Chapter Text
Sam dreams in colours that don’t exist.
He opens his eyes and knows without a doubt that this isn’t any place he can go to on Earth, that these hulking metal cities and crystalline structures that spiral towards the unfamiliar sky is a scene he will only ever see within his mind. In memories that don’t belong to him.
He’s never been to this place. He has no memory of ever stepping foot on these soils. He is a stranger to this strange world, and it shows in his dull colours, his pasty skin and his tender flesh. He is all of six years old and yet he knows, instinctively, that he is fragile. Like how a bird with a broken wing would feel in the hands of a titan.
When he’s six he only really dreams of the land. He explores buildings and roads and bridges in flashes of light, and he wakes up disoriented and a little lost. In comparison, his home feels soft and warm. The place in his mind isn’t exactly cold, but it isn’t soft, and he knows that if he ever were to actually go to this dreamscape he would earn himself countless injuries.
Good thing it’s a dreamscape and nothing more.
He’s six, and he dreams of colours that don’t exist.
He’s seven when he dreams of titans.
Sam is well aware of the rumours that circle around his head.
Tranquility is a seaside city, and it’s not very big. Most folks tend to flock to L.A. for the big lights and even bigger casinos, but those who live in Tranquility only really live here because they’ve got a nice big house by the ocean and, as such, find it bothersome to leave.
There’s two school’s in the city that all the seaside children attend; one’s for the rich ones who will probably move out of this town and to L.A, or New York, or anywhere that wasn’t here. Then there was the public school, a big building housing K-12 that resembled a prison ward more than an educational facility.
Seaside kids were already strange to begin with (unlike their city-centre neighbours who didn’t like driving all the way across the city to swim every evening) and so it was hard to categorise “weird kids” when most of them went to the same surf spots and bathed in the same sun pools. Needless to say, Sam managed to get dubbed anyway. He would take more offence, but at seven and a half he’s got a lot on his plate, so whispers and name-calling get pushed to the back burner. He’d be a lot more miserable if he let it all get to him anyway. He’s been told he’s a smart kid; he’s got his priorities straight.
He’s been a target of whispers from the moment he opened his mouth and asked why their cities were built so small and square when they could be building in magnificent spirals. He asked where he could find the crystal city, where he could find the sunsets tinged in colours he can’t name, and he was sent to the school psychologist when his teacher finally gave in and deemed him a lunatic.
He told the lowly-paid school psychologist what he told his peers, and when the lady asked if he saw things other people didn’t, he could tell that he wouldn’t find anything but trouble for his truths. He may be seven (and a half!) but he’s not stupid. His great-great-grandfather had been called crazy, and he disappeared for it. So he plasters on a smile and says, “it was a great dream, miss, you should’ve seen it. There were robots too. And lasers,” then for extra effect, “and dragons.”
She sighs, settles, and sends him on his way. Just another kid with a wild imagination.
He keeps the golden towers and crystal cities to himself after that.
Still, the damage was done last year, when Samuel James Witwicky was sent to the shrink, and everyone knows. They think crazy is contagious, so they keep their distance, and he is left with the boy who likes to climb trees and has trouble reading.
It’s not the worst.
He still keeps his dreams to himself. It hurts.
He’s on the cusp of turning eight, and he can speak two languages.
One is English, and that is the only language he speaks at home. His parents, though part Italian on his mother’s side, hold little to their minority lineage, and have been born and bred in America all their lives. So English is what the Witwicky household speaks, and English is what they teach at school, and the weird clicks and hums (they don’t sound right coming from his mouth, feels like there’s pieces missing, feels like he’s speaking without the right tongue) that he has gathered in his mind are what Sam speaks to himself after dark.
His room is right above his mother’s garden, where his father has built wooden piers so that his mother can hang potted flowers and grow her veggies. His window is a bit high, so he’s had the art of jumping from the sill to the closest pier down to perfection. It’s there, when he knows he’s the only soul awake, that he clicks and hums strange noises deep and high in his throat. He doesn’t know what he’s saying, because he’s never heard anyone speak the way he does, but he knows the basics. Low and long for sorrowful and sad, high and blipped for a chirping sound that resembles a happy bird. He knows the basics.
He knows how to say “I’m lonely,” and it’s a long croon that wisps off into the dark.
He’s eight years old when he sees a yellow car.
He’s not really a car-fanatic kind of kid, more interested in robots than he is the vehicle his dad drives to work, so he’s not sure what type it is exactly. There’s a whole bunch of cars sitting along the property of the automobile shop, so he’s already a little bit over his head with the models. It’s got racing stripes though, fat black lines that stretch over its build. Something itches his brain at the sight.
His dad’s here for some spare parts, for reference. This dealer is shady at best, with a slimy smile and rings littering his fingers that clack together every time he so much as waves. Sam doesn’t like him, and he’s getting bored of looking at different types of bolts and screws, so he stepped outside the shop to survey the countless busted cars sitting out in the hot California sun. Most have seen better days, and some seem to be one ignition away from becoming a pile of scrap metal, but he’s intrigued. He’s never seen this many cars before.
And then he spots the yellow one with black stripes, and his brain tingles. Like when the doctor would shine a light in his eyes. Like when he chirps and hums. Like when he dreams of colours he’s never seen.
He’s moving closer before he realises what’s happening, drawn to the beat-up yellow car with its racing stripes and dusty doors. There’s a keychain stuck to the rear-view mirror, a fluffy bee and a disco-ball and a tag that spells out B-E-E-O-T-C-H, whatever that means.
“Huh,” Sam says, and draws his finger over the dirt-covered hood to trace a smiley face against the hot metal. The yellow paint looks better without the grime. “You feel funny.”
It might just be his imagination, but the car hums back, a little like a chirp. Maybe it was just a bird.
His brain tingles. He shakes his head.
“My dad is taking forever,” Sam complains to the car, drawing a poorly shaped hexagon next to the smiley face. “And he doesn’t wanna’ pay someone else to fix his engine.”
The car does not move, but at this point Sam is invested in his complaining, and none of the other cars seem to take interest.
“Your stripes are cool,” Sam murmurs, and maybe this is why he’s considered a weirdo at school. Who else talks to beat-down second-hand cars? Him, apparently.
“Sam?” His dad calls out for him, and he jerks, snapping his hand away from the hood and leaving an incomplete symbol in his wake. Would he get in trouble for wandering off? Maybe. His dad is pretty chill though, and rarely invokes anger unless Sam steps on his newly trimmed grass. “Sam! We’re leaving!”
“Ah,” he sighs, turning around to the car. “Sorry. Gotta’ go. Hope whoever buys you likes yellow. It’d be sad if they repainted you.”
He runs along to where his dad is waiting impatiently by their car, a package in hand as he mutters about being ripped off, and had Sam not been in a hurry to duck behind his father and get into the passenger seat, he would have noticed the vacant spot in between the second-hand vehicles where a yellow Camaro used to sit.
