AN: Some of the work has changed more and new stuff has been added, but this chapter and the next chapter? Not so much. Hang tight, we're picking up pace and tossing in some new characters!

Now that Barricade had seemed to satisfy the insane need to prove that he could play nice, Miles allowed himself to relax. He was less nervous than he had ever been about Sam finding out the truth, since he had been completely oblivious while actually riding inside of Barricade.

Then again, if Miles hadn't been there, Barricade clearly would have forgotten about the Decepticon symbol on his steering wheel. That just proved that the mech did need him, no matter how much he might argue otherwise.

Currently he was in the shut down drive-in with Barricade, about twenty minutes outside of Tranquility. They had come here before to do exactly what they were doing now: watch a movie. Barricade somehow had The Shining playing on one of the screens—Miles had asked the first time they had done this and Barricade had explained something about being able to project the image but a lot of it had gone over his head.

Miles didn't think either of them were truly paying attention to the movie. He was more wrapped up in his phone, holding a conversation with both Sam and Mikaela. Barricade himself was using his holoform in case anyone came around and had it relaxing against the side of his alt mode. Like usual he was wearing the police uniform and had a scowl on his face.

"Let's go to Las Vegas," Barricade suggested out of the blue.

"My mom doesn't like you that much," Miles sent his newest response to Sam before he bothered to look up at Barricade. "It'd look super weird for a police officer to whisk me away to Vegas for a weekend."

Not to mention that there was no way in hell Barricade was capable of making a drive like that with the condition he was in, but Miles wasn't going to say that. Barricade was just bored and throwing out amusing ideas.

"And why not?" Barricade sounded slightly offended, "You're not even of legal age to gamble, or to drink. What could we even do there that would be so bad?"

"You remember what Sam accused you of when he first saw us together?" Miles didn't have to wait long before Barricade gave a disgusted grimace, "Exactly."

"Lake Tahoe?"

"You're an absolute riot."

"And you are very unadventurous," Barricade responded.

"You are my adventure," Miles batted his eyelashes a few times, laughing when Barricade resumed making the disgusted face. "You sure do seem to be wanting to go a lot of places lately."

"Can you blame me?" Barricade rolled his eyes. Miles was amused to see how much more lifelike the mech's holoform was getting, though he'd yet to say anything about him mostly picking up teenage mannerisms. "I think I've gone stir crazy and I didn't even know Cybertronians could go stir crazy. I blame this disgusting planet, it must make us glitch."

"I bet you just like feeling me inside of you," Miles teased.

There were a few beats of silence before Miles actually realized the double meaning of what he had said. He felt his cheeks heat with embarrassment and that was when Barricade started to laugh.

"Oh, shut up!" Miles huffed, climbing out of Barricade. "You stupid robots come with way too many possible innuendos. It's not my fault!"

"You just have poor word choice, fleshling." Barricade chuckled.

Miles ignored him in favor of climbing up on Barricade's hood and relaxing back against the windshield. Not too long ago and he wouldn't have dared to do anything like this, but now he knew Barricade well enough to know that he truly didn't give a damn. Climbing all over the bipedal mode was a little bit more tricky and seemed to irritate him more, though, so Miles avoided doing that for the most part.

From Sam: What are you n Barry doin?

Watching a movie at the drivein, Miles responded.

Miles waited a few minutes for a response but when none came he put his phone in his pocket. He stretched out lazily on Barricade's hood, enjoying the warm feel of the metal from where it had been sitting in the sun and the rumble of the engine underneath him. He closed his eyes, drifting into a state of semi-consciousness. He never fell fully asleep, still aware of the sun beating down on him and the occasional bird call, but he just relaxed and allowed himself to daydream.

He was brought back to reality when the engine below him revved loudly and Barricade started to curse.

"Slag!" Barricade growled, causing Miles to flinch and open his eyes.

The next thing he knew the surface he was resting on was pulled out from underneath him, causing him to hit the ground hard. Winded, he stared up at the clear blue sky in confusion, trying to piece together what had just happened. He could hear the sound of Barricade speeding off into the distance.

After a minute, Miles sat up. He rubbed at his sore back and worked on catching his breath, still deciding whether he should be angry or not when he was mainly just confused. It wasn't until he stood up and dusted himself off that he heard the sound of a car making its way towards him and he looked up, expecting to see Barricade coming back but instead watching as a yellow Camaro came closer.

Well, that certainly explained a lot.

Sam pretended to drive over to him, rolling down the window. "Hey, buddy. Thought you said you were here with Officer T?"

"I was, but duty called." Miles lied easily.

