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“Hey, Bàba?” North calls out, stepping into the kitchen.
Drift raises his head from the table, blearily. The papers he’s laying on shift with the movement. He groans, hand going to the back of his stiff neck. He can hear the clock above the stove ticking loudly. When did he fall asleep?
“Yeah?” he asks, straightening. His back pops.
“Dad said to tell you that he’s gone out grocery shopping.”
Drift glances at the mudroom. Ratchet couldn’t have woken him up?
North must have followed his gaze because he says: “He didn’t want to wake you.”
“Oh. Okay. Thanks,” he says, still feeling vaguely sleepy but not enough to actually get up and fall into bed. Besides, he doesn’t like sleeping while his children—or child, in North’s case, even though he is an adult now—are awake. He looks down at the court papers and remembers why he’s at the kitchen table anyways. “Where’s Dead End?”
North starts a pot of coffee. It feels unnatural, a son getting his father coffee. Sometimes Drift has to remind himself that North isn’t that little baby left at the firehouse anymore. He’s an adult man with an adult man fiancé and an adult twin sister. Still, he’ll always be his little boy, no matter how old he gets.
“He’s still upstairs with Maine,” North answers. He leans against the kitchen counter, hands tucked into the pockets of his beige pants.
Drift swishes hair out of his eyes. “That’s good that they’re getting along. I was worried he would shut everybody out. Tell Maine how grateful I am that he’s helping.”
He shakes his head. “He’s glad to be here. He needs a new distraction.” He dips his head, kicking aimlessly at the tile floor. “Ever since Connie— died he’s been working on this old car. He’s got it pretty much done. I was worried about what he’ll going to do when he’s done with it. But— he’s doing good with Dead End. I think he’ll be okay.”
North looks up at his father, and Drift sees the scared little kid he use to read bedtime stories to and who would beg him to check the closet and under the bed for monsters.
“North, do you know you rant the same way Rodimus does?” Drift asks, trying to lighten the mood. North’s been known to carry the entire world on his shoulders—just like his dad—ever since he was a kid, and he still doesn’t know how to shake it off.
North’s eyebrows furrow in confusion. “I do?” he asks.
He nods, smiling. “You do. You don’t normally rant, but when you do, you sound like he does.”
North takes two mugs out of the cupboard. One of them is a HAPPY FATHERS DAY one, written entirely in poorly scribbled Japanese. The second one he faintly recalls Ratchet bringing back home after he had a medical conference in Toronto. He pours steaming hot coffee into both, and then gives the former to Drift, who takes it gingerly and sets it on a nearby coaster with a hummingbird painted onto it.
“Rodimus babysat a lot,” he says.
Drift raises his eyebrows, blowing on his coffee. “I don’t think babysat is the right word for what he did. I once found you and your sister outside, covered in pink paint and climbing a tree. Rodimus thought you both were taking a nap. I remember telling him that you two refused to take naps unless Ratchet was holding you—and even then it was quite the battle. But he didn’t listen, couldn’t believe he was outsmarted by two toddlers.”
North takes a sip of his drink. “I don’t remember that.”
“You were very young,” he says. Drift sighs. “I appreciate what you’re doing. I want Dead End to be comfortable here, even when his siblings aren’t around.”
North shrugs, smiling. “Sign is easier to learn when you’re doing it. He’s picking it up quickly.”
“Your dad’s trying too. We both are. If Maine is going to be apart of this family, we want to be able to communicate with him,” Drift explains.
The bashful grin that spreads across North’s face is bright, infectious. “Thanks, Bàba,” he says.
He shakes his head. “It’s nothing. You—“ he is interuppted by his phone buzzing somewhere under his pile of papers. “Sorry, that’s probably your Dad asking if we still have peanut butter. He’s been captivated by this one peanut butter brand, I swear.”
He fishes his phone out of the sea of legal documents he’s unceremoniously been hoarding on the table. When he reads the caller ID, his eyebrows knit in confusion. He hits answer.
“Hello?” he wonders.
North sees the look on his face, his own interest peaked.
“Drift,” comes Megatron’s voice from the other end. Her tone is firm. “Is Drag Strip over there?”
He glances at his son. “No. He’s not. Why?”
Megatron sighs. “He’s not at home. None of the others will tell me where he went. I assumed he was with his brother.”
The children are known to be almost codependent on each other. The family therapist he’s consulted says that it’s not uncommon for siblings as close as them to cling to each other, especially in an abusive situation where all they know is each other, that they are only safe with each other.
He had thought that they were getting better at being apart, and that’s one of the reasons he had offered to watch Dead End. Without one of his siblings to translate, he would hopefully get out of his shell a little bit more.
“He’s not here. Megatron, I—“
“Don’t,” she says, and then hangs up.
He stands up, almost shaky, worried. That’s his son, his kid. He’s only just got to know of his existence. “Dead End’s upstairs?”
North nods, slowly. “Yeah, in my room.”
Drift doesn’t respond, he just rushes up the stairs.