There’s a yellow car in their garage.
His dad is furious, but there’s no licence plate, and no sign of any keys, so he calls the tow company and has the car removed.
Sam watches from his room, and he’s only slightly put off.
He recognises those stripes.
It’s back the next day. And the next. And the next. At some point the tow company gets annoyed and starts charging double, claiming that his dad’s prank isn’t the first to be pulled. His father, left with no option, tells them to forget it.
At least this time there are keys. They sit innocently on the driver's seat, paired with a keychain of a little smiling honeycomb character.
His dad refuses to touch it. He usually parks his car out on the road anyway, because parking in their garage would mean getting gas all over his grass. So he leaves the car in the garage and doesn’t look at it.
His mom seems unsettled. She tells Sam not to go near the garage until his dad deals with it.
He goes into the garage.
“Hello,” he says, “You’re back.”
His pictures are still drawn into the dirty hood, and he sees the words he left behind. Markings. Letters. Glyphs. He moves forward to complete them.
“Did you like the designs?” He asks, “is that why you’re back?”
He doesn’t imagine it this time, when one of the side mirrors tilts just enough that it makes it obvious.
“You can hear me, can’t you? My name is Sam. My brain tickles whenever I look at you.”
The passenger door opens, and a boy steps out.
He’s older than Sam, by a lot, more like a teenager or one of those really old kids who go off to study in different places after highschool. He’s got a head full of curly blonde hair, bright blue eyes (and they’re glowing a bit, if he squints and looks real hard) a splatter of freckles, and looks like he would be good at surfing.
“Do you know how to surf?”
The boy tilts his head, and in the dark it’s hard to tell, but Sam swears he sees something along the long line of his pale neck.
“Or swim? You look like those surfers who never go to school.”
There’s a whirring sound that Sam swears comes from the car, but the boy bobs his head as if the noise had come from him, so Sam plays along. He’s a bit preoccupied with completing the glyphs anyway, words he doesn’t really know but play familiar tunes in his fingers when he writes them. He knows the one he’s writing now is older than the other glyphs he’s written, something that has sleeker curves and deeper meaning.
“You–can you believe it!?--can write down anything–I know this place–sentences that don’t make sense–I know you!”
It’s the radio going back and forth, finding channels and snippets of radio chatter to string together something like a sentence. Sam is only a bit confused, because he doesn’t really understand what the boy is trying to say.
“I’m… I’m writing,” Sam explains slowly, tilting his head to match the boy.
The boy nods, and a clip of a crowd cheering is played.
An idea suddenly pops in his head.
“Can you read these?”
He points to the oldest glyph he’s written, with deep-rooted meaning that he doesn’t understand. The boy, without looking at it, shakes his head. But then he moves closer and points to another set of writing, this one newer than the others, and another round of cheering and clapping is played from the radio.
“You’re not that old,” Sam states, because if the boy knew the newer glyphs and not the older ones, then he’s definitely not the oldest guy around.
The boy shakes his head.
“Can you tell me what it says?”
The boy does something funny with his face, something that makes his dark brows scrunch and his face look funny, like he’s eaten a lemon by accident. He shakes his head again, and the yellow car’s lights flash on. Sam jumps, surprised, but the boy doesn’t wait for his heart to settle before leaning down to his height.
He can see the scars clearly now.
A mangled mess of flesh meets his gaze. Sam winces, bringing a hand out to trace the scarred tissue before he can even think about his actions. The boy doesn’t move away, doesn’t get mad, and simply watches as Sam feels around the scars and bumpy skin, the uneven lines of his neck.
“Does it hurt?” Sam whispers.
“–not one bit chap!”
“The radio makes sense now,” he nods, even though nothing is making sense. “You can’t talk.”
It’s not a question, but the boy’s eyes are bright like a glowing ocean floor when he nods.
The boy looks sad, and the car light’s wilt.
Sam’s brain tingles.
“Can you drive?”
The boy perks up, blond curls bouncing as he nods like a dog shaking water off its coat. He springs up, flickers a bit – and isn’t that strange – before walking back to the car.
“We’ll be right back folks!–no one is able to figure it out–”
Sam’s spine tingles, like electrical bolts dancing along his bones, and as he hops into the passenger seat he doesn’t mention the way the seatbelt clicks itself into place, how the boy doesn’t really turn the wheel when they drive out, and how the car’s engine is silent.
He doesn’t think about the possible ramifications of getting into a car with a stranger.
His brain tingles.
His chirps, something that he knows runs along the lines of happy, and the car jolts.
They go to the sea.
It’s not a far drive; only a few minutes to make it past the last line of neighbourhoods and another two to park just where the sand begins. The beach is soft and chalk-full of little trinkets, but Sam’s feet are calloused from crawling along this shore countless times before, so he tugs his sandals off and, with nothing stopping him, goes toward the dark waters.
The ocean is a black thing that stretches on so far that it blends into the sky. Sam likes to think that if he were to start swimming now he'd reach the stars. Without the blazing sun the sand is cool, and he knows from experience that the ocean will be colder. But he’s not stupid. He stays safely on the beach, away from the greedy void of water where only her lapping shore line can barely tickle his toes.
The boy comes to stand beside him, and the half-moon lights him in strange ways, like illuminating a crystal and watching shapes dance along a wall.
“You’re a strange kid–ya’ know that?”
“I don’t speak with a radio.”
He doesn’t mean it unkindly. The boy’s smile is wide and pearly white. It’s not taken as such.
“You remind me of the crystals I see in my dreams,” Sam continues, because this boy would definitely fall into the weird category alongside him and Miles. He’s got that scar for one thing, and the radio for another. His teacher would hate him. Maybe he has strange dreams too.
“–what are you talkli’ about–appening, kid?”
“I dream of colours,” Sam says, turning to look at the ocean. “I’ve been getting them since I was five, but then I started seeing towers too. And then…”
He glances at the boy. He looks back, and his eyes glow beneath the moonlight. Eyes aren’t supposed to do that.
“You look weird,” he states, and points to the boy’s blue blue eyes. “That’s the colour I dream of. I can’t find it anywhere else.”
The boy looks at him, really looks at him, and then does that same funny thing with his face. He takes Sam’s hand in his – his skin is unnaturally warm, like touching a lamp that’s been on for hours, like sunbathing in the sand – and brings their joined hands down, bending closer to look at Sam, really really look at him.
This glow, the glow of the boy’s eyes makes something in his brain itch. He’s seen these colours before. He knows of them. He’s never really been able to find them before now.
“Eureka! I have found it!” The radio plays in the distance, and the car hums back to life, engine purring in tandem to the ocean waves. “–you’re one lucky kid!”
His dad wants to drive the car to the junkyard and break it apart with his hammer.
Sam cries and screams and holds his dad shirt and beg him not to, teardrops fat and hot rolling down his cheeks as he throws what is essentially a tantrum over a stolen car. His father thinks he’s faking it, but he’s inconsolable until his dad finally relents and lets the car rot away in the garage.
