Oneshot - Rabbit, part one
Disclaimer: do not own Transformers.
Summary: Oneshot, 07Movie, not 09 compliant. It wasn’t that Miles was afraid of Sam, but still, after Mission City, Sam had an edge to him he hadn’t before. It was like flopping down on the comfy sofa in the basement…and gradually realizing that the odd lump he landed on was a loaded gun.
Author note: Is another one of Silvane’s bunnies. Original bunny is summary of fic. Thanks, Silvane! ETA: Bunny was, in turn, based on a metaphor made by Vathara in one of her fics over on FFnet. Thanks, Vathara!
Also: This is a oneshot, but apparently the entry is too large, so I had to cut it into two parts. Not sure whether or not that is a good thing...
Rabbit
There are probably many reasons as to why, after almost two decades of traversing this mortal realm, Sam still only has one human being he could actually call ‘best friend.’ One of the biggest reasons could be that Sam has a childish recklessness and naïve insolence that amuses Miles on days that are good and frustrates him to no end on days that aren’t. Sam would go off, by himself, to chase yet another futile dream of high school glory, leaving Miles in the dust, and then after that he’d come back to Miles as though nothing had happened.
In short, Sam isn’t really good at long-term planning, and he often takes it for granted that Miles will forgive him.
What never occurred to Miles was that maybe, just maybe, he took for granted that Sam would always come back.
When he first heard that Sam and his parents were home, Miles had hopped on his bike and pedalled there like a maniac. He must have been a sight, standing on the Witwicky’s front porch, wide-eyed and worried.
“Sam!” he blurts out as Sam opens the door. He just stares, and then says, “What the hell happened to you? Your house was a mess, no one was inside, you’re not answering your cell, you and your parents went up and missing for days, and now you look like you got beat up by the entire high school football team and the middle school cheerleading squad!”
It’s strange, now that Miles is the one spazzing out. Sam just tiredly puts a hand on his shoulder.
“Miles, you know Mission City?”
“You mean-“
“We were there.”
“But…how…?” Mission City was a mess. Everyone was saying anything between “electrical malfunction” and “alien invasion” to account for the complete annihilation of a good chunk of the city. If Sam and his folks were really there…how close must Sam have been, to come home looking like that?
“Can’t talk about it now,” he mutters, swaying a little and stifling back a yawn. “I’m really tired, Miles.”
“You sure you don’t need to go to a hospital, or something?”
Sam laughs shakily. “Nah, I just got back from there.”
“How’re your folks?” Miles asks urgently.
“Better than I am, Miles. They’re out for some food. I just hope they remember to bring me back some…”
Miles looks at Sam pointedly. “You’re not telling me the full story.”
“Miles, there’s nothing to tell,” Sam says calmly. So calmly that Miles does a double-take. He’d always been able to tell when Sam was lying-it wasn’t hard to do, Sam was a just such a bad liar, much to the teen’s chagrin-but now, Miles isn’t so sure. “I was at the wrong place, at the wrong time, and now, I’m really happy to be home and I really need to sleep.”
“Okay,” Miles says reluctantly. “I guess…I’m just glad you’re back, Sam. I guess I’ll leave you to sleep, or whatever it is that you were doing.”
“See you in school?”
“Where else?”
Sam gives a loopy, tilted smile. Miles turns around and picks up his bike. “Miles?”
“Yeah, Sam?”
“Thanks.”
“Thanks for what?” Miles asks, but Sam has already closed the door. Miles shakes his head, and his eye catches the shiny new car in the Witwicky’s parking lot. In such a frenzy to make sure that Sam was okay, he somehow missed this little detail.
“Hey, weren’t you a lot older the last time I saw you?” he asks the car pointedly. Then he sighs. “Miles, you’re talking to a car. I think it’s time to go home.”
He’d see Sam in school. Maybe, in time, he’d get the full story.
X x X
It’s a shock to everyone, Miles included, when Sam and Mikaela arrive at school together, pulling up in a car that looked way too expensive for someone like Sam to afford.
