The sun was shining and there wasn't a cloud in the sky; all in all, it was a beautiful afternoon. Despite the beauty of the day, Sam was more nervous than he had been for a long time. After hearing about what had happened at school on Monday, he was more determined than ever to reconnect with Miles.

Sam still felt like his reasoning for why he'd let his friendship with Miles slip away had been right, he just hadn't realized it wouldn't matter until Bumblebee so rudely burst his bubble the other day. He'd wanted to protect Miles, and he'd been certain that the best way to do that was to let Miles slowly disappear from his life. To find out that he was wrong and that he had potentially ruined one of his closest relationships forever had hit him hard. Even worse, he had hurt Miles for no reason.

He had decided there was no time like the present to try and fix things, especially after hearing about how Miles was apparently buddies with some mysterious cop the other day. Miles had called out of school sick, and after Sam had texted his mother during lunch it appeared as if the Lancasters were gone for a few days.

He had decided that a good way to try to get back in Miles' good graces would be to show up when he was sick and make sure he was alright. It showed he still cared about him. That had to give him some brownie points, right?

In an attempt to make sure he had privacy, Sam had left Bumblebee behind and taken Miles' bus to his house. Luckily the bus driver knew Sam from the many times he had ridden with Miles previously and didn't even question him when he got on. Sam got off Miles' bus and walked to his driveway, wiping his hands on his pants.

When he looked up, Sam realized that Miles' garage door was half open, and he could see two pairs of legs inside in front of some vehicle. Miles' laughter drifted out from inside, alongside a deeper male voice that he didn't recognize.

"A dildo?" The unknown male voice sounded absolutely disgusted.

"Yeah," Miles snickered. "With one of those suction cup bases. It got the dent right out!"

"We are not using that."

"You're always such a party pooper."

Sam ducked under the low hanging lift door to stare at the pair that had their backs turned to him. The stranger was in a cop outfit and fit the description Mikaela and his mother had given him, which meant this was Miles' new cop buddy. Sam wasn't sure what gave him away, but Miles looked over his shoulder and then his eyes widened to a ridiculous degree.

"Barry!" Miles' voice hit an interesting octave as he reached over and smacked the cop on the shoulder. "We have a guest!"

Barry turned his attention to where Miles was looking, but his eyes narrowed into a glare. For a moment Sam could have sworn they were a deep red color, but then the man tilted his head and he could see that they were just a dark brown and it was just a weird trick of the light.

"You skipped?" Was the first question out of Sam's mouth, because he was an actual idiot.

Miles gave him such an unimpressed look that Sam almost turned around and walked away. They had been planning on playing hooky their senior year together since they had started high school; as ridiculous as it was, it hurt a little to find out that Miles had done it without him. Even more so since it was his own damn fault.

"Why are you here, Sam?" Miles asked.

"I'm here because I was bringing my buddy his school work and some home made soup from my mom because I thought he was sick," Sam stressed the last word. "I didn't realize you were just playing hooky with a hot guy."

Barry's eyebrows raised, "Hot?"

"Not now, Barry." Miles said.

Sam realized something. Miles and Barry were at Miles' house alone after he had called out of school with a fake illness. Had the two been alone like this the whole day? Miles had even reacted like he'd been caught doing something bad with those wide eyes and high pitched voice.

"So, what are you?" Sam turned his whole attention to Barry and made himself stand a little taller as he glared at the stranger, "Some kind of pedophile?"

"Sam!"

"Ephebophile," Barry responded.

"Ephe—" Sam stared at him, "What?"

"Ephebophile," Barry repeated. "Pedophiles are attracted to prepubescents. Miles is quite obviously not a kid, so if I was attracted to him I would be an ephebophile."

Miles groaned, "You are so not helping."

"He asked."

"Yeah, because I don't want my friend getting the bad touch from some pervert!"

"It's not like that, Sam." Miles ran a hand through his hair, "It's—we're just pals."

"Since when are you pals with a cop?"

"Since when do you care?" Barry cut in.

Barry glowered at him, so Sam glowered right back. He was seriously beginning to dislike this dude. He didn't care if he was Miles' shiny new best friend, that didn't mean he had any sort of right to comment on their friendship like he knew anything.

"Alright!" Miles clapped his hands together, distracting Sam from the glaring contest he'd been having. "That's enough. Sam and I obviously need to talk, so why don't you just head on home, Barry? We can work on getting those dents out later."

"How about I take Mason for a walk instead?" Barry offered. "He's not had one yet since I was distracting you."

Miles gave Barry a dark look, but Sam couldn't fathom why since he was practically offering them an opportunity for alone time. Sam would have much preferred the rest of their conversation to occur in private, especially since he didn't think Miles would tell him the truth about their relationship with Barry right there.