“If no one claims it before you're sixteen, you can even drive the damn can. It’s free anyway.”
Sam doesn’t mention that the car has an owner, and that the owner of the yellow car is always waiting for Sam in the driver's seat everytime he trots over. Sam has warned the boy not to leave the garage while his parents are home, but the boy seems to have nowhere to be anyway. He simply sits in the driver’s seat, waiting, and when Sam sneaks out of his room and into the garage at night he takes Sam on a drive while playing music on his radio.
He never touches the radio to adjust it. Sam doesn’t mention it. Seems unimportant.
“–endangering the local honey bee population, to which scientists–”
Sam startles at the radio breaking their companionable silence. He then cocks his head, confused.
“What?’
“–local honey bee–” The boy replays the snippet.
“You want to see the bees?”
The boy shakes his head, and Sam thinks he looks a bit exasperated. He points to the keychain of the fuzzy bumblebee swinging idly from the rearview mirror, then points to himself, and replays the snippet. “–local honey bee–...”
“…so you really like honey bees?”
The boy’s face palm is so loud it has Sam wincing.
“What’s in a name–!” He plays, and then, “–so name me one thing–” and then “–authorities have confirmed the suspect’s name to be–”
And then he replays the snippet from before.
“–local honey bee–”
“The name of a… oh!” Sam perks up, brandishing a finger in the boy’s face. “Your name is Honey Bee!”
The boy pauses, tilts his head and squints, before shrugging and playing out, “ooh, so close!”
Sam huffs.
The boy holds up two fingers and replays, “–local honey bee–...”
Sam brightens. He knows this game. He plays charades with Miles all the time.
“Two words.”
The boy nods, grinning, and then brandishes the two fingers again.
“Second word.”
He replays the snippet.
“–local honey bee–...”
“Oh!” Sam smiles. “Bee!”
The boy shrugs, as if to say “sure, closer enough” and ruffles Sam’s hair.
The radio plays the sound of a cheering crowd, and Sam beams.
He’s eight and he’s dreaming of titans.
They are massive, and made of metal. He only knows this because even though there is a saying that you can’t really feel things in your dreams, when Sam touches them, they feel cold like metal.
Most of his dreams are as a bystander, watching as these giants walk along the now familiar roads of this foreign place. The towers spiral high, the crystal city gleams, but instead of being desolate there is now life. Huge life. Life that could hold him in their palms and have room to spare. Like an injured bird. Like in the hands of a beast.
The colours are bright, and they bleed into blues and reds and, strangely enough, pink.
Tranquility doesn’t have those colours. He doubts any city has these colours.
The only one who has these colours are Bee. It’s in his eyes.
He’s eight and dreaming of robots, and he’s eight when he speculates that his dreams and his little garage friend might be connected somehow.
He doesn’t mention Bee to his parents. He just knows that if his dad found out there was a boy hiding in his garage he’d definitely flip and destroy the yellow car, so he keeps it to himself. He’s tried giving Bee food from time to time – he’s bound to get hungry in there – but then Bee explained (after a series of confusing audio clips strung together and another game of charades) that he’s never hungry.
“–not for your things, anyway!”
His eyes glow bright blue.
Sam is eight and a few months old and he thinks Bee must be a titan. He has to be.
Sam learns that though speaking the language embedded in his heart hurts his throat, the only sequences that hurt are the lower ones. He can chirp out higher notes fine, not that he knows that they mean, and Bee nods along to everything he chitters. He seems to like it when Sam says those strange words, laughing with his eyes even when he doesn’t make a single sound. Sometimes the engine of the yellow car will growl and shake, and Sam thinks the car is laughing too.
Sometimes Sam chirps something, and his heart knows he’s said something unintelligible, but with the right emotions. Much like how people can hum and stutter, he chitters, and it makes a strange noise in his throat, and he knows that he’s somehow managed to convey that he’s having fun, even though he knows by the bright blue of Bee’s eyes that he’s probably said it wrong. Backwards maybe. Different dialect.
Bee doesn’t judge though. He’s happier when Sam chirps at him. He plays his radio without touching it, always an audience cheering him on while the boy himself claps and applauds.
Sometimes Bee will draw glyphs and symbols along the hood of the yellow car. The ones Sam wrote down months ago are long gone, because the two of them took Bee’s car to a wash and now the car is shiny and clean. But after driving for hours a layer of sand and dust has settled, so Bee draws. Sam recognises the symbols, looks over them and then copies them. The radio plays behind them through the sliver of open windows.
“–old timer–Yikes, that sounds horrible–better now with financial aid–Halayuyah!–we’ve landed gentleman–no, not that one, the other one–yes!”
Bee settles to a song and dials it down, the strum of raw guitar and whispered vocals filling the space between them.
Eventually, Sam stops copying the symbols Bee has been writing.
“I dream of colours,” he starts. It’s late at night, and they’re parked under a streetlamp illuminating the sandy white beach. Tranquility has plenty of seaside views, but this one is closest to town and the most cultivated. Sam has grown up on these shores. He knows them. Bee does not, so he follows Sam’s lead as he gets up and starts walking along the beach, leaving the yellow car to sit idle under the yellow light.
“You’ve seen them before, haven’t you.”
It’s not a question.
With the car far away, the radio can’t be heard, so Bee just nods.
Then, after a pause, he lifts a finger and presses in between Sam’s eyebrows.
His face scrunches up on instinct, and he lifts his gaze to look at the offending finger.
“What?”
Bee, of course, doesn’t say, but then traces something along his skin, and his fingers are hot against Sam’s face, but not uncomfortable. His skin is unnaturally smooth. He doesn’t have fingerprints. Sam wonders if Bee knows he looks a little angelic in the sun, and how that’s not what human’s actually look like. They don’t look that pretty. They have dull colours.
“My… my head?” He eventually asks.
Bee nods, and then drags his finger down to press into Sam’s chest.
“My heart.”
His brain tingles.
Bee points to himself, one hand pressed into Sam’s hair.
“Like… like yours?’
Bee’s smile is a bright thing that reminds Sam of a sunrise that drowns not one moon, but two.
“I’m me though,” Sam frowns, though it does little to dampen Bee’s spirit.
Bee points to himself again. In the distance the yellow car plays a lonely guitar.
“You’re not human, are you?”
Bee shakes his head, smile a wide thing on his thin lips.
“So how can I–...?” He cuts himself off, unsure. Insecure. He likes Bee a lot. He wishes he were like him, free and uncaring and a little odd but a lot of kind and compassionate.
Bee points to himself again, and then he’s grabbing Sam’s face, his warm smooth hands curving over his cheeks, and he just… he just looks at him.
His blue eyes speak wonders in a language that can’t be spoken.
Sam can tell though. Sam knows.
(Sam had been a complicated baby.