“Did he...offer you a ride on the way?” one of Mikaela’s fellow football trophies asks, almost timidly. This was high school. There were certain stereotypical stats quos that were upheld.
“No,” Mikaela says bluntly. “He’s with me.” And with that, both of them go inside the school building, hand-in-hand.
Miles follows them, just watching, and, oddly, he doesn’t think about status quos, or football-bunnies, or how Sam’s crazy scheme finally worked. He isn’t even thinking about what Sam would go through when-if-it turns out that Mikaela is just using him, like a bad cliché in those movies that he’d never understand.
By the looks of it, Sam and Mikaela aren’t thinking about those subjects either.
It had only been a few days since Miles had last seen them, but they’re different now. Something has pushed them, has forced them to change. Mikaela no longer has that eternally bored, greater-than-thou look, which, in Miles’ opinion, isn’t much of a loss, but Sam...
Miles remembers all the nature shows he’d sometimes stumble across, and how they’d focus on a hapless deer or rabbit, little vulnerable animals going about their business while all the time remaining ever watchful. He always felt sympathy for those creatures, especially since, as a viewer, he knows about the wolf lurking nearby.
But Miles sees Sam make his way slowly through the hallways, shoulders hunched in almost a defensive pose and his gait without his usual wannabe-a-football-champ swagger, and Miles feels almost like he’s watching one of those documentaries again. This time, though, it’s not just sympathy he’s feeling. He’s worried, and confused, and more than a little disturbed.
He doesn’t know where the wolf is, this time around.
Miles chalks it up to some kind of shock. Mission City must have been traumatic. Sam would be back to his normal, spastic self in no time, and everything would be back to normal.
X x X
The teacher finishes explaining the finer details of their project, and there’s a buzz of noise as students start splitting off into partners and dividing tasks before the period is over. Miles looks behind him, and he sees that Sam has already made his way across the room, and is saying something to Mikaela. She’s nodding. Miles pulls a face, and then turns around.
So it’s going to be like that, huh?
It always seemed to work like that in the movies. Boy meets girl, and then no one else but girl exists to boy. But, as Mikaela-crazy as Sam was, Miles hoped that he and Sam could escape that cliché.
Idly, with his back turned to the two love-birds, he scans the room, looking for a possible partner. He almost jumps when he feels a tap on the shoulder. He looks up, startled. Sam is peering at the clock. “So, you want to meet at the library later?” he asks. “Say, about five?”
Miles is kind of shocked, so all he manages is an inarticulate, “Huh?”
Sam looks at him confusedly. “You’re my partner, right? Unless you don’t want-“
“No, man,” Miles said, feeling relieved but also at the same time confused. “Five’s good. I just thought-“ Miles narrows his eyes suspiciously. “Hey, this thing just got assigned. Since when did you start thinking about projects seriously?”
Sam starts pulling on his backpack, not meeting his gaze. “Well…you know, the sooner we finish…”
“The sooner you get to make out with your girl?”
“Miles!” Sam squawks, and that scared-rabbit aura that Sam’s giving off disappears, if only for a moment. “She’s not my girl. She’s Mikaela.”
Miles sighs. “Five’s good,” he says, letting Sam easily off the hook-yet again.
Sam’s grin is tight. “Thanks,” he says, and then just like that, he’s off.
Miles looks at his retreating form, noting disappointedly that whatever happened in Mission City was taking Sam a lot longer to recover from than he had hoped. He even looks both ways before entering the hall, for goodness’ sake.
Sam is acting as though this world is made of glass, what with all his carefulness. He’s acting as though all this is an illusion or a dream instead of hard reality.
But then again, Miles thinks, maybe it did seem like a dream to Sam. Maybe, after Mission City, this peace just seemed too delicate to be real.
Maybe Sam just needs more time.
X x X
Standing on Miles’ front steps, Sam is absently looking at his car, not even noticing that Miles already opened the door for him.
