A/N: as stated in the description, this fic will focus on the pairing Mikaela/Optimus Prime, and a driving lesson they share with surprising results.

'Surprising results' being of a sexual variety, so if that isn't your cup of tea, this is your warning. Also, I may have a small (or not-so-small tbh) infatuation with big diesel trucks which, well... does not exactly make me any less fascinated Optimus Prime's alt-form... (like he wasn't already super hot WITHOUT having a gorgeous alt-form). So, disclaimer- just in case it was not already implied strongly enough, this story contains awesome alt-mode sex. Because heck yeah, why not?

Redline

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Part 1

~One month before the events of Revenge of the Fallen

Friday nights were poker nights at Mike's Custom Cycles. Most nights, Mikaela had better things to be doing than sitting around a poker table with a bunch of smelly old men who loved motorcycles too much, especially as they were almost always hosted in the cramped, cluttered office that really was no better than the disorganized workshop.

The whole place was constantly filled with the strong smell of stale beer, tobacco smoke, and the ever-present undertone of mechanical grease and car exhaust. Haze hung heavy in the air on such evenings, wafting over the heads of the participants from the endless chain-smoking of cigars and cigarettes, the smoke yellow in the dingy light coming from a collection of desk lamps set-up to illuminate the cardtable.

It was a depressing place to be, and this was why Mikaela avoided them (because who wanted to be at work after hours, anyways?), but gambling had always been a part of her father's life. Gambling on the weekends in messy offices of motorcycle shops, or gambling with their lives, it didn't matter which—there were only three things in life that her father really loved. Thrills, cars, and Mikaela. And Mikaela loved him, too—she loved her father a lot, even though he got on her nerves, sometimes.

So, when the occasional Friday night rolled around where Mikaela found herself with nothing to do—those rare times when her girlfriends were all out with their boyfriends, and Sam's parents had grounded him for forgetting to call when he was over for a sleepover at Mikaela's so that they knew he hadn't gotten himself abducted by aliens again—she'd always accept an invitation from Cal and the boys to one of their boring, smelly poker games.

Looking back, she supposed that was how it all started.

Because if she hadn't found herself pulling up to Mike's on that fateful Friday night with Cal, she would have been with Sam; and if she had been with Sam, maybe she wouldn't have been so worried about things.

Or maybe, it had started before that. Maybe it had all happened because they'd all been talking about Christine. And because they had talked about Christine, she had started thinking about Bee, and because of that, she had remembered the day that Sam and her had first met and that had just made everything worse.

That had been the day when everything had started. The first time she had ever laid eyes on Sam Witwicky—that she could remember, at least—had been the day that her life was destined to change forever.

Although… it was true that she only got in the car with him in the first place because of Todd. And Todd hated Christine.

The summer of '09 was unusually hot, even for the south. The great desert plains that stretched for miles around the great city had been transformed into a wide, cracked dust bowl, complete with armies of tumbleweeds; even in the center of the urban sprawl, you'd have been hard pressed to find someone who wasn't suffering in some way from the heat. Only employees who worked in tall, air-conditioned office buildings with adjoining underground parking, who lived in ritzy skyscrapers had the fortune of totally avoiding the scorching temperatures. Everyone else, however, had to find other ways of keeping cool—men in blue-collar business suits could be seen running to and fro with newspapers held over their heads for shade, bums sat in reclusive cement corners that hardly saw the light of day, and Sam's family had taken a much-awaited weekend trip to the coast.

This was the reason that Mikaela found herself at home alone with nothing important to do on a particularly gorgeous Friday evening. Sam had not even asked her if she would have liked to go along with his family—in his defense, all of Friday evening and the last half of Sunday would have been wasted driving, and the whole point behind the trip was so that Sam could get a feel for the college he planned to attend come September. Her coming along might have been kind of intrusive in that way—but she was his girlfriend of almost two years, and it was starting to feel a little like Sam cared more about college than he did about her.

They'd had a bit of an argument about it before he left, actually. They seemed to be doing that more and more, these days, and it made her feel sad. It didn't help that their time together was growing increasingly scarce; Sam was leaving for college and Mikaela had a job. Her father was out of prison now, too, and she had to take care of him. Some part of her was aware that Sam was kind of jealous—not only because a lot of her time that was usually allotted for him was now taken up by Cal and work, but she knew that it bothered him that he was almost nineteen years old and still had never had a job.