His parent’s were already on the older side by the time they decided to have him. He doesn’t know the details, only that his mom got sick when she was pregnant and didn’t really get much better. He was born early. He had been a little sick too.
Then his mom got sad. His parents don’t like talking about it, and honestly, if Sam were slightly more normal he probably wouldn’t have remembered it. But he remembers.
He remembers how when he had been three, maybe four, and his mom got sad for months. She had gotten better as Sam got older, but she got sad again. He doesn’t know why, but he knows how it felt. He would wake up in the middle of the night and sob into his blanket, trying to alleviate a sadness that didn’t belong to him. Like honey stuck between his fingers that he can never wash out. He cried and cried, and then he would fall asleep, exhausted, and the next morning his mother’s tired red eyes would match his own.
Turns out he’s got a knack for feeling things. Specifically feeling things for other people. It’s not really that bothersome for people that aren’t his mother. Maybe his brain filters them. Unimportant. Maybe it’s just his mom.
And then…
And then he meets Bee.)
“–a field project–”
“Some kind of field?”
“Ding ding ding! We have a winner!”
Sam is nine years old and learning about aliens.
“–and my partner Emma–”
“Emma… I don’t get it.”
Bee holds up four fingers, and replays the clip.
“–my partner Emma–”
“Not the number of words… the number of letters?”
Bee nods, grinning. Then puts two fingers down so he’s making some sort of peace sign.
“So the first two letters. Not partner, the word partner is too long. Emma then. The first two letters of Emma,” Sam frowns, thinking, and then, “Em?”
Bee claps, and the car chirps.
(Bee stopped trying to hide his car-that-must-be-alive months ago, not that Sam hadn’t guessed. Radios don’t play on their own. Now he just wants to know who’s the alien; Bee or the car.)
Bee shakes his two pointed fingers, and then points to Sam, and then plays the clip:
“–a field project–”
“The field again.”
Bee nods. Then, he takes the hand pointing to Sam, and taps it to the two fingers he’s holding up that represent Em.
“Field Em?”
Bee makes a twirling motion with his hand.
“Em field?”
Bee gives him a thumbs-up.
“And for the final answer, contestants must spell out–”
“E-M-F-I-E–”
Bee clamps a hand over Sam’s mouth. Sam licks Bee’s hand, but the boy doesn’t show any indication of caring (he takes strange, like stale warm water) and instead does the same twirling his hand again, as if to say, “say it again, slowly.”
“E… M–”
Bee clamps his hands back on Sam’s mouth, but Sam thinks he’s got it now.
“EM field. That’s what it is, isn’t it?”
His brain tingles. Something in his heart settles.
He knows those words.
Bee writes the symbols for the field – whatever this EM field even is – along Sam’s palm.
He feels the motions, nods, and Bee ruffles his hair.
“So what is it?” He asks after Bee’s done assaulting his hair into a mess his mom will surely complain about. “An EM field.”
Bee thinks for a moment, and Sam expects the radio to start playing, but he’s surprised when Bee suddenly grabs his face and forces him to look up.
“What are youuumph–!”
Fingers pinch his cheeks and turn them up until Sam is smiling, though he’s sure it looks more like a strained grimace, but he keeps it up when Bee lets go. He watches in rapt fascination, smile still a tight thing on his lips, as Bee uses his own fingers to mimic what he just did to Sam, spreading a pearly smile along his thin lips. His cheeks bunch, his freckles stretch, and his eyes gleam.
Bee keeps his smile in place, and points to Sam, and then points to himself, and then smiles, if possible, even wider.
His brain tingles.
His heart settles.
Something clicks in his brain.
“Oh,” he breathes, smile becoming small and reserved. “You’re like my mom.”
Bee tilts his head.
“I get upset when she gets upset,” Sam explains. “It hurts a lot, right here,” he curls his fingers over his chest, right above his heart. A heart too big for his body.
The blonde nods, the car’s engine rumbles something in tune to Bee’s obscured humming.
He ruffles Sam’s hair, and Sam – who has all of one friend, two loud but loving parents, and a whole lot of space in his chest that feels a bit empty and sad most of the time – leans into the touch. It’s warm, like the rug in his living room that always gets hit with the afternoon sun and stays warm for a precious few minutes. He’s got to fight his dog for a spot there, but it’s always worth it. Bee’s hand reminds him of that, smooth and soft and warm; not quite like skin, as he’s slowly coming to realise – though he’s been suspecting something from the very beginning, but he thinks it might be embarrassing for Bee if he brought it up so soon, so he lets the issue sit – Bee’s skin resembles static, tingling down Sam’s body and yet settling it in all the right places.
(Like his mother’s hand in his hair.
Like his father’s hand between his shoulder blades.)
Sam leans into it, and Bee hums again, high and happy and almost like the sounds that Sam’s been trying to mimic since he started talking in that strange dream-language that only Bee seems to understand.
(Sam finds comfort in the touch, grounding, exhilarating. Heart-bound and timeless.)
Something opens in his mind, or maybe something opens right outside of it, and his mind is only brushing the surface. It feels as Sam thinks a cloud would feel illuminated by the sun, and it encompasses him in the same breadth that Bee snakes his long arms around Sam’s lithe shoulders and draws him in for a hug.
(It feels like coming home.)
He’s nine years old when a strange man walks up to him and asks him where the relic is.
He’s got no idea who this man is, but his school has cautioned stranger-danger policies, so Sam politely informs the man he has no clue what the man wants and turns around to walk away.
Except he’s stopped when a hand closes around his upper arm. It’s a bruising grip, so tight and unwavering even as Sam starts to panic in the man’s hold. There’s no-one around right now, because he’s taking the short-cut home and it’s also the seaside neighbourhood during work hours. He’s crossing under a bridge, the curve of the road empty, and if he were to scream he might get the nearest house to hear if he does it loud enough.
He opens his mouth, but another hand clamps around his face before he gets the chance.
“You’ve got an energy reading, fleshling,” the man growls into his ear as he starts dragging him away. There’s a black police car parked a little ways away, shiny and imposing on the empty street. Sam’s panic increases tenfold, and he starts thrashing. The man is warm and strong, and his fingers feel smooth over his skin, and behind his glasses his eyes gleam.
His brain tingles.
He’s not human.
So he fights with all his might, kicking his feet around and swinging his body as much as possible. Unfortunately, he is nine years old, and he is fighting a possible alien. He barely makes a scene.
The car is getting closer, all on its own.
He knows he’s not going to free himself. He knows it’s a futile effort even though he continues to kick and bite and thrash around. The car is only a few feet away now, and his mom is expecting him home from school in a few minutes, and he needs to get there before his dad returns from work so he can set the table for dinner, and he won’t be able to do any of that if he doesn’t get out of here.
So he does the one thing he can do. He wrenches his head back, hiking a shoulder up to wedge between the man’s loose hand and his mouth, and screams–
“BEE!”