Miles rolls his eyes. “Sam?” he asks, drawing out the name patronizingly.
Sam jumps a little, and Miles raises an eyebrow. “Sorry, Miles,” he apologizes, and then brushes past Miles to get inside, already jabbering about some mundane bit of information that he probably only half-heard from a less than reliable source. Miles sighs. At least some things never change.
Miles’ room doesn’t really look like the room of a teenager. It’s not like Sam’s room, where the teddy bears and baby blankets had long since given way to game consoles and badly hung posters. Miles’ bookshelf lining one wall is still filled with his children’s stories. A little train set lines the floor. The walls are plastered in photos, a good chunk of them consisting of him, Sam, and their crazy plan of the day. Worn stuffed animals, with the stuffing spilling out, rest on and under the bed. Miles keeps all his toys, even that clumsy birdhouse that he and Sam made in summer camp that was more a fitting abode for dust bunnies than for birds.
Sam never mentions any of it, though. Maybe he doesn't notice, or maybe because he thinks that it’s normal. Miles hopes it’s not because Sam doesn’t care.
Miles works at his desk while Sam sits, cross-legged, on the bed, his laptop tilted on his knees and resting on the comforter and a teddy bear on his lap. It was an unconscious, but still amusing, move on Sam’s part.
They’re researching Peter Pan for their project. Researching a little too early, by Sam’s usual standards.
“So,” Miles starts. “Why did you want to start this early again?”
“I kinda have a meeting, or whatever, to go to,” Sam mutters vaguely, his eyes not leaving the screen. He starts to stroke the teddy bear’s fur, and Miles raises an eyebrow. He’s about to call Sam on that telling sign of duplicity when Sam says something that unexpectedly throws him off that trail of thought.
“Never liked Peter Pan,” Sam remarks.
“What?” Miles says sharply, but his incredulity is lost on Sam.
“Miles,” Sam says patiently, finally looking up at him, and just for a moment, Miles can see some of the old Sam in that look of exasperation. “The guy had a ton of crazy and loyal friends who’d follow him anywhere, and the love of a girl who could not only stand him, but who’d also, given a few years, grow up to be really, really hot. He had that one chance to live, and he gave it all up for pirates and crocodiles. No self-respecting human being would admire someone like that.”
At the end of Sam’s slightly caustic tirade, something inside Miles dies a little. Miles gives an uncharacteristic grunt that could be interpreted as acquiescence, and then pretends to focus all his attention on the research. In his peripheral vision, he sees Sam blink in surprise-maybe Sam knew him a little better than Miles gave him credit for.
“Hey, did I say something wrong?” Sam asks, in all the innocence and ignorance that only someone like Sam could have.
“No, nothing’s wrong.”
“But you seem-“
“Nothing’s wrong.”
Sam continues to look at him, but Miles stubbornly refuses to meet his gaze. Sam sighs, shrugs, and then turns his attention back to his laptop.
And Sam has gone and done it again.
Sam would never know how much those words stung. Miles liked Peter Pan. He was almost envious of him. He was just a kid clinging to his innocence. The child who never grew up.
Not like Sam. Sam was growing up quickly, and growing up without Miles.
Miles doesn’t know why that thought has been occurring to him more and more often, especially since Sam got back from Mission City. He doesn’t know why, sometimes, he wouldn’t be able to fall asleep at night, thinking that, in Sam’s life, he’d just become yet another childhood remnant, like the forgotten teddy bears and the moth-eaten baby blankets stored in the attic.
Maybe it’s because only those you truly love could make you hurt that much.
X x X
“Miles!” Sam says upon opening the door. “I didn’t know you’d be here this early.” He rests his hand against the door frame.
“Yeah, well,” Miles says, ducking under Sam’s arm. “I figured, the sooner we start, right?” As usual, Miles heads down the basement. “So you wanna start on that poster here or-“
“No, no, we can go to the library,” Sam says, stumbling after him. “Um, let’s go now, okay?”
