Title: Evolution
Author: dancinbutterfly
Helpers/Betas: travelingstorm, sprencenspire, okamimyrrhibis, ladyoneiros, and dania99 all generously gave their time and help to me. Thank you all.
Pairing: a tiny bit of Sam/Mikaela, eventual Sam/Bee
Rating: R – nothing too bad but just to be on the safe side, we'll give it an R for what might be in later chapters.
Author's Notes: This sprang up from a challenge in the community and turned into something a bit different. This is my first transformers fic. sigh I'm on crack.

Cassandra: I'm so alone, hidden down here... the last Human in existence...

Rose: Don't start that again - they've called this planet New Earth!

Cassandra:A vegetable patch.

Rose: And there's millions of Humans out there... millions of them.

Cassandra: Mutant stock!

Rose: They evolved, Cassandra. They just evolved, like they should. You stayed still. You got yourself all pickled and preserved, and what good did it do you?

-Doctor Who "New Earth"

Evolution: Chapter 1

The first person who noticed that something was weird was Mikaela. But then, Mikaela was good with details. Sam had always been more about seeing the big picture than addressing little things like how to reach it. It was one of the things that he found so appealing about her, besides her oh-so-awesome body.

The first time she noticed something off, they were in the backseat of Bumblebee and his hand had been cupping her breast through the fabric of her shirt.

"Sam, Jesus, your hands," she gasped, her head tipping back against the leather. At the time, Sam was too distracted by the way her skin tasted to know that it wasn't a good reaction.

"More?" he offered, kneading just a little bit harder and returning his attention to sucking her neck.

"No, Sam, stop!" She caught his wrist and pulled, pushing him up and off. He blinked at her.

"What? Was it something I did? Too much pressure? Not enough? Because hey, I'm always ready to try new things and-"

But Mikaela was looking at his hands. "It's just…your hands Sam. They," she cut off and her brow furrowed, "they were burning me"

"Like… 'I'm going to spontaneously combust from the sexual chemistry' burning?" Sam asked hopefully.

"No. More like a second degree type burning."

"That's not good."

"No." she pushed back further and sat up, leaning against the interior wall of Bumblebee. "It's really not."

"You sure? It could be you. I mean, maybe your breasts are overheated."

She gave him a withering look and Sam knew, with an awful certainty, that even if she were wrong about his hands, he was not getting under that stretchy white shirt in the near future, at least not that afternoon. So he sighed, sat up and turned to face her.

"Or there could be something wrong with my hands," he conceded.

"I bet Bumblebee could run a check or something. Just, like, put your hands on the seat or something. Can't you?"

"I can," Bumblebee's voice echoed through the cab, soft and serious. He and Mikaela had a way of ganging up on him.

"Mikaela, babe, it's probably nothing," Sam protested, folding his arms and tucked his hands against his chest. They didn't feel hot to him. "It's definitely nothing."

"Just touch the damn seat, Sam."

Her tone was razor sharp and Sam knew better than to argue with that. He'd seen first hand how strong her will was, and he pressed his right hand quickly to Bumblebee's soft leather.

"I'm getting anomalous readings."

"What's that mean?" she asked, her eyes still fixed on his hands.

"I'm not sure," Bumblebee replied, sounding perplexed. "But the information I gathered simply cannot be correct." The engine hummed a little, giving off a strangely little noise that added to the air of discomfort that filled the small space.

"Why not?" Mikaela pressed.

"I'm getting a strange temperature reading from Sam's skin. My sensors must be malfunctioning. I'll talk to Ratchet about it. For now, I think I should take you both to your homes."

The ride home had been eerily silent, and neither of them able to look at the other. Somewhere during that long ride home they silently agreed that the incident had never happened. Except that Mikaela wouldn't let him touch her when he walked her to her front door.

The awkward tension only got worse when he somehow managed to kill her phone a few days later.

"It was an accident," he protested, tossing his key nervously back and forth from one hand to the other.

She tapped at buttons, staring at the dead screen. "Did you drop it?"

"No."

"Did you hit it with something? I mean, it's hot. How did you manage to overheat it?" She looked suspiciously at his hands.

"What? No! It was ringing and I picked it up. Then fwoosh, no power. You should charge it longer. A good twelve hours should do the trick next time."

"It spent all last night charging, Sam."

"I didn't do anything," he protested again and she sighed.

"Are you ever going to stop being just completely bizarre?"

"Do you want me to?"

The official no-touching edict had come down less than two minutes later, effectively ending what had been the best, longest relationship of Sam's short life. "I just can't be like that with you, Sam. At least until you start taking the fact that there is something weird going on with you seriously."