He screams the boy’s name over and over at the top of his lungs, until his throat feels hoarse and the man holding him clamps a hand over his mouth again, choking his voice. He whines, something low in his gut as the police car’s door opens all on his own, and the sound has the man jerking to a stop for a few moments. Sam can’t stop though, his chest is rumbling and sending out a keening low note from deep within him, a cry of hurt anguish help that comes to him as naturally as the tears clouding his vision. The man freezes for a few seconds, shocked, but recovers quickly and renews his efforts to drag Sam into the car.
A yellow blur comes speeding down the road and crashes right into the police car.
The man holding Sam flickers to nothing, leaving Sam – who had been propped up in the air like a sandbag at some point – to drop unceremoniously back to the ground. He sputters, coughing up dust and lost wind as he drags himself up to a sitting position. Glancing around, Sam barely registers what’s happening over the loud ringing in his ears that deafens even the beat of his frantic too-big-heart.
There’s a yellow robot, a huge beast of machinery that’s wrestling another robot, thick and made of black and white, and they are fighting over the long lonely road under the bridge. The yellow one pulls back just enough to duck under the black one’s punch, and something on its arm shifts, and the yellow one doesn’t hesitate to use the second of reproach by shoving his now canon-shaped fist under the black one’s head and firing a loud explosive shot.
Sam wants to look away, but he can’t. He can’t bring himself to tear his gaze even a fraction of space away as he watches the black titan’s head blast into millions of pieces, the biggest chunks sliding right off his neck while the rest scatter across the road. Under the bridge. Desolate.
The yellow robot is quivering, shaking, and something familiar brushes against Sam’s mind. His breathing is a rabid thing that makes him feel dizzy, makes his chest feel tight and makes his too-big-heart feel like a balloon about to burst right out from behind his ribs.
The yellow robot drops the rest of the police-car-turned-robot and turns to him, slowly. It’s an empty road near the ocean, and Sam can smell the salt from here, right underneath the smell of gasoline and copper and something distinctly familiar.
Something croons low, like a whine from an injured animal. He realises a second too late that it’s coming from him.
The yellow robot shakes, vibrates, and lowers itself so it’s on all fours. It still towers over him, but for some reason, fear is not what lodges itself into Sam’s throat. His mind is in a frenzy, and his body aches, but there is a feeling of brushing against a cloud illuminated by the sun that has his skin settling, and his heart calming.
It reminds him of–
“Bee?”
His voice is hoarse, like he hasn’t talked in ages. The yellow robot chirps gently, head tilting and regarding him with blue blue eyes that resemble a colour Sam only finds in his dreams.
“–a siren call–as fast as they could–I’m sorry–...”
Sam swallows thickly, and without thinking of the potential repercussions, reaches out.
He is met halfway by a metal hand that dwarfs him, shading him against the glaring sun. Like an injured bird in the hands of a titan.
Sam is nine and dreams of robots that turn into cars.
They don’t turn into cars in his dreams. They turn into other things, like arms that shape into cannons and legs that rotate into wheels that let the titans move faster. He doesn’t recognize any of them, but he watches like a captivated audience to a movie as flashes of life play before him.
He tells these details to Bee, who still spends most of his time with Sam as Bee the human with blonde hair and not Bee the robot that stands 16 feet high. It doesn’t bother him much, other than the fact that he wants Bee to stand with Sam standing on his shoulders. He’s never been 16 feet tall. Unfortunately Bee had explained – again, using stilted radio clips and a lot of hand movements, but he’s getting better at understanding one another – that he cannot be seen beyond what Sam already saw.
(The robot had to find a crafty solution to the dead police-car-turned-evil-robot situation all over the road, and found it best fit to gather all the pieces and walk straight into the ocean until he couldn’t see the light.)
“Only one eye witness–it can only be you!”
“That’s a lot of pressure,” Sam notes, then nods. “I think I can manage.” He turns to Bee and grabs the older boy’s one hand in both of his small ones. “You can count on me!”
Bee looks so happy, and his blue blue eyes gleam like melting ice caps that he sees on TV.
Bee shakes Sam awake, and it is nearly quarter-past two in the morning according to his glaring red alarm clock.
“It’s way past my bedtime,” Sam yawns, “and it’s a Sunday.”
Bee doesn’t say anything, but tugs at Sam again.
“Alright, alright, I’m getting up,” he grumbles. He’s wearing shorts to bed along with a loose oversized tank top because it is almost summer and the heat is blazing. So he finds some sandals and, just like he predicted when he hopped out of his window and into the garden, he sees Bee’s headlights propped open and twinkling in the dark.
“We went for a drive yesterday,” Sam muses, slowly easing into the open passenger seat and allowing the door to close on its own. The seat belt fastens over his chest without warning, and then Bee is racing off without a sound.
“Where are we going.”
“–to meet the President–!”
“Oookay then.”
Turns out the President lives in a deserted little alleyway a few blocks from the Tranquillity local Walmart and is a metal titan that looms so tall that Sam has to crane his neck all the way back, and he is painted in red and blue.
Eh, close enough, he thinks to himself as stands next to Bee, near enough that he can lean against the yellow robot and clutch at his foot. He’s got two out of three. Plus, white stars would look stupid anyway.
“Is that a–Bumblebee, are you glitched? That’s a fraggin’ fleshy.”
“A fleshling at that. It is underdeveloped.”
“Didn’t know ya’ to be the type ta’ keep pets, Bee.”
Bee lets out a low string of warbles and whirs, and they sound so familiar that Sam’s heart settles just by hearing them. It’s Bee’s energy, his strange cloud-like presence that puts him at the most ease, and because of this he doesn't think twice about the potential danger currently surrounding him in the form of four unfamiliar robots. Instead he tries to copy the sounds Bee made in his own throat, before he can think better of the action, but it comes out wrong, and just a bit louder than he had intended.
He can feel every stare that bores holes into his body. He puffs his chest out and pretends his mind doesn’t feel like a static storm.
‘“The fleshling knows Cybertronian?”
“Have you been teaching this lowly life form our language, Bumblebee?!”
Bee gives a low croon, and it sounds like a warning.
“That is enough, all of you,” the President suddenly speaks, and his voice is a deep baritone that Sam feels in his very core. It commands attention authority respect that has Sam settled before he even registers anything else. The President has a cloud-aura much like Bee, but his is open and wide, invitingly warm at the edges of his mind. He is hesitant to reach forward, because he only has really done this with Bee, but he can feel Bee intermingle with the President’s cloud, so he reaches out before he can chicken out.
The president does not jolt in surprise, but it is a near thing, and his bright blue gaze never leaves Sam as he slowly starts folding in on himself. He is by far the tallest robot amongst the group, but as he bends down to rest on his knee to be closer to Sam’s level he still towers over him like a… like a…
Like a titan. Like the ones from his dreams. (This one is familiar.)
“You are different… young one,” he begins, voice rich with meaning. Sam refuses to look away, even though with every word the big robot speaks he feels heat crawl up his neck and cheeks. “You understood what I just said.”