"I have to use the bathroom anyway," Sam lied.

"Fine," Miles gritted his teeth.

Miles waited for Sam to come out from hiding while he thought of a long list of different ways to get Barricade back. He knew full well that the only reason the mech had offered to walk Mason was because he could listen in with his alt mode to whatever was said between him and Sam, and Miles fully intended to make him suffer because of it.

Neither of them could have ever guessed that Sam would just show up to his house, and they were lucky Sam had left Bumblebee behind. He probably hadn't wanted an audience. They would have to be much more careful going forward.

Miles was surprised to realize he felt more nervous than happy. Just a couple of weeks ago he had been willing to do anything to reconnect with Sam, and now he had been on the verge of making up some kind of excuse just to avoid it. What had changed?

There was a ding from his phone and Miles took it out, reading the message from Barricade and barely holding back a snort.

From Officer Barry Ticon: Do try to find out if any anal probing is going on so you can never ask me about it again.

Barricade was probably trying to make sure Miles wasn't too mad at him, but it just served to remind Miles of what had changed. He was getting closer to Barricade and was actively beginning to care him and what might happen to him. Just the other day he had come to the realization that he felt closer to him than he did to Sam, but in the long run he knew that if it came down to a choice between Barricade and Sam that he would still choose Sam. He had only known Barricade for a short time.

It had been easy not saying anything to Sam when they so rarely talked in the first place. Miles had been able to convince himself that it didn't matter that much in the end, what with Barricade barely doing anything at all. But Barricade was starting to move around more and if what he had done to Trent was any evidence it was clear he could do far more than Miles had ever assumed. He was still fairly confident that Barricade wouldn't hurt Sam, though. He was all about survival and touching a single hair on Sam's head would be a death sentence.

That didn't mean it wasn't a betrayal to not say anything. Miles could acknowledge that fact and had actively been stressing out over it for a bit now, but he couldn't bring himself to say anything that might hurt Barricade just yet. As long as things continued as they were right then, he could at least lie to himself that it was alright to leave it as it was.

Five minutes later, Sam finally emerged from the bathroom and came over to him. For a moment he just stood and stared at him, and Miles knew then that he was going to be a little mean. He didn't want to make this easy on Sam.

He now had a much better idea of what happened to make Sam start pulling away from him, but part of him was still hurt. He felt like if he'd been in Sam's shoes that he would have never done such a thing.

"So…" Sam began and then stopped just as quickly. "Are you fucking him?"

Miles rolled his eyes, "Is this really where you think you should be taking this conversation?"

"No," Sam grimaced. "But I don't want you to get hurt. You don't know what-"

"I'm not fucking him," Miles cut him off. Sam was like a dog with a bone at times, and right now it was more annoying than endearing. It always had been when it was pointed at him instead of someone or something else, "We're just friends."

"So you just went and got yourself a new best friend?"

Miles just raised an eyebrow at him and Sam realized how he had sounded, sitting down with a sigh next to him.

"That sounded super jealous," Sam acknowledged. "It was. A bit. I guess I should start with asking you out again, huh?"

"Yeah, that would probably actually get us somewhere."

Sam turned to him and took his hand, looking him right in the eyes. "Miles Lancaster, will you be my best friend again?"

"I would love nothing more," Miles said honestly. "But first, I think we need to finish this talk."

"Fuck," Sam muttered as he dropped his hand. "I was really hoping we could just go back to the way things were."

"Me trying to go back to the way things were seemed to make things worse."

"Yeah, I-"

Miles raised a hand to cut him off, "Save the excuses. I know something happened, Sam. It's fine if you can't tell me or just don't want to tell me. But that doesn't give you the right to be upset when I go and get a new friend. I tried to text you, I tried to call you. I tried to hang out with you. The only reason I've let you treat me like this for so long is because I see you like a brother; if it wasn't for that I wouldn't have put up with it."

"You're right," Sam admitted. "About it all. Something did happen and I can't talk about it and I was so worried that I'd slip up and tell you that I just iced you out, I guess. I shouldn't have done it like that but I didn't know what else to do."

Miles had figured it may have been something like that, once he had met Barricade and found out the truth. He wasn't surprised the government was trying to keep giant alien robots a secret, but he was pretty sure Sam was lying about not thinking he could keep it a secret. He had always been a good liar, and Bumblebee had never once done anything to make Miles think he was anything but a normal car.

"Everything changes," Miles said after a long moment. "I was mad at you for a while because I didn't get that. I thought I'd done something to piss you off and you were just being too nice to say anything. I realized that wasn't it recently but I was still hurt over it."

Sam made a face, "Is this what the self help books were for?"

"No," Miles laughed. "Those were actually for a friend. They just ended up helping me out, too."