"How could she say that I don't take the weird seriously? I take weirdness very seriously. I'm talking to my car for God's sake," Sam sighed, resting his forehead against the steering wheel later in the parking lot. "How much more seriously do I need to take the weird, Bee?"

"Does that make me crazy? Does that make me crazy? Possibly." Gnarls Barkley drifted out of the speakers and Sam resisted the urge to give Bumblebee the finger, but he was smart enough to not alienate his best ally in the current situation.

"You're just so helpful," he muttered.

Bumblebee revved his engine soothingly.

"You can do something in between. Baby you can drive my car," the Beatles offered. Sam chuckled and lifted his head off the steering wheel as Bumblebee switched the steering to manual.

The good thing about getting a cripplingly painful cramp was that he got out of gym. Sam was only two weeks into his senior year but he already had a nearly paralyzing case of senioritis, and no one - be they a lowly frosh or a ruling senior - wanted to be in gym with the exception of the muscle bound jocks Mikaela used to date.

Gym was torture, run by spitting male coaches who were all bitter, failed college football players and female coaches who looked like they could kick ass, take names and steal your girlfriend without breaking a sweat. It was all about climbing ropes, running laps and proving that, yes, if someone does thirty sit-ups in sixty seconds they'll be sick.

The cramps hit in the middle of one of those ridiculous exercises. It hit him like a shot, forty-three yards into the hundred yard dash, and he went down like a bag of bricks, scraping his hands and knees as he landed. It was a weird, seizing feeling in his torso, like something was pulling inward.

It was weird and mind-numbingly painful in a way that eclipsed any of the piddling scrapes and bruises his fall had caused. Sam swore to God, as he lay on the blacktop of the track, that if it the pain would just stop he would never ever make fun of another woman's period cramps ever again. He would never make fun of anyone. Ever. Not even Trent.

He had gym with Miles, and his friend was right there so fast that Sam really felt that the guy should get sprint credit for the move. He couldn't seem to take a deep breath so he couldn't tell Miles he was okay.

Miles called for help, and the next thing Sam knew, one of the disturbingly masculine female coaches was carrying him back into the school. By the time she deposited him to the nurse's office, the cramps had died down enough for him to convince the faculty to not call his parents.

"Dude, you should really let them call your mom," Miles protested. "You look green."

"I am not green," Sam panted, curled up tightly on the brown cot. "I'm just a little tense."

Miles sighed. "I think I can get them to pull your girlfriend out of class."

Mikaela wasn't technically his girlfriend anymore. After the no-touching thing, well, there was no touching. And that was sort of key to dating. It had only been a few weeks but that was all it took really for the romantic side of their relationship to peter out, for her at least.

It hadn't taken that long for her to gently break it off – although her demand that they stay friends was anything but gentle – and return to looking at guys with washboard abs and ripped arms just like she had before everything changed. Only back then, he could lust from afar. Now he had to hide that he was lusting whenever she was came over to his house to watch movies, to hang out with Bumblebee, and just generally be buds.

That was great and all, except she was still devastating and his dad was now convinced he was gay. In his world, guys and girls couldn't be friends unless one of them was gay. That had lead to a long, embarrassing conversation the likes of which only the "Happy Time" conversation could rival.

Despite all that, she was still one of favorite people and definitely his favorite organic person. And still so, so pretty. He really just loved looking at her, it made him feel better all on its own. So Sam nodded and gave his friend a smile. "Give it a shot."

He was able to sit up when Mikaela finally made her way to the office. She looked amazing. She always looked amazing. Especially when she was looking at him all concerned.

"Sam?"

"Hey."

She sighed and pushed her hair back. "What did you do?"

"He was running and he fell," Miles supplied helpfully.

"I was sprinting and I got a cramp," Sam corrected. "Cramps. Whatever."

"And then you fell. You totally wiped out, man," Miles insisted.

"Right. Fine. Then I fell."

Mikaela blinked at them. "Why are you still at school?"

"Because if I call my mom, she'll drag me to a doctor and our doctor has weird, cold hands. It's very disturbing."

Mikaela sat on one of the plastic chairs and crossed legs that were revealed by shorts that couldn't be dress code appropriate. He really wanted the no-touching rule revoked because touching her legs would make his cramps feel better. It was definitely possible that some friends-with-benefits leg touching would cure him.

"So you would rather lay there in pain than go see a doctor?"

"We had seafood last night," Sam replied. "I'm sure I just got some bad shellfish."

"Dude, bad shellfish makes you vomit and you haven't thrown up once yet," Miles pointed out and Sam and Mikaela looked at him dubiously. He blushed. "I don't eat clams anymore. Bad experience."

"Yeah," Sam sighed, closing his eyes. "I'm just gonna be still for a few minutes then I'm gonna go back to class."