Sam jumps in surprise then. He hadn’t even noticed when the President had stopped speaking in strange noises and strung-together clips and back to English.
“Y-yes,” he stutters out, face heating. “It’s hard though. I don’t know all the words.”
“How is that even possible,” the big silver one tuts.
“Let’s eat em’,” the shorter, white-and-silver one offers.
“By the Allspark…” the last one, a shorter robot with red and white painted over its frame, including designs that reminded Sam of a hospital. “This cannot be…”
Bee croons, and then a clip plays.
“We’re the guardians of–! I will take this responsibility and–belongs to me–?”
“Samuel,” the President addresses him, capturing his attention once more. “My name is Optimus Prime, leader of the Autobots. We came bearing questions, but it seems as though our scout has found more than what we bargained for.”
Bee’s energy whirls to life, proud.
“Haven't been in this meetin' for two kilks and we're already dealing with a mess,” the big silver one sighs – it sounds more like a ventilation releasing a puff of air – before shaking its head.
Sam frowns at that, and for the first time since this little meeting started, he finds courage to open his mouth and fire back:
“You’re covered in sand and dust and I’m not. You’re messy.”
Bee chortles.
Bee – Bumblebee, really, because they never really got past the honeybee conversation properly, but now Sam can appreciate how close they had been – ends up staying in his garage.
“Don’t you wanna’ be with them?” Sam asks, nestled deep in the warm leather of Bee’s seat. The blonde boy is back, Bee’s human form, and he just shakes his head and beams.
“Where will your friends stay?”
Bee shrugs, twirling a finger around as if to say “who knows, ‘cause I don’t.”
“I wish my garage was bigger,” Sam sighs. “So you wouldn’t get lonely. Being lonely is the worst.”
He speaks from experience. He knows better than most. He had been six and dreaming of a world where he was the only one alive for a very long time.
Bee warbles something low and sad, and reaches over to gently smooth Sam’s hair back.
“–with friends like you–it’s hard to say so,” the radio plays.
Sam’s heart settles.
A tall man with bright blue eyes picks him up after school.
His parents don’t pick him up for school because they live nearby, and Sam knows the way home, and Tranquility is a small city full of seaside children, so most folks are too busy surfing and sunbathing to kidnap kids.
Sam doesn’t know the man, but looking at him standing by the gate, tall and broad-shouldered in a way you could tell he was always on the move, always active, had Sam’s brain tingling.
The man is looking over the rest of the kids walking along the courtyard, and some parents throw concerned glances his way. He definitely looks out of place; he’s just so big, and his eyes are so blue, and his face is made of harsh lines and sharp angles and it doesn’t take a genius to see all the scars over his rich skin and realise that he’s seen nightmares.
It doesn't take a genius to speculate he may be a nightmare.
But Sam spots him while leaving the front doors and immediately knows that he’s just like Bee. He’s got cloud energy, ever-present and expanding and familiar, and Sam is already leaning into it with his heart before he can make a more logical decision.
Sam leans into the warm present home energy, and the man’s eyes snap to him in an instant.
He doesn’t move though. He stands stock still by the gate and parents usher their children away fearfully and he just stays put. Watching. Waiting. Letting Sam make the first move, he realises as that warm cloud energy pulses – like a heartbeat, but not quite like a human one – and beckons him closer. Not luring. Welcoming.
(Welcoming him home.)
Sam walks over.
“I’ve felt you before,” is what he greets with, staring up and up and up. This man is tall, and he’s got a military build and a face weighed down by things Sam can’t pick apart, but when Sam comes to stop right in front of him those sharp angles melt into something softer, kinder. His eyes brighten, if that was even possible, and his scarred lips curl, barely noticeable, into a small semblance of a smile.
He bends down on one knee, to Sam’s height, and his energy is warm.
“Hello Samuel,” he speaks, and his voice is a bit unusual, as if speaking a language for the first time. Sam thinks it lacks something deeper, something with a resounding echo. His warbles, quietly, to rectify this. He doesn't know what he says, because someone has yet to teach him the strange second language he knows the shapes of, but he thinks he says something along the lines of confused hello welcome.
The man’s smile softens.
“You have a lot to learn, young one,” the man murmurs, and even though his voice his deep and rich and his shoulders are broad and his face is sharp, his words are soft soft soft, just like his energy, just like his eyes. It settles Sam’s heart. It soothes the itch of his brain.
He knows this voice.
“I’ve felt you before.”
“You know of my name,” the man nods, eyes searching. They are so blue.
Sam nods, frowning, and then brightens.
“OP,” he states, then flushes when the man’s energy surges with something warm and fuzzy, just like his mother when Sam makes her scrambled eggs when she’s sick. “I remember an O and P.”
“To you it may be difficult to remember,” the man nods, then after a moment he gestures for Sam to come closer. Unafraid, he follows, and the man ducks his head as if sharing a secret.
“I had a designation prior to my making of a Prime,” he whispers, and his eyes search Sam’s until they seem to find what they were looking for. “It is a constellation I am aware your kind has dubbed already. Something regarding a garment. A belt, if I recall correctly.”
Sam nods. He loves the stars, both the ones in this sky with one moon and the sky with two that he sees behind his eyelids. His father has sat with him and named them all, so he is familiar. He’s familiar with the king who was shot by a stray arrow and the garment that represents his wound. The belt around his withering waist.
“Orion.”
Instead of taking Sam home, Orion walks with Sam until they reach the sea. There is a group of people sitting in the sand, talking, and they are the only ones who sit a ways away from everyone else, in a circle by the stones that jut out of the shore that kids tend to avoid for fear of getting cut and falling. Orion walks there, and Sam follows because he still has a few hours before curfew. He’ll tell his mom he had been at the beach.
There are questions burning on his tongue, but he keeps them to himself, because OP, Orion, whatever his actual name was, he didn’t talk much. He had asked Sam about his day, to which he rambled on about how he got paint all over his shorts because some kids thought it would be funny. Seaside kids can be cruel too, but Sam doesn’t let it get to him. So now he walks around with paint on his shorts and a bit on his backpack, and Orion apologises.
He doesn’t really get why the man says sorry, it’s not like he was there, but he lets it slide.
Soon they are clambering over the jutting stones to the group pooled around the pebble part of the beach, laying around, enjoying the sun. People stare at them, as they walk past and give them space, but why wouldn’t they? These are strangers, Sam has never seen them before. One of the men is a big fellow with wide shoulders and a tall frame, though Sam can’t tell if he’s taller than Orion. He’s got a wide nose with a nasty scar going across it that cuts through his eye.
The other man is younger, and smaller, sharper. He’s doing handstands and flipping around and, and when he spots them walking up he waves while still upside down, and his shirt slides a bit to reveal a patchwork of snake-like lines that crisscross his body.
