say it’s because someone hexed Magnus’ sense of fun, he’s just forged that way.”

Rodimus grins because he catches every joke Drift throws out. “You’re not the one who’s had to live with that stick-in-the-mud for the last – like – forever, it feels like. Trust, me I know.” But he softens again, drops his cheek to settle against his upper arm, hand drooping over his head. “I think I might be a little cursed,” he says.

You’d have to curse every sun, Drift thinks for a hysteric moment. He adjusts his focus. “If this is because of the DJD,” he says, “they’re already gone, so –”

“Not that,” Rodimus interrupts, but frowns. “Not just that, anyway. I mean, yeah, that. But also, well, the mutiny thing, and the Megatron thing, and the time travel and Swearth and Overlord and the thing with you – ”

There’s barely been a few hours of peace and Drift hasn’t heard every story yet and he doesn’t even know, right now, some of the words Rodimus are saying. The meanings of them. But Rodimus’ face tenses and shifts in a familiar terrible frown, so that much, Drift does know. “Hold on,” Drift says. “You can’t act like you caused all of that.”

“No,” Rodimus says. “Yes? Ugh.” He rolls down onto his back again, huffing a vent that ruffles the flowers around him. “It’s not that,” he says vaguely, staring up, up. The sky, or space past it, maybe, the stars, a missing ship. Drift watches him.

When Rodimus opens his mouth again he speaks carefully, which – a lot of people don’t think – not many people realize the care he can put into his words, because you have to look down under the bluster and the bravado and dig a little. Get dirt in your seams. “I’m cursed,” Rodimus says, “and I’m the one who did it. So I have to fix it. No matter what it costs.”

There’s dirt in Drift’s seams. He’s heard this sort of thing before. But Rodimus used to twist up a little with pain when he talked about the cost, and now his face goes a little hard, steely in his optics. There’s just a split second of it before Rodimus shakes his head and looks over at Drift with a quickly-gathered grin. “Anyway, you know what time it is? Time for a paint job! Up and at ‘em, Drift, I know you don’t wanna miss out on painting this aft.” Rodimus shoves himself up onto his feet and cocks his hips for a second before he starts walking back toward the fortress they’ve adopted. There’s a manufactured sway in his step.

“Primus,” Drift murmurs, a low plea, “don’t let him turn out like me.”

“Get with it, slowpoke! I wanna be dry by the time Megatron finds out!”

Drift hopes this time Primus will crack the earth under their feet to say his piece but it doesn’t happen, of course, and so he rises up after Rodimus and says “coming, coming,” and he goes. If no one else will watch Rodimus, then Drift will. If no god intervenes on the part of lost and angry souls, then a wanderer must.

Drift makes sure his hands are steady when he paints.