"But Sam-" Mikaela began.

"I'm fine," he mumbled. "I'm fine."

Before she could retort or Miles could chime in, he was asleep. For Mikaela, it was a bit of a blessing. She didn't have to fight him while she talked to the nurse into calling his mother.

Sam just wanted a burrito. He hadn't really stopped feeling shaky since the initial cramps set in, and for the first time since his wipe out during gym he felt well enough to want something a little more substantial than the toast and soup his mom had been forcing on him. That wasn't too much to ask for was it? A tortilla, some refried beans, some cheese maybe a little bit of salsa. Just a burrito. He had saved the world not that long ago. He was pretty sure for something like that he was due simple pleasures like burritos.

But no, the damn microwave had to blow up. Well, not blow up so much as spark, catch fire, and stop working when he hit the start button.

Sam shouted and jumped backwards, nearly tripping over Mojo and landing against the kitchen table with a thump. Now Mojo was whining in the back of his little doggie throat, he had a bruise the size of a grapefruit on his spine, and his microwave was smoking.

Sam sighed heavily and grabbed one of the random towels his mom left hanging off cabinets and tentatively popped open the microwave. The fire had consumed the outside of the burrito and Sam hit at it with the towel like he was swatting at a fly.

It took way longer than it should have and by the time it was out, the burrito and the inside of the microwave were blackened. Sam tentatively reached out and lifted the burrito off the turntable and dropped it in the sink. It hit with a loud bang and pieces of charred tortilla flecked off in the basin, revealing the still frozen center and Sam sighed.

It just figured. With the exception of Bumblebee, he'd been having really crappy luck with electronics lately.

Three days ago, he'd hit the space bar on his computer and it had made a groaning noise, flashed a blue screen of death, and crashed so hard it was wonder that there weren't search and rescue teams in his bedroom. And now he'd murdered the microwave.

"Awesome. Just awesome. I didn't want a burrito anyway," he muttered under his breath. Mojo just whined at him, begging to be picked up. Sam complied with one hand and tossed the mutilated burrito in the trash and d before trudging upstairs to his bedroom.

It was probably for the best. His stomach hadn't completely recovered and there was no guarantee that burrito would have agreed with him. He was more tired than hungry anyway. He was tired all the time lately.

Maybe he was coming down with something. The flu was going around wasn't it? He was pretty sure it was.

Sam fell on his bed and threw an arm over his eyes. He didn't turn on any music though. He liked his iPod way too much to risk it going the way of the microwave. Mojo gave a soft whimper of understanding and curled up next to him as he drifted off.

Sam knew when he hurled on Mikaela's feet – she had left her shoes by the front door – that she would never, ever sleep with him again. He'd held out hope but about two seconds before he passed out, he was sure that even the hope of ever getting her naked again had vanished.

He had been home from school with a full blown case of the flu for about a week when it happened. She had come over to visit and push the buttons on the remote control so that he could actually change the channels since his mom had made a grocery store run and his dad was at work.

It had been a miserable week stuck on the couch in his pajamas and trying to force down ginger ale and crackers. He was tired, sore, and headachey on top of it all, and it just didn't seem to be getting better. He was so pathetic that Mikaela had actually rescinded her no touching rule and he had gratefully curled up in her lap in desperate need of any sort of comfort.

He'd tried to pull away from her when he felt the nausea rise up in the back of his throat but all he managed was to get his head off over the edge of the couch. Unfortunately, he couldn't get any further than that had before tunnel vision set in and her feet were smack in the trajectory of what little food he'd managed to get down as it fought its way out of his stomach. He'd fallen unconscious before he heard her reaction, but he knew it could not be good.

When he woke up again, he was in the backseat of Bumblebee and Mikaela was sitting nervously in the driver's seat. She was turned around, her dark eyes looking down at him with concern as the Autobot tore down the road.

"What…?"

Her hand shot out and pushed him back down. "Don't try to sit up."

"Kay," he murmured, pressing his face against the soft leather of Bumblebee's back seat. He loved new car smell normally, but at the moment it was making him kind of nauseous but the idea of throwing up in Bumblebee seemed about a million times worse than spewing on Mikaela's feet. He groaned low in the back of his throat as he fought back the bile.

"He sounds awful. Can't you go any faster?"

"I am going as fast as is safe, Mikaela," Bumblebee snapped. "Faster would endanger both of you. We will be at the hospital in two point three minutes."

She said something in reply but Sam didn't hear her. He was out again and he stayed out for the two point three minutes it took to reach the hospital.

It was a blessing. If Sam had seen the way he was convulsing, he would have been just as scared as Mikaela and Bumblebee, and as sick as he was, that was extra stress he just didn't need.

End Chapter 1