The last man is short, and he’s older, with lines that decorate his face in a way that tells Sam he frowns a lot. He’s tapping away at some kind of tech pad in his hands, hands that don’t look quite right. Like they’ve been plucked apart and put back together.
They’ve seen nightmares, all of them. And they’ve got blue blue eyes.
Sam is hesitant to join them, but Orion is already walking up to the group, and he doesn’t want to be left behind. So before he can sike himself out he grabs the rough material of Orion’s pants and hides behind his leg that easily is the same size as him. It offers a layer of protection that he is thankful for, and when Orion does not complain (or pull away and his energy spikes again with that warm cotton) Sam chooses to stay.
“Autobots,” he calls in greeting as he approaches them, and they all turn those bright blue eyes to them. Sam peaks out from behind Orion’s leg, spots Bee amongst the group of strangers doing a handstand competition with the small silver-haired man (the one who looks like he’s been through a shredder) he brightens.
“Bee!” he chirps, excited. He doesn’t often go out with Bee during the day, mostly because he’s got school and Bee is usually missing from the garage until dark, but he’s happy to see him. The sun does the boy wonders, casting his hair in golden and making his skin shine. Beneath the beams of yellow and white his eyes are bright blue, the kind of blue you can’t find on this Earth, the kind of blue Sam can only see in his dreams.
Bee’s head whips around to meet him, and his cloud energy expands and engulfs him, intermingled with Orion’s until Sam feels like he’s floating. The itch in his brain receded. His heart beats, content.
Sam would trot over, but the two other, older men are staring at him, bright blue eyed and all, and he cannot shake his shyness. Orion’s leg becomes his anchor to which he clings.
“It is alright, Samuel,” Orion hums, as if reading his thoughts. “You may proceed. We are your friends.”
Sam has only had one friend in his entire life. He was a strange boy who loved to surf and climb trees because he thought the ground was overrated. Miles was a dear friend, but there was always a barrier between the two because while Miles had red blood and normal dreams Sam dreamt of his blood in different shades of sunset pink.
Sam’s a lonely kid. He wouldn’t mind an extra friend or two or five.
The man with the wide nose says things in the language of wires and blips and croons and Sam doesn’t understand the words but he understands the intention, can hear the small protect welcome in the undertones of the language. The others speak up after, in the same blips, in the same hums, and Sam, put off, turns to Orion for clarification.
He knows without a doubt that Orion can feel his confusion, because the man turns to him with understanding in his blue eyes. He bends down, again to Sam’s level, and draws him close.
“We shall teach you Cybertronian, youngling,” the one with the wide nose cuts in before Orion can speak. Sam startles, wondering how the man knew his feelings. It’s not like he’s got cloud energy like Bee or Orion. Sam can’t feel a–oh, okay, never mind.
“Some bots are more reserved than others,” Orion explains, and he says bots and not people. It’s apparent when another energy mingles with his, not unwilling but reserved, the way Orion said. He lets his heart – at least, what he thinks is his heart, because he feels it in his body, right beneath it – expand and dip inside, like feeling the water tension of the ocean. He registers welcome and foreign and curious. Then, the energy recedes, Orion’s words echo in his mind, and suddenly everything clicks.
“I dream of you guys,” Sam murmurs.
“Flatterer,” the handstand one scoffs, still unyielding in the tight competition he’s in with Bee. “E’s a sharp thing.”
Sam elects to ignore him.
“You must tell us about these… dreams then,” Orion nods, “for in my limited knowledge of the human race, I know that your visions are unique.”
“Otherworldly,” the rusty-haired man offers, voice gruff. “Impossible reality.”
Bee gives up on the handstand competition and flips to his feet in a graceful acrobatic motion. The silver-haired one cheers, does a complicated dance on his hands, and joins Bee in trotting toward Sam until he’s facing two pairs of bright blue optics.
…eyes . Eyes.
His brain tingles.
“Oh, yur’ a tiny thing,” silver hair gripes, but this close his energy is not unkind. Harmonious. Like the guitar Bee plays on the radio. He doesn’t hate it. He thinks he can come to like it very quickly.
“Glad ya’ think so,” he grins suddenly, sharp teeth lining his mouth, and then bends forward so close that their noses almost touch. Sam doesn’t move back, certain, and then the man’s grin widens. “Oooh, yeah, I like ‘em. I like ‘em. Sammy, was it?”
“Sam.”
“Eh, how old are ya’, Sam?”
He’s humming something under his breath, tapping his foot against the ground, fingers drumming to a silent beat.
“Nine and a–”
“Nine?!”
Silver hair screeches loudly, and Sam winces at the volume, not that the man cares too much. He turns to Bee, who’s reaction is a similar state of shock.
“Nine what?” Silver hair prods him in the stomach with a long finger, eyes so bright they were almost feverish. “Nine vorns? Centi-vorns?”
“Uh… nine years old. I’m nine years old.”
The man turns to Bee, who shrugs and hums low, and the two turn to Orion.
“A solar cycle, Jazz,” Orion answers, amusement colouring his tone. “Of this planet.”
Silver hair – Jazz, and the name fits, Sam muses to himself – has his wide eyes trained on Sam like he was a nuclear bomb about to explode and not just some weird kid who dreamed about titans and crystals.
“‘E’s just a sparklin’,” Jazz notes with a tinge of horror. “Less than one–he’s a well-crawler!”
Sam thinks that he should probably be offended.
“An’ this planet spins real fast,” Jazz continues, turning away slightly to mutter to himself. “In such a rush, this place. Nothin’ like good ol’ Cybertron. I feel like I’m seein’ colours and nothin’ else.”
“I see colours too,” Sam cuts in, “in my dreams.” Then, after careful consideration and an encouraging welcome continue curious from Bee, he says, “and spiral towers that reach the sky and crystal cities.”
He glances at his feet, taking in the scuffed red sneakers with the white laces, one of which is slightly undone, and admits, “and sometimes I see you. Well, not you you. But people like you. Robot’s like you.”
Everyone is quiet, and the energy around him stutters in shock surprise curious for a few seconds before Sam’s feet lift off the ground and he’s being tossed high into the air.
He doesn’t think a normal human should be able to toss a kid his size as high as Jazz does, but he goes flying a few feet into the air, and on his way down he bites back a loud laugh slash scream before Jazz is catching him without a hitch.
“E’s a special one!” He announces, and beside him Bee chortles and the man with the wide nose just scoffs, smile a rough thing on his haggard face. Even Orion, who stands a ways behind them with his imposing figure softens at his squeals.
“Be careful with the fleshling, Jazz,” the rusted-haired man admonishes, though it does little to subdue Jazz’s attempts at throwing Sam into the heavens above. “He’s fragile. Humans do not have the ability to regenerate at an accelerated rate either. Such a feeble species.”
“Easy, Ratchet,” Orion warns, though not unkindly.
“And to think that this lower life form has some sort of connection to Cybertron…” The one Orion called Ratchet continues with a scoff, as if the very idea were a scandalous thing.
