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“You’re serious.” Drift wasn’t criticizing him; no, it was more of a spoken validation of his understanding.
“Woof,” said Rodimus, winking.
“What?”
Drift was laughing despite himself, laid out backwards next to Rodimus, who was twirling the small woven fiber lead around his fingers. they hadn’t stopped anywhere for a while and it was unlikely Rodimus had been able to somehow synthesize the materials himself, so Drift had to imagine e had either gotten the thing before at some point and forgotten about it or that he had been waiting for the right time to ask. Of course, Drift would have always said yes, there was no question there, but some things came easier to Rodimus than others, like asking for oddly personal requests.
“It’s the sound Earth dogs make. Woof, woof!”
He leaned in and pretended to bite Drift’s nose.
“No it isn’t!” Drift pulled away, laughing and trying to cover his face but finding it hard with his hands trapped between their bodies. “Or maybe they do,” he paused, wrinkling up his face in thought. It was damn cute. “Where I landed on Earth I remember people saying wan wan for dogs. Or was it kyan?”
“Earth has a lot of different languages. I thought you were a nerd for that kind of stuff?”
“I’m not a nerd!”
He gasped and struggled a little as Rodimus loomed in again, poking and prodding at him with gusto.
“Oh really?”
Gold fingers tapped at his hips, where, a few bodies ago, some of the human glyphs from the part of Earth he’d stayed in primarily used to adorn his plating. He wriggled away, laughing, and then Rodimus reached up with his free arm and tugged a little on the leash. Instantly he froze, a little gasp lighting him up as he felt the gentle tug on the collar around his neck.
“Well,” he said, trying to recompose himself, “perhaps I was a nerd for only the bits I knew best.”
“Not a very good nerd then.”
“And you’re a terrible actor. Wasn’t this going to be a scene of some kind?”
Rodimus pushed himself up on one elbow and cocked his helm, giving off the casually handsome air of a reclining prince.
“I dunno, I mean I kinda just thought we’d get you dressed up and go from there.”
The weight of the singular item of costume in their play once again made itself known as Rodimus shifted the lead a bit.
“You didn’t think this through much, did you?”
Looks like forgetting he had it was the more likely answer. Rodimus smiled in a way that was intended to express the dueling emotions of “whoops” and “oh well”.
“What can I say, I like to improvise.”
“Mmhmm,” Drift hummed, swinging a leg over Rodimus’s hip and righting himself to straddle his best friend, “Whoo whoo, then.”
There was a moment of silence, short but cutting, as Rodimus stared at him without comprehension. Then the corners of his eyes turned up as if he were about to cry and a laugh as bellowingly loud as it was unexpected. Drift clamped his legs down hard, literally riding the waves of mirth as Rodimus shook the whole berth with it.
“WH… what?”
“It’s, it’s not,” Rodimus broke down again, wiping his forehead with a limp palm as if his laugh was choking the life from his spark, “it’s not whoo whoo!”
“Well I don’t know!”
He wanted to be indignant but it was hard when Rodimus was clearly beside himself. Covering his mouth to hide the smile trying so hard to burst out, he wriggled his hips, reaching up to jingle the d-ring connecting the thin strip of flexible metal to the leash.
“Wan wan?”
Calming almost unnaturally fast, Rodimus stared up at him. Drift let the hand fall away just enough to display his coy smile.
Rodimus stared. He licked his lips.
He leapt up to mash their mouths together, catching Drift so off-guard that they tumbled off the berth as one, leash and all.
“Woof!”