"Maybe…" Sam shifted awkwardly, "Maybe we can't be as close as we used to, but I would like us to still be friends. I really have been busy with some stuff, so we wouldn't have been able to hang out every day like we used to, but I've missed you. And I was afraid because…" Sam trailed off, looking away from Miles. "Well, I guess that doesn't matter anymore. I wanted to say something sooner, but by the time I realized how bad I'd let it get I just didn't know how to fix it."

Miles smiled, "I'd like that. I've missed being able to kick your ass in Call of Duty."

"Hey!" Sam protested, "I'm not that bad!"

"Sureeee," Miles laughed. "But, first, how about you let me know what not to talk about, so we can avoid a situation like this?"

"Oh, that's a great idea!" Sam agreed. "But, uhm, I'm not sure how to say it without saying it…"

"Mission City, right?" Miles asked. He grinned at the flabbergasted look Sam gave him, ready to make him a little paranoid. "You actually thought I had no idea, didn't you? Puh-leeze. The whole of Tranquility is aware something went down and that you and your family were right in the middle of it."

"Seriously?" Sam was a little wide eyed, "I hadn't realized it was that obvious. No one said anything to me."

"That's because you were obviously in the thick of it," Miles pointed out. "Mr. Willoughby is convinced you and your family have been replaced with robot look-alikes. Mrs. Willougby thinks it was giant aliens, but I told her it was probably some government experiment like Godzilla and that they gave you a new car because yours had gotten stepped on."

"Haha, yeah…" Sam laughed awkwardly.

"So I won't bring up Mission City, or your government pay off car, or the fact that Mikaela is probably a slave bride," Miles said as he ticked off each point on his finger.

That made Sam actually laugh, and he smacked Miles on the arm. "Oh, shut up. Miks isn't a slave bride."

"Suuuure," Miles drawled. "I won't talk about it anymore."

"Oh, we are so changing the topic," Sam laughed. "Here's one we can both talk about: just how did you meet the hot cop?"

"Please stop calling him hot," Miles sighed. "You're not even interested in men, and his ego is bad enough already."

"You're interested in men," Sam reminded him, as if Miles had somehow forgotten. "And he's hot hot."

"I'm interested in both men and women, as you know full well." Miles rolled his eyes again, because Sam was the smartest dumb person he knew. "And just because I have eyes doesn't mean I actually want to bang every hot guy I see, just like you don't want to bang every hot girl you see."

"I plead the fifth," Sam joked.

"I'm not interested in him like that," Miles ignored the bad joke.

"But is he-"

"Sam," Miles warned.

"Fine," Sam crossed his arms and let himself sink deeper into his seat. "Maybe you two aren't into each other, but that doesn't make it not weird that some older dude is just chilling with you. How did you two even meet? Do your parents know he's here?"

"Of course they do," Miles lied, because he knew Sam would never bother to confirm it. "It'd be super weird if they didn't. They're chill with Barry. I met him, well… There was a…" he trailed off and pulled a face, trying to make his hesitation believable. "I don't really want to talk about it, to be honest. Barry helped me out of a tight spot when I did something stupid and that's all you need to know."

"Something stupid?" Sam raised both eyebrows at him, "Like picking a fight with Trent?"

"Something like that," Miles agreed.

"Guess we can just add it to that list of things not to talk about."

Miles nodded eagerly, happy to change the topic. He'd just have to make sure that Barricade actually met his parents sometime soon so none of his stories fell through.

Barry brought Mason back in about twenty minutes after Sam and Miles got done with the hard part of their reconciliation. Mason was panting, and immediately went over to his water bowl when Barry let him off his leash. Sam and Miles were still sitting next to each other on the couch, but now they'd turned the TV on to watch something stupid on the Disney channel.

"Done making up?" Barry checked

Sam was about to tell him it wasn't any of his damn business, but Miles spoke up first.

"Yeah," Miles responded. "You're free to go. You don't have to deal with any of the emotional stuff."

"Good, because I have to go to my job. My police job," Barry said the last part while looking directly at Sam. "Where I work at the police station."

Sam stared back at him, a bit confused as to why it was said directly at him. Was Barry worried he was going to accuse him of being a pedophile again, and thought mentioning the cop thing would make Sam trust him more? Most of the cops in Tranquility were incompetent idiots that let their modicum of power go to their heads, so that just meant Sam assumed Barry was an idiot, too.

Miles snorted, "Go on, then. Gotta make sure to keep those bad guys off the streets."

There was a weird bit of eye contact between them where Barry glared at Miles and Miles just gave him a shit eating grin, but then Barry turned and left without another word. Evidently the guy was just weird, and Sam wasn't quite sure what to think about him.

Well, anyone who could put up with Miles couldn't be that bad.