Chapter Text
“You want an amica endura ceremony--”
“Spectralist ceremony--”
“You want to do a Spectralist amica endura ceremony?” Drift said. “What brought this on?”
Rodimus, gripping Drift’s sword in both hands, grinned at him. “Maybe I wanna show you that I’m really into this Spectralist thing.”
“Yee-ah, that’s not it—whoa! Hey! Calm down!” Drift turned to the side, blocked Rodimus’ thrust. “Roddy. Unless you want to actually fight me, save the sparring for when we have practice blades.”
“Who says I don’t want to actually fight you?”
Drift raised an optic ridge. “Do you?”
Rodimus let the point of the sword drop to the ground—Drift winced—and groaned dramatically. “No, stupid, I want to do the frikkin’ ceremony! I know we’re already amicae, but there’s no reason we can’t do it again. Properly.”
Despite himself, Drift felt a little thrill of excitement go through him at the words. Knowing that Rodimus had adopted a practice that, perhaps, he didn’t know much about yet—for Drift—well, it was nice. It was a nice thing to know.
“Well. In that case,” he said, brightly, and slid the sword he held back into its sheath. “I’ll look into what we need to do to get it started.” He held out his hand for the other sword.
Rodimus grabbed his hand instead and began swinging it merrily as they walked out. “Great! I’m really looking forward to this!”
“Can I. . .” Drift cleared his throat, felt his finials twitch a bit, reflexively, as Roddy wiggled his fingers inside Drift’s hand. “Are you gonna give my sword back?”
“Nope!” Rodimus chirped, and laughed.
Two years ago, Drift would have just accepted it, and perhaps begun looking for another short sword if Rodimus had been serious about wanting to keep it. Today, though, he let his engine rev in a pattern, bared his fangs in a playful growl, and tackled his captain around the waist.
Rodimus landed with a grunt on his back, and laughed delightedly as Drift attempted to secure his wrists to the ground. The sword had gone flying as soon as Drift had made his move, but this wasn’t really about the sword. This was about Roddy, who was not going down as easily as Drift had expected.
“Come on, Drift!” he panted, and hooked an arm around Drift’s shoulders. Drift yelped as Roddy let his weight jerk Drift to the side, unbalancing him. “I thought you’d go harder than that!”
He could, but he knew it was important to hold himself back. Even playful wrestling bouts like this had him tensing inside, seeing options for the fight playing out in front of him like the video games Chromedome loved to play. Dig my fangs into his wrist. Punch him in the back of the head while he’s focusing on my knees. Go for the spoiler.
But instead he relaxed his center of balance and let Rodimus flip him over and pin him to the floor. He landed awkwardly on the Greatsword, and let out an “Oof” as Rodimus cackled and knelt on his abdomen.
“Not so tough now!” Roddy crowed.
Drift smirked at him, wiggling a little as the Greatsword dug more into his helm. “Oh, really? And what are you gonna do?”
Rodimus pretended to think, and leaned forward, attempting to rival Drift’s smirk. “I. . . could. . . do. . . this!”
And before Drift could think to react, Rodimus dug his fingers into sensitive transformation seams and tickled. Drift gasped and stiffened, a surprised laugh climbing its way out of his throat before he can think.
“N-no, Roddy, stop!” He should know the words are useless—when Rodimus got to be the one in control of the tickle fights, he never stopped. Most of the time, he was the one screaming and giggling helplessly on the ground as Drift targeted his most vulnerable spots with deadly accuracy.
“Stop what? Stop this?” Roddy asked, and wormed his fingers deeper into Drift’s seams as Drift thrashed beneath him, laughing and laughing—and sure, it was almost awkward as Roddy leaned down closer to him and his thighs squeezed Drift’s waist and their faces were so close the smiles could have touched—but it wasn’t, it wasn’t awkward, because it was Roddy and Drift would never do anything to hurt Roddy. Never.
Rodimus must have noticed when Drift became sober, because his fingers slowly stopped dancing along Drift’s seams and rested flat on his chest instead. He grinned down at him—and that was Roddy, never wanting the fun to stop, never wanting Drift to be sad. “Sooo, are you planning on looking up how to make ourselves best-friends-in-Spectralist, or am I gonna have to keep you here forever?”
Drift hefted himself up with a grunt, dumping Rodimus—lovingly-- on his aft. “I was going to go check it out before you stole my sword.”
Rodimus brightened up. “First one to the sword get to keep it!”
“No, no--” Drift lunged forward, snagged Rodimus by the piping of his foot, and leapt over his head. “My sword.”
“Aw, maybe you should bond with the sword instead of me,’ Rodimus said, sticking his lip out in an exaggerated pout. Drift chuckled, glancing back over his shoulder, not buying his act at all.
There was a pause.
“Aw, pit,” came Rodimus’ disappointed voice. “Magnus.”
“He needs you?”
“I was—I was supposed to be at his office, um, five minutes ago.”
“Oh, he should be happy. Five minutes late. That’s good time for you.” Drift stood from picking up his sword, turned and slid it back into its sheath.
“If I didn’t have to be there right now on pain of death you would totally be getting tickle-tortured again,” Roddy threatened.
“Or would it be you this time?” Drift asked, idly, as Roddy hurried out the training room door.
“I will be holding you to that promise!” Rodimus hollered as he walked out. “Ceremony, baby! We’re gonna be best friends!”
Drift put his hands to his hips. Spectralist amicae endura ceremony. Yeah. He could do that.
How hard could it be?