Chapter Text
“And stay off of level seven tonight! Magnus is on duty there, and he’s not gonna be as nice about it if you run into him.”
“Yes, sir! Thanks for the heads up!”
Rodimus huffed fondly as Tailgate sped by him with a cheery wave, the hum of his hoverboard rising and falling as he zoomed around the corner. He made a note to ask Tailgate about where to get his servos on one of those sometime. High speeds, slight peril, and the constant possibility of giving Ultra Magnus a spark attack? What wasn’t to love? It could never replace meteor surfing, but it’d be a suitable substitute until they came across another shower.
He turned to his hab suite door to tap in the passcode when a flash of red caught his eye. Something was stuck to the doorframe. The crest of his helm twitched slightly as he plucked it off. It was a note—a real, paper note. It felt strange to have something so flimsy in his servos. He gingerly wiggled a digit underneath the shiny red seal that was keeping the paper folded shut. It popped off smoothly, revealing a single sentence written in offensively neat, bold, black penmanship:
You put the brightest of stars to shame.
Rodimus shuttered his optics once, and then twice, and then a third time for good measure. He brought the note closer to his face, flipped it over a few times, even held it up to the light, before jerking it away to snap his helm up and down the hallway. It was, obviously, completely empty. No one was there shyly peeking around the corner. No one dropped out of the vent to shout ‘surprise!’ at him. He looked back to the note.
“Jeez,” he said. He finished typing in the rest of his passcode and hurried inside his hab suite without looking away. He deftly navigated the drawing irons on the ground he kept vowing to pick up and sat down behind his desk.
You put the brightest of stars to shame.
Rodimus smothered a silly grin and tried to focus. Who in the Pit had written this? Clearly, someone old-fashioned, if the fact that it was handwritten meant anything. There were so few reasons to write anything when datapads existed; hardly anyone ever actually wrote things down unless they were absolutely determined to be untraceable. Which meant Rodimus couldn’t even begin to guess whose penmanship this was. So unless he wanted to go make over two hundred mechs write down the message until he found a match, guessing on handwriting alone wouldn’t be possible.
Of course, there were a dozen ways he could figure it out—requesting security footage, setting up a temporary watch out in the hallway, Pit, just asking around would probably yield some answers. Yet he felt oddly reluctant to do so. True, he was insanely curious about who the sender could be, and it took everything in him not to call Nightbeat right away to tell him about another case. But he also wanted to see things play out on their own. It could be… exciting. Fun, even. The kind of fun he hadn’t had in a long, long time.
And he wouldn’t complain if he got a few more notes like this. It’d be a shame if he cut them off early because he overreacted.
He decisively planted his chin on the tops of his servos. If the notes suddenly turned creepy or threatening, then he’d act accordingly. But for now…
.:drift:.
.:drift:.
.:driiiiiift:.
DRIFT is typing...
.:Yes?:.
.:can you come to my hab suite? there’s something weird i wanna show you:.
.: I’m feeling oddly disinclined given the last ‘weird’ thing you wanted to show me involved your exhaust pipes exploding in my face.:.
.: it’s way weirder:.
.: I’ll there soon.:.
Rodimus stayed seated, pensively jiggling his pede until, sure enough, a few faithful moments later, a polite knock sounded at the door. It slid open a second later, and Drift strode in with a curious tilt to his finials.
“What is it?” he asked as he came to a stop before Rodimus’ desk.
Rodimus handed him the note. “Someone left this outside my door,” he said as Drift took the paper from his servos. “I wanna know what you think of it.”
Drift sat down on the edge of his desk as he read the note over. His optics crinkled slightly in an amused smile. “I think someone’s very interested in you,” he said.
“Yeah, no slag, but I wanna figure out who.”
“Ask security for some footage or something. They would’ve seen whoever it was.”
Rodimus made a plaintive noise. “I know, but like, I wanna do it the old fashioned way. Whoever left it wanted me to find it without giving themselves away..”
“Hmm.” Drift gave the note back to Rodimus with a puzzled little twist to his mouth. “In that case… Well, I can’t think of anyone off of the top of my head.”
“Yeah, me neither. I’ve got ‘old-fashioned,’ and that’s about it.”
They hemmed and hawed for a minute. “Whoever put it there must have gone out of their way to get paper,” Rodimus began suddenly. It made sense. Everything aboard the Lost Light was tech and metal. Any organic materials would likely only be found in the labs for whatever reason the science folks needed them, or bought while they were stopped on an organic planet somewhere.
“And there’s even a wax seal,” Drift pointed out. “I think it’s an older human tradition to seal letters with a wax stamp, but I could be wrong. Either way, whoever it is clearly cares enough about you to want to go through the effort.”
Rodimus nodded. “Right. So do you think it’s probably from someone who I’ve already got some kind relationship with?”