Sam was usually very spastic and clumsy, but not to this extent before. Miles just gives him a look. “Come on, Sam,” he says. “Since when did the basement become a forbidden zone?” Miles lazily slumps into the nearest sofa, and lies down on it, just for emphasis. He raises his eyebrows when Sam eyes the sofa warily, as though expecting a monster to burst from underneath it at any moment. “Hey, Sam,” Miles says, and Sam’s attention snaps back to him. “The sooner you grab your stuff, the sooner we get outta here.”
Sam all but bolts upstairs. Miles rolls his eyes. Now why was Sam so paranoid about the sofa…?
Wait, he thought, getting slightly panicked and jumping up from the sofa. Did he and Mikaela…He immediately got his mind out of the gutter. Sam could be crazy, lazy, and hormonal, but even he wouldn’t go that far…and Miles doubted that Mikaela would let him in the first place. Plus, even if he and Mikaela did have sex, there was no way that they’d do it on the unaccommodating sofa, in the basement of Sam’s house where the walls were paper-thin.
He settled back down. So what was-
Then he felt it. An odd lump, poking him in the back.
He sits up again, and starts fishing around between the cushions. His fingers meet something cool, and smooth, and he draws out his prize.
He stares at this thing, lying heavy and cold in his hand.
It looks like a handgun, but of no kind Miles had ever seen before. The basic design looked right, but the silver metal had a strange tint that just seemed off, although Miles couldn’t figure pinpoint exactly what was wrong about it. There were strange markings on the side...perhaps a foreign language? Almost everything about this weapon looked almost alien.
But it’s not how the weapon looks that Miles is preoccupied with, inasmuch as what the hell is it doing in Sam’s sofa?
Miles can see it in his mind’s eye. Sam, looking at this thing in the dark of the basement. Opening the chamber, maybe. Looking up, wide-eyed, when Miles rang the doorbell too early. Hastily stuffing it between the cushions, and then running up before Miles could suspect anything...
Miles fights down the wave of irrational panic. A lot of responsible and sane people owned guns for perfectly legal reasons. It probably belonged to Sam’s parents. Heck, Sam probably didn’t even know about it. There was nothing creepy or suspicious about its hiding place, right? A lot of people probably did this.
Gingerly, keeping his fingers well away from the trigger, he opens the chamber.
The bullets glow a soft blue.
It’s fully loaded.
He hears Sam start coming down the stairs, and Miles hastily puts the weapon back where he found it.
“Ready to go?” Sam asks. His glance at the sofa is too quick to be noticed...unless you knew what he was really looking at.
“Yeah,” Miles finally says.
Later, at the library, Miles can’t focus. He closes his textbook audibly. Sam looks up at him.
“Sam,” Miles begins, trying to change his tone so that it didn’t convey what the hell are you doing?! “Is there anything that...that I should know about?”
Sam blinks. He almost looks innocent. “What do you mean, Miles?”
“Sam, I know these past few weeks have been tough on you, what with Mission City and all...”
“Miles,” Sam laughs-too shakily to be sincere. “Hey, I got the car, I got the girl, school isn’t trying to kill me…Life’s good. Really.”
“You know you can always come and talk to me, right?”
“Right.”
“I mean it, Sam. I...I worry about you. You’re hiding something.”
Sam’s smile falters.
“It’s okay,” Miles continues quietly. “You can keep your secrets, if you want to. Just...just don’t go and do something stupid, okay?”
Sam manages to hold Miles’ gaze for five whole seconds. Then he glances downward, at his papers, and then starts babbling some nonsense.
It’s all white noise to Miles. Maybe Sam isn’t even listening to his own words.
Miles can’t tell if he got through to Sam. Miles still can’t tell what was making Sam act this way. And Miles can’t tell if that gun hidden beneath the sofa cushions beckoning to Sam like his own little tell-tale heart.
All that he can tell for sure is that Sam is hiding something from him, and that something was really, really bad news.
