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“Mims, are you – are you crying?”
“What? *sniffle* No, certainly not!”
“You are crying!” Rodimus wraps a hand around Minimus Ambus’s shoulder, and draws him to the side, away from the handful of people milling around the hall’s first few glass cases. “What’s wrong? Did I screw it up?”
“No! Not in the least, Rodimus, it’s that –” Minimus raises his head, and through the filaments bleeding light, Rodimus can see that his optics are shining. “It’s so beautiful.”
The exhibition hall they’re in is unassuming – high-ceilinged and airy, but the walls are plain, hung only with the occasional chipper sign requesting quiet or pointing out objects of particular academic significance. It’s the beginning of the weekend for the people of New Praxus, and the sunny streets outside are jam-packed, but Rodimus and Minimus are sharing the museum with perhaps a half-dozen other visitors, most of whom are wandering from display case to display case with expressions ranging from boredom to mild interest.
None of them have the kind of love light in their optics that Minimus has right now.
“So,” Rodimus grins, “Guessing I picked a winner after all, then?”
Minimus gives him a look that’s somehow wry and grateful all at once. “How did you even find a Museum of Historical Fonts?”
“Oh, I have my ways,” Rodimus tells him loftily. Ways that involved a lot of frantic research into holiday destinations and late-night comms to mechs who still owed him favours, but that doesn’t sound as cool so he leaves it out. Instead, he reaches down, and when Minimus takes his hand, it sends the same little shiver up his spinal strut that it did the very first time. His Minimus. His Ultra Magnus.
Rodimus might – might! - swing their joined hands a bit ostentatiously as they walk around the museum.
It takes them most of the afternoon to really absorb each exhibit in the level of detail that Minimus wants to devote to them. His voice is reverently hushed as he explains to Rodimus the history of each style of serif, the links to different forms and periods of programming, fonts designed to be hand-written as a form of art versus those for the masses for print or digital display. There’s something intoxicating about watching Minimus this animated, this happy, and it makes spending a sunny day inside a beige box full of fonts entirely worthwhile. (It’s not the only perk, Rodimus admits to himself. Bits of the history are even interesting, especially when they bleed over into the rise of resistance to the Senate and the fonts mimicked in protest graffiti or printed in underground pamphlets. Plus, some of these typefaces are quite pleasing to look at. No sooner does that thought cross his mind than he recoils in horror, wondering what he has become.)
They’re almost at the end of the exhibition when Minimus glances at a glass case, then strides right past it.
“Mims, you missed one,” Rodimus calls.
“No, that’s all right –” Minimus starts, but Rodimus is already bending over the case. The font on display looks… strangely familiar.
“Hey, this is the font you used to use whenever you submitted a report on the Lost Light.”
“Many fonts look similar to the untrained optic. It would be easy to confuse them, especially after so many centuries.”
That’s not a no, Rodimus twigs. “Nope, I’m sure it was this one. Get half a dozen reports a day for years, and you’d still see them when you closed your optics, too.”
“You never even read most of those reports, Rodimus!”
“I – skimmed them! Stop trying to change the subject, Mims, why would...” Rodimus trails off as he catches sight of the neat plaque beside the display.
Iaconian Simplifed Sans Serif. Developed shortly before the outbreak of the Autobot-Decepticon War, this font, though now often praised for its efficiency, was controversial on its introduction. Critics cited the ‘subtle eroticism’ of the font’s clean, perpendicular corners, in an era when clipped corners were widely preferred. One member of the Functionist Council at the time even condemned the entire font, saying it ‘quivered with suppressed longing’.
“Maaaaagnus,” Rodimus sing-songs, grinning so wide it hurts.
“Rodimus, really, you can’t believe everything you read. The art of typeface interpretation is –”
“How long were you sending me official reports in a flirty font?”
There’s a momentary silence and, when Rodimus glances down, he realises that Minimus has a hand pressed over his mouth, and that his cheeks are flushed dark with energon. Rodimus is about to take pity on him and excuse him from answering when Minimus whispers, “Since the beginning of the voyage.”
“Ultra Magnus!”
“I didn’t realise at first!” Minimus all but wails.
Rodimus pats his shoulder sympathetically, though still can’t quite keep from grinning. “So when did you figure it out?”
“I didn’t! Thunderclash was the one who told me, some time after he joined the crew. I’d asked him to look over one of my reports on our encounters with the Vis Vitalis in order to double-check some of the figures. He did so, but then he pulled me aside to ask if I always submitted my reports in that font, and whether I was aware of its… implications.”
“Thunderclash, huh?” It’s been a while since Rodimus thought of his one-time captain with any actual animosity, but this may be the most positive he’s ever felt about Thunderclash. Gotta buy the guy a drink when I see him next. “Wait. Is that why he didn’t seem surprised, when I told him I was leaving the Exitus to see the galaxy with you?”
Minimus smiles slightly. “He told me later that he always rather hoped we’d work it out. I believe he called it ‘a happy ending worthy of Iaconian Simplified Sans Serif’.”
Rodimus shakes his head. “You know what, Mims? In a bizarre way, it’s kinda nice to hear that from the only person weird enough to think in those terms. Besides you, that is.” He cups Minimus’s cheek and crouches down so they’re optic-to-optic. Minimus is pressing his lips tight and clearly trying to look stern, but the softness in his optics ruins the effect… as does the way he leans in eagerly, hands sliding up Rodimus’s chest, when Rodimus moves to kiss him.
“So what do you reckon?” Rodimus asks when they break away. “Happy ending worthy of history’s sexiest typeface?”
Minimus looks him up and down assessingly, making Rodimus laugh – and underneath that, though he’d never admit it, making him momentarily nervous – before breaking into a smile. “I would find it difficult to imagine anything better.” He extends a hand to Rodimus. “Now. Shall we finish off the exhibition, and then dinner?”
“Only if the letters on the menu have clean, perpendicular corners.”
“Rodimus.”
“What?” Rodimus stands and takes his conjunx’s hand. “You’ve ruined me for every other font.”