Sam is pretty sure that calls for some offence.
“What’s Cybertron?” Sam asks, perches atop Jazz’s broad shoulders. The man is humming something under his breath, tapping his feet and swaying side to side. His energy is, well, energised, to say the least, and thrumming with happy welcome home.
“”Was’ Cybertron” the sparklin’ asks,” Jazz jumps, and jostles Sam on his shoulders. “Bitlit, you’ve got a’lot ta’ learn! Apparently Cyberton’s got her claws all over ya’.”
Bee is looking at the two of them with wide eyes, brows furrowed and hands outstretched as if to catch him should Jazz trip or something. But Sam feels secure, with Jazz’s warm hands (warm just like Bee’s, and just as unnaturally smooth) holding his ankles in a firm grip, not willing to let go. Bee still looks mildly worried, his energy cloud twitching slightly in anxiety. Sam tries to convey his calm with his heart, reaching over in his mind, and it seems to work a bit too well. Bee’s eyes soften and his smile softens with it, but so does Orion’s, and Jazz squeezes his ankles and even Ratchet scoffs something less harsh.
“It’s so strange,” the man (his name is Ironhide, Sam surmises, from where Jazz had poked fun at him while in the midst of throwing Sam around like a ragdoll) muses, going to stand next to Orion (he’s shorter, definitely; Orion stands the tallest of them all). “The well-crawler’s got an EM field. As a fleshy. Next thing you know he’ll have an alt mode. Or a spark.”
“I know that one,” Sam points out suddenly, in the middle of being transferred from Jazz’s shoulders to Bee’s. “EM field. I won at charades with it.”
Bee coos, nodding, soft blonde curls brushing against Sam’s legs. He seems to be the only one who can appreciate it. The rest of them look lost.
Though Jazz volunteers, it is Ratchet who ends up being chosen by Orion to teach Sam Cybertronian.
He had been less than pleased.
“He is but a child, Optimus,” he had argued – Optimus sounded familiar, but now that he’s used to it Orion tastes better on his tongue – posture tense as his gaze darted between Sam and the Autobot leader (whatever that title meant). “I have lived millions of his lifetimes.”
“That makes you all the more knowledgeable, old friend.”
“I’m a medic, not a scholar.”
“Then I trust you to do the best that is in your power.”
Seeing no way out, Ratchet sighs, resigned.
They sit now, in Sam’s garage. He’s sitting inside of the ambulance parked in here instead of Bee, because the garage is not big enough to fit more than one car. They’re just lucky that his dad isn’t home yet, or he’d throw a fit.
They sit inside the ambulance, where the fluorescent lights illuminate the papers scattered about, symbols and glyphs drawn in seemingly random fashion. Ratchet’s hair catches the lights and becomes molten orange, like rust on fire, and his eyes are brighter than any blue on Earth.
“And this one?”
Sam snaps back to attention, focussing his eyes to the new set of familiar glyphs written out before him.
“New,” he starts with. “Not from Kaon,” wherever this Kaon was, Sam didn’t know, but that’s where Ratchet had explained the older dialects remained in active use, so that is what he parrots back. “Something about direction. This one–” he points to a glyph “–means onward. Path.”
Ratchet says something, and the voice seems to resonate from the ambulance around them. The noise blips and clicks. Sam tries to copy it, and can feel the familiar sensation of seemingly knowing these words without having ever spoken them before.
“You lack the correct autonomy to be able to pronounce it properly,” Ratchet notes clinically, and he’s pressing thick scarred fingers over Sam’s throat before he can process what’s happening. “A soft jugular, and from my studies I have knowledge of the two vibrating tissues that result in sound…”
Sam stays put.
Eventually Ratchet retracts his fingers and mumbles to himself, and Sam goes back to tracing glyphs while the medic files away whatever he learned from tracing Sam’s neck the same way Sam traces his writing.
Ratchet’s by far the strangest teacher he’s had, but he’s had worse.
He manages to warble out a high-strung sentence structure that tells Ratchet something along the lines of “Welcome. My designation is S-A-M-U-E-L,” only a week after learning with him.
“I must admit to your absorbing capabilities,” Ratchet mutters under his breath as he inspects the small scrapes along his knees.
(Trent pushed him down the stairs after school but he tells Orion that he fell. He can tell the man can tell his lie, but Orion doesn’t comment, and so he doesn’t go into it. It’s just part of life.
Ratchet, however, got upset.
“He’s a fleshling with Cybertronian blueprints,” he had huffed, dragging Sam away from the group and into the ambulance sitting in the beach parking lot. “We cannot risk even the slightest of injury. By Primus, he’s more fragile than a sparkling.”
He seemed begrudged when he helped Sam onto the small metal bed inside the ambulance, but his energy cloud said otherwise.
“Any relic of Cybertron must be guarded,” he had muttered under his breath while he scanned him over with a strange red light. “You would be the last of your kind.”)
“Really?” Sam brightens.
“Hardly something of a note-worthy achievement,” Ratchet immediately rectifies.
“I’ll take what I can get.”
“You are irritating; are you aware?”
Sam grins.
His brain tingles.
“And you’re just a grouchy old man.”
“As your medical officer it is within my capabilities to do what I please to you so long as I believe it is beneficial,” then Ratchet pauses, eyeing him from the corner of his vision. “Even if that is to weld your smart mouth shut.”
Sam keeps quiet after that, but not without snickering into his palm’s everytime Ratchet turns away from him to mutter angry threats under his breath.
Bee slips into his room one night, and doesn’t leave like he usually does.
“What’re you doing?” Sam asks softly, as to not disturb his parents. “It’s wayyy past my bedtime.”
Sam looks around the room, even though he’s been in here before, and when he spots the rumpled bed makes his way toward it. He throws himself down, bouncing with a satisfied chirp before star-fishing across the whole space.
“Hey!” Sam pouts, fisting a pillow in his hand. “That’s my bed.”
He throws his pillow at Bee’s cheeky smile, who can probably dodge the attack with ease (something tells him Bee’s done it before too, if his scarred throat is anything to go by) but allows the pillow to hit his face regardless. Sam revels in his victory until Bee snatches the pillow with a mischievous smile and vaults the pillow right back at Sam.
The ensuing pillow fight is muffled at best and disastrous. By the end of it Sam gives up and allows Bee to throw him unceremoniously on the bed before crawling in after him.
“It’s too hot for a sleepover, Bee,” Sam yawns, curling into Bee’s side regardless. “You run way too hot.”
Bee is on his back, starfished again, and with all his pillows on the floor Sam pushes himself up to use the blonde’s arm as a cushion instead.
“Way too warm,” Sam mumbles, eyes falling shut, heavy. His heart is full and content. Beneath him Bee seems to purr like an engine.
When his mother comes up to wake him the next morning Bee is gone, but the bed is pleasantly warm still, and Sam is curled into a corner as if pushed there.
He’s never felt better rested.
His heart feels settled.