Sam put his car in park and got out of it, walking over to Miles. He had just opened his mouth to respond when his phone went off. Miles laughed at Sam's embarrassed grimace, gesturing for him to answer it. Sam did so and walked a couple feet away, not even bothering with a hello. Miles watched all of this with mild amusement, but when Sam looked back at Bumblebee he realized who he must have been talking to.

He pulled his phone out to text Barricade, warning him that Bumblebee knew he had been there. He didn't get a response, but then again he didn't expect one right away. If Barricade was smart he would be getting as far away as possible at that moment.

Sam hung up his phone and wandered back over, "Sorry, what were you saying?"

For a moment, Miles considered coming clean then and there. It was only a moment, though, because he remembered how much Barricade's ped was still bothering him. A thirty minute drive was about the most he could do without starting to leak energon everywhere, and going to the drive-in had already been pushing it.

When he did come clean, because he knew he would have to some point soon, he wanted to be able to give Barricade a better chance at being as far away as possible. Just in case.

"Oh, just that Barry had to go to work real quick." Miles put on a smile, "There was some weird police car hanging around, but he couldn't get a response from them so he went to go pull 'em over."

"Oh, that's good, because I wanted to come kidnap you anyway." Sam grinned, "Can't have you becoming a hard ass from hanging around Officer Hard-ass too much. Wanna have a guys night? Cousin Teddy said he wanted to borrow my car for a hot date but we can just have a sleepover."

Miles laughed, "Sure, sounds great. I don't have anything else to do."

At least he could comfort himself with the fact that they were lying to each other.

Miles woke up bright and early the next morning. He had spent the night at Sam's and had slept next to his friend on a blowup mattress on the floor. He stood up and stretched, making sure that Sam was snoring away while he did so before moving over to the nightstand. Sam's phone was right out in the open, because Sam had no reason to think he had to hide it. He picked it up and was pleased to see that Sam was still too lazy to put any kind of password protection on it.

He started to look through the texts. Part of him felt guilty for ignoring his friend's privacy and part of him felt guilty for going this far in the first place, but if there was anything he could tell Barricade then he had to do it.

It wasn't hard to guess who some of the contacts were. Bee was definitely Bumblebee, and OP was likely to be Optimus Prime. He didn't have any idea who Harda$$, the Hatchet, and Head Cheese were, but he didn't think he needed to know who was who of the first contacts to appear. It was just important that Sam had been talking to them last night.

He decided to focus on the conversation between Bumblebee and Sam, scrolling up until he read all that he wanted. After doing that he was fairly sure he had everything he needed to know, so he carefully set Sam's phone back down and texted Barricade.

Extra Autobots would be coming into town to do an extensive search for him three days from now. Who wasn't mentioned, and at this point there was no way to tell if any had landed that Barricade didn't know about. He just had to hope that would be long enough for Barricade to do what he needed and leave.

He sat back down on the blowup mattress and stayed there until Sam woke up. The two made plans to see a movie that night, the whole time Miles pretending like he wasn't feeling sick to his stomach with anxiety.

Miles didn't bother to contact Barricade anymore after that. He figured if the mech was making plans then the last thing he needed was a human bothering him with texts. He kept his phone on him just in case Barricade reached out, but he never got anything from him.

Despite the persistent feeling of dread in his gut, he went to the movies with Sam. There wasn't anything else he could do for Barricade now, he just had to convince himself of that. Whatever he may have been able to do for him—none of that mattered now. Barricade was on his own.

It was too late for the mech to enact his "look, I can play nice" plan like he had wanted, Miles was sure of that. Barricade also tended to be more stubborn than intelligent, so he wasn't even sure he'd bring it up if he got cornered.

He let himself enjoy the movie as much as he could, but both he and Sam were distracted and not talking much. Towards the end of it Sam disappeared into the bathroom, and after a few minutes Miles grew paranoid about why.

Being the good friend that he was, he went to check on Sam, but when he got to the bathroom doorway he froze as he could hear Sam's voice already. He listened in, knowing his friend had to be on the phone from the way he paused in his speech.

"What do you mean they're really coming in tonight? You told me they'd be coming in three days and that still leaves two days!" A pause. "Why would Barricade hack into the phone company just to see my texts?" A pause. "Ugh, okay, yes, it is obvious you're with me." A longer pause. "What, you seriously think he was trying to target Miles because of me?" An even longer pause, followed by a sigh. "No, I just have to text Mom to hide Mojo in the house in case tall, dark, and trigger happy stops by. The last thing I need is him trying to exterminate Mojo again and Mom having an aneurysm."