Link to part two
Summary: Oneshot, 07Movie, not 09 compliant. It wasn’t that Miles was afraid of Sam, but still, after Mission City, Sam had an edge to him he hadn’t before. It was like flopping down on the comfy sofa in the basement…and gradually realizing that the odd lump he landed on was a loaded gun.
Author note: Is another one of Silvane’s bunnies. Original bunny is summary of fic. Thanks, Silvane! ETA: Bunny was, in turn, based on a metaphor made by Vathara in one of her fics over on FFnet. Thanks, Vathara!
Also: This is a oneshot, but apparently the entry is too large, so I had to cut it into two parts. Not sure whether or not that is a good thing...
Rabbit
There are probably many reasons as to why, after almost two decades of traversing this mortal realm, Sam still only has one human being he could actually call ‘best friend.’ One of the biggest reasons could be that Sam has a childish recklessness and naïve insolence that amuses Miles on days that are good and frustrates him to no end on days that aren’t. Sam would go off, by himself, to chase yet another futile dream of high school glory, leaving Miles in the dust, and then after that he’d come back to Miles as though nothing had happened.
In short, Sam isn’t really good at long-term planning, and he often takes it for granted that Miles will forgive him.
What never occurred to Miles was that maybe, just maybe, he took for granted that Sam would always come back.
When he first heard that Sam and his parents were home, Miles had hopped on his bike and pedalled there like a maniac. He must have been a sight, standing on the Witwicky’s front porch, wide-eyed and worried.
“Sam!” he blurts out as Sam opens the door. He just stares, and then says, “What the hell happened to you? Your house was a mess, no one was inside, you’re not answering your cell, you and your parents went up and missing for days, and now you look like you got beat up by the entire high school football team and the middle school cheerleading squad!”
It’s strange, now that Miles is the one spazzing out. Sam just tiredly puts a hand on his shoulder.
“Miles, you know Mission City?”
“You mean-“
“We were there.”
“But…how…?” Mission City was a mess. Everyone was saying anything between “electrical malfunction” and “alien invasion” to account for the complete annihilation of a good chunk of the city. If Sam and his folks were really there…how close must Sam have been, to come home looking like that?
“Can’t talk about it now,” he mutters, swaying a little and stifling back a yawn. “I’m really tired, Miles.”
“You sure you don’t need to go to a hospital, or something?”
Sam laughs shakily. “Nah, I just got back from there.”
“How’re your folks?” Miles asks urgently.
“Better than I am, Miles. They’re out for some food. I just hope they remember to bring me back some…”
Miles looks at Sam pointedly. “You’re not telling me the full story.”
“Miles, there’s nothing to tell,” Sam says calmly. So calmly that Miles does a double-take. He’d always been able to tell when Sam was lying-it wasn’t hard to do, Sam was a just such a bad liar, much to the teen’s chagrin-but now, Miles isn’t so sure. “I was at the wrong place, at the wrong time, and now, I’m really happy to be home and I really need to sleep.”
“Okay,” Miles says reluctantly. “I guess…I’m just glad you’re back, Sam. I guess I’ll leave you to sleep, or whatever it is that you were doing.”
“See you in school?”
“Where else?”
Sam gives a loopy, tilted smile. Miles turns around and picks up his bike. “Miles?”
“Yeah, Sam?”
“Thanks.”
“Thanks for what?” Miles asks, but Sam has already closed the door. Miles shakes his head, and his eye catches the shiny new car in the Witwicky’s parking lot. In such a frenzy to make sure that Sam was okay, he somehow missed this little detail.
“Hey, weren’t you a lot older the last time I saw you?” he asks the car pointedly. Then he sighs. “Miles, you’re talking to a car. I think it’s time to go home.”
He’d see Sam in school. Maybe, in time, he’d get the full story.
X x X
It’s a shock to everyone, Miles included, when Sam and Mikaela arrive at school together, pulling up in a car that looked way too expensive for someone like Sam to afford.
