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When Optimus opens his door, the last person he expects to see is Drag Strip standing on his front porch.
It’s pouring rain, thick blobs soaking into the earth and wetting the stone and red mulch driveway. Drag Strip’s dyed blond hair is wet.
“Can I come in?” he asks, refusing to look Optimus in the eye. He has a hockey duffle bag thrown over his shoulder.
“Sure?” he answers, moving out of the way as Drag Strip quickly walks into his home.
Drag Strip kicks off his shoes—Optimus watches him flinch, spine curled like he was about to pick them up and put them side by side, in their correct placement by the door and not haphazardly tossed around—and makes his way to the kitchen, plopping down on the chair and dropping his duffel by his feet.
Optimus approaches cautiously, sitting at the other end of the table. “Does your mom know you’re here?” he asks, listening to Drag Strip’s leg bounce rapidly against the hardwood floor.
“Nope,” he answers, keeping his head dipped, picking at the skin around his fingernails.
From behind him, he can hear Indy walk out from the hallway and stop in his tracks.
Optimus wonders if he’ll slink back into the bedroom. He wouldn’t blame him, he didn’t know he would have to be dealing with teenaged children from a one night stand over a decade ago. Optimus himself didn’t know he would have to be doing this either.
“Drag Strip?” he asks, stepping into the kitchen. Yellow light bathes over his face, over his confused yet wondrous look. “What are you doing here?”
“Studying for Prime Minster,” he deadpans, then regrets it.
Optimus has never seen Drag Strip regret something he’s said before. It’s odd. He’s always been the “shoot first, questions later” type. He talks before he thinks. His mouth is a revolving door of words and letters. He simply just doesn’t care what he says or who he says it to.
At least, that’s what Optimus thought before he watched Drag Strip’s expression flicker, dipping his head back down.
Indy puts his hands on the back Drag Strip’s chair. “Does your mother know you’re here?” he wonders.
Drag Strip shakes his head. “She went out, fuming mad. Decided I’d jump out before she came back.”
Optimus frowns and catches his husband’s eyes, concerned. “Why was she mad?” he asks. “Your mother is a reasonable woman, I’m sure it would have been okay.”
Drag Strip snorts, unbelieving, rolling his eyes. He’s much more reactive than his siblings, less scared of doing. It doesn’t matter what, but he’s noticed it’s more about acting human and alive than anything else. They’re scared. The boys are skiddish and untrusting of adults. Drag Strip isn’t any different, but he’s loud and angry about it. There is something so unrelentingly teenage boy about him, something that he can’t shake.
It’s refreshing, really, seeing one of Optimus’ children acting his age, even if Drag Strip still has some of his more stoic moments.
“Of course you’d say that, you don’t want her to restrict your visiting rights,” he mutters bitterly.
“How’s your mom going to restrict anything? You’ll just sneak out of the house again,” Indy says, playful and soft and caring.
Drag Strip snorts and shrugs. “I dunno,” he responds, looking a lot less tense.
Optimus isn’t sure how Indy is doing it. The boys are always so cautious around him, like their stepping on eggshells, but Indy can talk like it’s nothing, like they are his pals.
He supposes it’s because Indy’s had so many friends over the years that he’s learned how to talk to just about anybody, teenage boys alike.
“I was like that when I was your age. My father was a little bit like that too,” Indy announces. He pats the back of the chair and then steps back. “Well, I, for one, am going to bed. I’ve got a class in the morning and then a excavation later in the day.”
Drag Strip watches him stretch and then looks over at Optimus. “Can I stay the night?” he asks, as if he wasn’t fully intending on doing so as soon as he left his mother’s house.
Optimus nods, glancing at Indy. “I’ll have to make sure your mother knows where you are, but you can stay for as long as you’d like,” he reassures.
Drag Strip brightens.
“As long as his mother doesn’t come here and get him herself,” Indy says, still lightheartedly around, arms crossed against his chest.
Optimus hopes she wouldn’t.
They get Drag Strip set up in a guest room, far enough away from the master bedroom so that he wouldn’t feel like he was back in school, listening to the nuns outside his bunkroom.
Optimus doesn’t know what all happened to those boys in that school, but he knows for certain it wasn’t good. They are all hurt, hurt in ways he can’t even imagine.
Indy strips off his shirt and tosses it into the laundry bin.
“He’s been asking me about my adventures,” Indy says, having been the last to speak to Drag Strip.
He had stayed back to get extra blankets, and Optimus had assumed that it had been silent.
“Has he?” Optimus asks from the adjacent bathroom, squeezing the bottle of toothpaste into his brush.
“I’m wondering if he wants me to drag him around the world like I did with Short Round,” he remarks, throwing a sleep shirt on.
“Well, would you?” inquires Optimus. He shoves his toothbrush into his mouth and squints slightly at the artificial flavouring. “I know you and him were close.”
Indy sighs. “We were,” he says, picking his words carefully and thoroughly, “and I miss him. But—uh, Drag Strip kinda reminds me of him, y’know?”
Optimus remembers Short Round’s funeral. He was stiff and remorseful and had cried uncharacteristically into Optimus’ shoulder when they had got back home. He still remembers how he sounded, howling, animalistic sobs, shaking. Optimus would have cried too, for Short Round was officially the last tie he had from his time. Everything else, everyone else, was gone.
Indiana is a living ghost.
Optimus had helped him through it, but had thought bitterly of his own family and friends, from way, way before the Europeans came.
In truth, he still isn’t sure he helped that well.
“I never knew Short Round as well as you did,” he admits truthfully.
Indy waves him off vaguely. “I know that, I know. It just— I dunno.”
Optimus furrows his eyebrows, sympathetic. He spits in the sink and rinses out his toothbrush. “Would you want to teach him something? If he was interested. I haven’t seen him interested in much of anything.”
“He likes to argue on that TikTok,” announces Indy. “Told me so.”
“He trusts you more than me.” It stings a little, that his own son doesn’t trust him, but he thinks that building a reputation with his husband would be better anyways. Indy is a part of his family, and he wants the boys to be in it as well.
His husband shrugs. “I’m not related to him, and I’m the cool archeologist who has stories from all over the world.”
Optimus steps over and cups Indy’s cheek, feeling the unsubtle brush of his stubble against his hand. “Thank you,” he says.
“What are husbands for?” Indy responds, nonchalantly, as if he wasn’t struggling to say that they were married for many, many decades. As if he was only really okay with that part of himself recently.
Optimus smiles at him, overly fond.