“I mean, it’d make sense. But we can’t rule out the possibility of it being someone who’s kept their interest in you at a distance. This could be how they’re finally making their move.”
Damn. Rodimus hadn’t thought of that, and it instantly increased the pool of potential mechs to an overwhelmingly large size. He drummed the tips of his digits across his desk. Then he pulled a datapad from a drawer and called up a roster of the mechs on board. Primus, this was going to take ages. But a list was Rodimus’ current best idea for at least narrowing down the possibilities. “Not Magnus,” Rodimus said after a moment, crossing his name from the list. Drift snorted.
“Definitely not. Besides, I don’t see him being so indirect about it.”
“Or poetic.” The energon drained from Rodimus’ face. “Oh, Primus, you don’t think—?”
“I sincerely doubt Megatron is even pursuing a romantic relationship of any kind,” Drift quickly assured. “Even if he were, I don’t think he’d be using love notes to tell you.”
Love notes. Now that was a phrase Rodimus hadn’t heard since he’d graduated from the Academy. It made him somehow feel eons older and younger simultaneously. He grinned. “He’d probably see it as a waste of time. Sucks to be him, love notes are great.”
“How would you know?”
“This isn’t about me.”
“You know, you never did finish telling me that story about you, Two-Step, and the scented—”
“Not about me!” Rodimus hissed as Drift chuckled. He shot him an ineffective glare before swiping another line across the datapad. Then he glanced over at the note again. “Actually, hold on, look. It’s got the Nyon dialect, look, there’re the weird swirlies on everything…”
“Oh, you’re right. So they could either be from Nyon—”
“Or they’re trying to impress me.”
“I was going to say they could simply also be very thoughtful, but that’s an option too. I guess.”
Rodimus hummed. “Not Mags, not Megs… Is it you?”
“I’m a married mech, Rodimus.”
Rodimus curled his free servo and swung his forearm in a small damn motion. “Had to try.” Drift rolled his optics and shook his helm as Rodimus crossed his name off with a small tsk.
They continued back and forth like that for a while, slowly whittling down the list from a couple hundred mechs to around a hundred. It was a good start, though hardly any of them leaped out at Rodimus as the potential note-sender.
“Wait,” Drift said, pointing at a particular name on the list, “what about him?”
Rodimus squinted at the name and burst out into laughter. “Thunderclash? No way.”
Drift didn’t look nearly as amused. “Why not?” he asked with a frown. “He seems the type to put in this kind of thought and care into something.”
Which was true enough, and Rodimus could easily picture him to be the exact type to go outside of Cybertronian tradition to court romantic interests—which Rodimus definitely didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about, thank you very much.
But Thunderclash, directing that kind of attention towards him? That had to be wrong. One, there was no way a mech like him was still single, and two, they barely knew each other. Well. He knew some stuff about Thunderclash, like his favorite drink, and how his laugh filled up a whole room, and how big his smile got when he talked about his friends, but that didn’t count. Besides, Thunderclash was renowned for his selflessness and bravery. He wouldn’t hide his affections behind a note like this, even if he did want to spare a second glance for Rodimus.
Still, Rodimus hesitated to cross his name off of the list. Then he realized he was being stupid and almost viciously drew a line through Thunderclash’s name. No. Thunderclash didn’t like him like that. He was amicable towards Rodimus as any mech would be, and nothing more.
But why did Rodimus suddenly care so much?
“Just trust me on this one,” Rodimus said. Drift shot him an unconvinced look, but thankfully, didn’t say anything more.
As the list slowly shrank, their back and forths about individual mechs grew longer and longer. The reasons for why so-and-so was the author were beginning to rival the reasons for why so-and-so wasn’t. When their debates began to creep upwards of half-an-hour per mech, Drift yawned and said, “It’s getting late. We should probably pick this up in the morning.”
Rodimus glanced down at the time on his datapad in surprise. Drift hadn’t been kidding. It was hours past Rodimus’ usual time for recharge. “Scrap. I have a morning shift tomorrow. Ugh.”
“Have fun with that.” Drift gracefully pushed himself up and off the desk and made for the door. “We’ll talk later, then. Maybe whoever sent it will come forward soon. We’ll just have to wait, I suppose.”
“Guess so.” Rodimus stretched, groaning as struts in his back tensed and released. “Thanks for helping me out.”
“Anytime.” Drift smiled and tossed a short wave over his shoulder. “Good night.”
Rodimus yawned. “‘Night.”
As the near-silent sound of Drift’s pedes faded away, Rodimus shut off the datapad and picked up the note once again. The berth sank slightly beneath his weight as he sat down on the edge of it, still reading the note.
You put the brightest of stars to shame.
Feeling warm, he placed the note on his nightstand before he reached over and turned out the lights. A pleased smile spread across his face, and it did not disappear as he finally slipped into sleep.