“Did he...offer you a ride on the way?” one of Mikaela’s fellow football trophies asks, almost timidly. This was high school. There were certain stereotypical stats quos that were upheld.
“No,” Mikaela says bluntly. “He’s with me.” And with that, both of them go inside the school building, hand-in-hand.
Miles follows them, just watching, and, oddly, he doesn’t think about status quos, or football-bunnies, or how Sam’s crazy scheme finally worked. He isn’t even thinking about what Sam would go through when-if-it turns out that Mikaela is just using him, like a bad cliché in those movies that he’d never understand.
By the looks of it, Sam and Mikaela aren’t thinking about those subjects either.
It had only been a few days since Miles had last seen them, but they’re different now. Something has pushed them, has forced them to change. Mikaela no longer has that eternally bored, greater-than-thou look, which, in Miles’ opinion, isn’t much of a loss, but Sam...
Miles remembers all the nature shows he’d sometimes stumble across, and how they’d focus on a hapless deer or rabbit, little vulnerable animals going about their business while all the time remaining ever watchful. He always felt sympathy for those creatures, especially since, as a viewer, he knows about the wolf lurking nearby.
But Miles sees Sam make his way slowly through the hallways, shoulders hunched in almost a defensive pose and his gait without his usual wannabe-a-football-champ swagger, and Miles feels almost like he’s watching one of those documentaries again. This time, though, it’s not just sympathy he’s feeling. He’s worried, and confused, and more than a little disturbed.
He doesn’t know where the wolf is, this time around.
Miles chalks it up to some kind of shock. Mission City must have been traumatic. Sam would be back to his normal, spastic self in no time, and everything would be back to normal.
X x X
The teacher finishes explaining the finer details of their project, and there’s a buzz of noise as students start splitting off into partners and dividing tasks before the period is over. Miles looks behind him, and he sees that Sam has already made his way across the room, and is saying something to Mikaela. She’s nodding. Miles pulls a face, and then turns around.
So it’s going to be like that, huh?
It always seemed to work like that in the movies. Boy meets girl, and then no one else but girl exists to boy. But, as Mikaela-crazy as Sam was, Miles hoped that he and Sam could escape that cliché.
Idly, with his back turned to the two love-birds, he scans the room, looking for a possible partner. He almost jumps when he feels a tap on the shoulder. He looks up, startled. Sam is peering at the clock. “So, you want to meet at the library later?” he asks. “Say, about five?”
Miles is kind of shocked, so all he manages is an inarticulate, “Huh?”
Sam looks at him confusedly. “You’re my partner, right? Unless you don’t want-“
“No, man,” Miles said, feeling relieved but also at the same time confused. “Five’s good. I just thought-“ Miles narrows his eyes suspiciously. “Hey, this thing just got assigned. Since when did you start thinking about projects seriously?”
Sam starts pulling on his backpack, not meeting his gaze. “Well…you know, the sooner we finish…”
“The sooner you get to make out with your girl?”
“Miles!” Sam squawks, and that scared-rabbit aura that Sam’s giving off disappears, if only for a moment. “She’s not my girl. She’s Mikaela.”
Miles sighs. “Five’s good,” he says, letting Sam easily off the hook-yet again.
Sam’s grin is tight. “Thanks,” he says, and then just like that, he’s off.
Miles looks at his retreating form, noting disappointedly that whatever happened in Mission City was taking Sam a lot longer to recover from than he had hoped. He even looks both ways before entering the hall, for goodness’ sake.
Sam is acting as though this world is made of glass, what with all his carefulness. He’s acting as though all this is an illusion or a dream instead of hard reality.
But then again, Miles thinks, maybe it did seem like a dream to Sam. Maybe, after Mission City, this peace just seemed too delicate to be real.
Maybe Sam just needs more time.
X x X
Standing on Miles’ front steps, Sam is absently looking at his car, not even noticing that Miles already opened the door for him.
