Title: Of Routines
Disclaimer: Still don't own
Challenge: 18coda (On Livejournal) 12. Legato (Italian: past participle of legare, to bind, tie together) in a smooth, even style without any noticeable break between the notes
Rating: K
Characters/Pairings: Sam Witwicky, Prowl
Warnings/Comments: Unbeta'd, Post-RoTF
Summary: Sam has a routine broken and replaced with another, and finds even the aliens are sometimes clueless
Sam had found that the raised walkway that ran diagonal, and one hall away from Wheeljack's claimed lair was an ideal spot to just sit and think. Or not think at all as the case was a lot of the time. The close proximity to Wheeljack's area of play meant that there were few occupied spaces outside of storage, and even then it wasn't uncommon to see the blurred form of, the quiet and yet twitchy, Red Alert in altmode clipping the corner to put out a fire before it made it to one of the storage areas. Add that all of the major areas of business were on the other end of the compound entirely and you didn't see many people or autobots roaming the hallways at any given time. Which meant it didn't take long for Sam, as a young adult still trying to find his niche in this weird world he was now in, to claim it as his own little area and clutter the walkway with items he was too lazy to drag back to his room in the housing area. Making a second sort of home twenty feet above the concrete ground.
Which was probably why he nearly rolled over into empty space out of shock a week after the newly landed had settled in and his little second home had a visitor. The sudden creak-clang of metal on metal had startled him out of his concentration of the game he was currently playing and moving as if he was in his room until his hand felt air and he remembered rolling that way was a bad idea. The missing panic in the thought later on when he looked back on it showing him just how much he blindly trusted the autobots. However, at the time he barely registered it as he moved away from painful injury and Ratchet glare session to the nearly all black metal frame calmly moving down the walkway. Something that would have made him freak out if he hadn't been there when Arcee was stress testing the walkways in the main area and proving the sturdiness of the things. Instead he was just amazed to watch the nearly eleven foot (Though he was probably wrong on the height thing since he never tried to measure Prowl like he had done Bumblebee and Arcee in boredom a month back.) mech move on a space that was made for two humans to stand side by side on as if it was as wide as a street.
Only to stare as the black mech then manage to sit with his legs crossed on the walkway a few feet from Sam. He had seen Arcee bend in ways metal shouldn't be able to bend, but that sort contouring, especially on the very narrow walkway had never been displayed by any of the three units. It was a bit sad that even after two years of constant exposure to them Sam still acted like he had back when he thought his first car was possessed by Satan every now and then over things that were probably really simple for them. Normally about three seconds of him staring the one being stared at would say something, especially on why they were there, or about the staring if they were Mudflap or Skids, but this one didn't and instead turned very dimmed blue optics to stare back.
The staring lasting for about two minutes, which was a pretty long time considering things, before they both turned towards the rest of the hallway, and back to their own projects. Well Sam believed that was what Prowl was doing as he went back to his game, considering 'bee had explained to him in simple terms how much communication and 'paperwork' went on over private and public communication lines. Like having Chat and message boards inside your head. So he figured that Prowl was making the duty rosters for next week, as that job had been all but gleefully thrown at the newly landed as soon as Jazz could do so, and hey Sam was not above finding amusement in imagining a message board like the one he sometimes helped manage for Leo on his site, and 'seeing' Prowl typing up the roster and posting it on there.
Only for them both to look over the side as the vibrations of another explosion rocked through the walkway, and the screech of tires as the white and red blur that was Red Alert once more came around the corner. Considering the amount of wires and electronic equipment that Sam had seen earlier cluttering the hallway near Red Alert's security room and how everyone had been told to not bother the security mech today, he wasn't as surprised that he actually got to hear the muttering Red Alert tended to do over the network. (Which he only knew about because Bumblebee would sometimes mention things that were going on in that alien internet the autobots had.) Though he wasn't expecting the calm response to his accidentally vocal questioning on who this Inferno fellow was that Red Alert was muttering about.
"He was in charge of search and rescue before the war, and even when the war happened he was normally the one who was sent to deal with Wheeljack's and any other scientists' mishaps."
It wasn't that Sam wasn't thankful for being answered, but he normally didn't like asking questions of the new guys until he was certain they weren't going to squish him for asking something he didn't know was rude. This time though he didn't flail and babble as he noticed a sort of humor in the odd facial structure of this mech, and was actually not surprised when he was asked a very familiar question all the mechs seemed to have when it came to humans. It started an odd sort of routine if they were ever both on that walkway, which Sam later found out was for the same reason as why even Arcee would retreat to them when the much larger mechs were crowding the hallway. No one liked being banged or stepped on by some of the rowdier members of the autobots.
Though a month after their first question and answer session they both were at a lost for what purpose the tanks Wheeljack and Ratchet had dragged past them meant. Sam though knew that Prowl would probably find out even if it meant having to play twenty questions with Jazz or decoding Perceptor's vocabulary.