Miles was already reaching into his pocket to grab his phone and text Barricade when he paused and really thought about it. If they were really worried about Sam's texts being looked at, would they look at his? It seemed like they didn't assume Barricade and he were connected in a positive way, but that didn't mean he wanted to tip them off. Instead he pulled up the location app that Barricade had made for him just so that he could see him sitting stationary in his normal spot.

He growled under his breath and shoved the bathroom door open, heading inside and running through a list of excuses he could give Sam to get them out of there quickly so he could go and tell Barricade this new information.

Sam turned around and looked at him questioningly, "Is the movie over already?"

"Yeah," Miles nodded, despite having no idea if that was true. He took a deep breath, "And I just remembered that today is Mom's and Dad's anniversary, so could we stop by that one flower store? You know how sad Mom gets when I forget stuff like that."

It was a lie, of course, but Sam's recollection of dates was just as bad as Miles' was. Sam would be able to recall that the anniversary would be sometime soon and think Miles was telling the truth. In reality, the flower store just happened to be the only part of town that was somewhat close to where Barricade was. He was sure he could slip out the back and take off sprinting before Sam noticed.

Sam nodded and just followed after him. Miles figured he must have been coming across as genuinely stressed or freaked out in some manner because nothing was said as he shoved his friend out of the movie theater and towards Bumblebee. Or perhaps his friend was just worried about the possibility of one of the Autobots getting hurt when they found Barricade. Miles tried not to think too hard about it.

In less than ten minutes they reached the flower shop and Miles let himself out of Bumblebee, barely stopping himself from sprinting inside the store just so Sam wouldn't think anything too weird was going on. When Miles entered the store he glanced back through the shop window and could see that Sam was watching him. As much as he had just wanted to make a break for the back exit he didn't want to do so under scrutiny, so instead he grabbed the first set of roses he could find and took them up to the cash register.

Once he was in line he glanced back out the window once more and saw that Sam was no longer paying him any mind. Miles paid for the bouquet of roses and dropped a ten dollar tip on the counter on the tip jar, apologizing to the harried clerk behind the counter as he made his way towards the back door. As soon as he opened it he could hear an alarm start to ring but Miles ignored it and began running instead.

Alternating between a sprint and fast walking, he was able to get to where Barricade was in about fifteen minutes. By the time he got to him, he was breathing hard and his legs were aching, but it was worth it to see with his own two eyes that Barricade wasn't in immediate danger.

He was apparently enjoying a light recharge if the lack of reaction was anything to go by. Miles walked up and tapped on his hood, holding the bouquet of roses that he'd never bothered to drop close to his chest. He could tell he startled Barricade because of the way the mech's engine revved to life and his wheels immediately started to move him back a few inches. There was a long moment where Barricade didn't say anything at all and Miles just did his best to catch his breath.

"I'm flattered, really, but roses just aren't my thing." Barricade finally said.

Miles scowled, "You're not as funny as you think you are."

"So I've heard," Barricade responded dryly. "Why are you here, then, fleshling? I thought you had a movie date with the other organic."

"Apparently the Autobots are smarter than you gave them credit for. They were worried about you hacking into Sam's phone company and looking at his texts—which, can you actually do that? Should I be worried about you looking at my—you know what, never mind. Long story short, they lied about when they were coming to avoid tipping you off at all. I think you best get a move on."

"Oh, that's just wonderful." Barricade growled, "According to my scans there's one heading right for us."

"Yeah, that's probably Bumblebee." Miles frowned a bit, "I was just with them and ditched them to come warn you. I mean I guess I could have just ended up leading them straight here, but at least you still have some warning?"

"No, it's the trigger happy one." Barricade snarled.

"A second one already?! Come on! Stuff only goes this badly this quickly in a movie," Miles complained. "What're we supposed to do now?"

Barricade ignored him, which wasn't a huge surprise. Miles took a step back when Barricade started to transform. As many times as he had watched the mech do this by now he was still just as fascinated as he had been the first time.

The next thing he knew he was being picked up by a servo, something he was still getting used to. He was promptly shoved into the nearest pine tree, Barricade hardly pausing long enough to make sure he was balanced enough on his branch to not fall out immediately.

"What the hell?" Miles demanded.

"There is no we," Barricade hissed. "You stay here."

"Get me down from here!"

And again Miles was ignored. Barricade was already walking away from him.

"Get back here and get me out you stupid robot!" Miles yelled.

He fumed as Barricade disappeared completely from view. He looked down to judge how far he was from the ground and decided that his only choice was to climb down as much as he could. He managed to make his way down to the branch below him when he heard the sound of a vehicle crashing through the underbrush. He looked just in time to see a black GMC top-kick go flying past.