Miles rolls his eyes. “Sam?” he asks, drawing out the name patronizingly.
Sam jumps a little, and Miles raises an eyebrow. “Sorry, Miles,” he apologizes, and then brushes past Miles to get inside, already jabbering about some mundane bit of information that he probably only half-heard from a less than reliable source. Miles sighs. At least some things never change.
Miles’ room doesn’t really look like the room of a teenager. It’s not like Sam’s room, where the teddy bears and baby blankets had long since given way to game consoles and badly hung posters. Miles’ bookshelf lining one wall is still filled with his children’s stories. A little train set lines the floor. The walls are plastered in photos, a good chunk of them consisting of him, Sam, and their crazy plan of the day. Worn stuffed animals, with the stuffing spilling out, rest on and under the bed. Miles keeps all his toys, even that clumsy birdhouse that he and Sam made in summer camp that was more a fitting abode for dust bunnies than for birds.
Sam never mentions any of it, though. Maybe he doesn't notice, or maybe because he thinks that it’s normal. Miles hopes it’s not because Sam doesn’t care.
Miles works at his desk while Sam sits, cross-legged, on the bed, his laptop tilted on his knees and resting on the comforter and a teddy bear on his lap. It was an unconscious, but still amusing, move on Sam’s part.
They’re researching Peter Pan for their project. Researching a little too early, by Sam’s usual standards.
“So,” Miles starts. “Why did you want to start this early again?”
“I kinda have a meeting, or whatever, to go to,” Sam mutters vaguely, his eyes not leaving the screen. He starts to stroke the teddy bear’s fur, and Miles raises an eyebrow. He’s about to call Sam on that telling sign of duplicity when Sam says something that unexpectedly throws him off that trail of thought.
“Never liked Peter Pan,” Sam remarks.
“What?” Miles says sharply, but his incredulity is lost on Sam.
“Miles,” Sam says patiently, finally looking up at him, and just for a moment, Miles can see some of the old Sam in that look of exasperation. “The guy had a ton of crazy and loyal friends who’d follow him anywhere, and the love of a girl who could not only stand him, but who’d also, given a few years, grow up to be really, really hot. He had that one chance to live, and he gave it all up for pirates and crocodiles. No self-respecting human being would admire someone like that.”
At the end of Sam’s slightly caustic tirade, something inside Miles dies a little. Miles gives an uncharacteristic grunt that could be interpreted as acquiescence, and then pretends to focus all his attention on the research. In his peripheral vision, he sees Sam blink in surprise-maybe Sam knew him a little better than Miles gave him credit for.
“Hey, did I say something wrong?” Sam asks, in all the innocence and ignorance that only someone like Sam could have.
“No, nothing’s wrong.”
“But you seem-“
“Nothing’s wrong.”
Sam continues to look at him, but Miles stubbornly refuses to meet his gaze. Sam sighs, shrugs, and then turns his attention back to his laptop.
And Sam has gone and done it again.
Sam would never know how much those words stung. Miles liked Peter Pan. He was almost envious of him. He was just a kid clinging to his innocence. The child who never grew up.
Not like Sam. Sam was growing up quickly, and growing up without Miles.
Miles doesn’t know why that thought has been occurring to him more and more often, especially since Sam got back from Mission City. He doesn’t know why, sometimes, he wouldn’t be able to fall asleep at night, thinking that, in Sam’s life, he’d just become yet another childhood remnant, like the forgotten teddy bears and the moth-eaten baby blankets stored in the attic.
Maybe it’s because only those you truly love could make you hurt that much.
X x X
“Miles!” Sam says upon opening the door. “I didn’t know you’d be here this early.” He rests his hand against the door frame.
“Yeah, well,” Miles says, ducking under Sam’s arm. “I figured, the sooner we start, right?” As usual, Miles heads down the basement. “So you wanna start on that poster here or-“
“No, no, we can go to the library,” Sam says, stumbling after him. “Um, let’s go now, okay?”
Sam was usually very spastic and clumsy, but not to this extent before. Miles just gives him a look. “Come on, Sam,” he says. “Since when did the basement become a forbidden zone?” Miles lazily slumps into the nearest sofa, and lies down on it, just for emphasis. He raises his eyebrows when Sam eyes the sofa warily, as though expecting a monster to burst from underneath it at any moment. “Hey, Sam,” Miles says, and Sam’s attention snaps back to him. “The sooner you grab your stuff, the sooner we get outta here.”
Sam all but bolts upstairs. Miles rolls his eyes. Now why was Sam so paranoid about the sofa…?
Wait, he thought, getting slightly panicked and jumping up from the sofa. Did he and Mikaela…He immediately got his mind out of the gutter. Sam could be crazy, lazy, and hormonal, but even he wouldn’t go that far…and Miles doubted that Mikaela would let him in the first place. Plus, even if he and Mikaela did have sex, there was no way that they’d do it on the unaccommodating sofa, in the basement of Sam’s house where the walls were paper-thin.
He settled back down. So what was-
Then he felt it. An odd lump, poking him in the back.
He sits up again, and starts fishing around between the cushions. His fingers meet something cool, and smooth, and he draws out his prize.
He stares at this thing, lying heavy and cold in his hand.
It looks like a handgun, but of no kind Miles had ever seen before. The basic design looked right, but the silver metal had a strange tint that just seemed off, although Miles couldn’t figure pinpoint exactly what was wrong about it. There were strange markings on the side...perhaps a foreign language? Almost everything about this weapon looked almost alien.
But it’s not how the weapon looks that Miles is preoccupied with, inasmuch as what the hell is it doing in Sam’s sofa?
Miles can see it in his mind’s eye. Sam, looking at this thing in the dark of the basement. Opening the chamber, maybe. Looking up, wide-eyed, when Miles rang the doorbell too early. Hastily stuffing it between the cushions, and then running up before Miles could suspect anything...
Miles fights down the wave of irrational panic. A lot of responsible and sane people owned guns for perfectly legal reasons. It probably belonged to Sam’s parents. Heck, Sam probably didn’t even know about it. There was nothing creepy or suspicious about its hiding place, right? A lot of people probably did this.
Gingerly, keeping his fingers well away from the trigger, he opens the chamber.
The bullets glow a soft blue.
It’s fully loaded.
He hears Sam start coming down the stairs, and Miles hastily puts the weapon back where he found it.
“Ready to go?” Sam asks. His glance at the sofa is too quick to be noticed...unless you knew what he was really looking at.
“Yeah,” Miles finally says.
Later, at the library, Miles can’t focus. He closes his textbook audibly. Sam looks up at him.
“Sam,” Miles begins, trying to change his tone so that it didn’t convey what the hell are you doing?! “Is there anything that...that I should know about?”
Sam blinks. He almost looks innocent. “What do you mean, Miles?”
“Sam, I know these past few weeks have been tough on you, what with Mission City and all...”
“Miles,” Sam laughs-too shakily to be sincere. “Hey, I got the car, I got the girl, school isn’t trying to kill me…Life’s good. Really.”
“You know you can always come and talk to me, right?”
“Right.”
“I mean it, Sam. I...I worry about you. You’re hiding something.”
Sam’s smile falters.
“It’s okay,” Miles continues quietly. “You can keep your secrets, if you want to. Just...just don’t go and do something stupid, okay?”
Sam manages to hold Miles’ gaze for five whole seconds. Then he glances downward, at his papers, and then starts babbling some nonsense.
It’s all white noise to Miles. Maybe Sam isn’t even listening to his own words.
Miles can’t tell if he got through to Sam. Miles still can’t tell what was making Sam act this way. And Miles can’t tell if that gun hidden beneath the sofa cushions beckoning to Sam like his own little tell-tale heart.
All that he can tell for sure is that Sam is hiding something from him, and that something was really, really bad news.
Link to part two