But that didn't mean he could get away with being a jerk about it whenever he pleased. Mikaela was hurt that he'd left her behind, but at the same time she wasn't going to let it ruin her weekend—it was her birthday the coming Saturday, and she wanted to make the most of being eighteen while it lasted.

It was Cal who had convinced her to come out for a couple of rounds of Texas Hold 'Em and maybe a drink or two if she felt like it. Naturally, she wasn't able to ride her bike if she was going to have a drink, so she carpooled with Cal—he'd rescued this cherry-red Plymouth Fury from a junkyard a couple weekends ago, and that was why they'd started talking about Christine.

"It's basically Christine," Mikaela had told Cal, having been a fan of the movie based off of the Stephen King book for as long as she could remember.

"It's not Christine. It doesn't even look like her, Mikaela. This thing is a hunk of junk."

"Whatever you say, Cal. Let's just hope this thing doesn't try to kill us."

She had been kidding, of course. The real Christine was a sentient, very murderous fictional car that had the ability to miraculously repair almost any kind of damage you could think of—but Mikaela still shot a wary glance at the dashboard.

There were just some things in life that you couldn't go through without becoming a little bit vigilant, sometimes. Just in case. And finding out that there were aliens disguised as vehicles situated all around the globe—some of them actually outright murderous ones—had come as quite a shock, and she wasn't about to forget it any time soon.

Nevertheless, the car did seem to be just a car—as far as Mikaela could tell, anyways.

The subject had come up again around the poker table. Mikaela had been dealt a two and a three of hearts—Tammy, Mike's wife, who had very curly, greying blonde hair and spoke with a thick Russian accent, was dealing. She sucked on the end of a long mahogany pipe as she dealt the flop—a red ace, a black queen, and a red seven—before she put down the pipe and turned to Cal.

"I almost forgot, zat is a nice find you haf parked outside, Cal. Whare did you get zuch an old beast?"

"Al's," said Cal, meaning the auto wrecker down the road. Mikaela's eyes met her father's. "Bought and paid for by me. It certainly has an aesthetic to it—Mikaela says the damned car's Christine. You know, from that 80's movie."

"Well you never know," muttered Mikaela.

A shout of laughter went around the table.

"Oh, amuzing," cackled Tammy, slapping Mikaela on the arm. She scowled. "Zat car is just a regular car. Zare is no such fing as a car zat is alive, you zilly girl."

Everyone around the table laughed again, but Mikaela didn't join in. It was always when people who didn't know, people who were ignorant to the existence of the war of the Autobots and took their daily lives for granted—civilians—that thought that the idea of a sentient killer car was some kind of joke or something to laugh about. It made her feel really awkward.

It was incredible to think she had once enjoyed the movie Christine; just the thought of it sent shivers up her spine, now. It made her remember the decepticons… but then, there were the Autobots, too. And the Autobots were good—Bee had become a very close friend of hers over the past two years for a reason. It was a shame that they had to be kept a secret, but it was necessary. The reaction of the adults around the poker table was enough to prove at least partly why that was so.

But, deep down she really hoped that things would be different someday, and that the humans and the Autobots could one day coexist peacefully, sans decepticons. Because right now, she was fast approaching a place where she genuinely felt like nobody understood at all, save for the Autobots themselves, witnesses of the battle of Mission City, and Sam—and Sam was not going to be around anymore come September.

"Mikaela, honey?" came Cal's voice, drifting through her thoughts. "It's your turn to bet."

She had been trying hard to stay interested in the game, but she was beginning to find it incredibly dull. And above all, she really missed Sam.

"I think I'm gonna take off, Cal," she told her father after she'd checked and had nil on the river, "You can have these, I don't want them." She pushed the small pile of chips away from her.

"Okay…" he looked confused, but accepted the poker chips regardless. "You okay to get home on your own, Mikaela?"

"Yeah, don't worry about it." Pushing in her chair, she tried her best to smile warmly at her boss and the other figures around the table but her voice was growing increasingly croaky from emotion and the thick smoke that was hanging about the place. "Thanks again, guys… I'm just feeling a little tired, that's all…"

"Okay. Call me when you get home, all right?"

"Sure thing, Cal."

The tinkle of the doorbell was the last thing she'd heard before the sounds of laughter and the gentle clink of poker chips coming from the old office were cut off, and Mikaela stepped out into the half-full parking lot. The first thing she noticed was how extremely lonely she felt, now that she was no longer surrounded by a room full of people. While she had been inside, her chest had felt tight and claustrophobic—but out here, she could breathe easier, and there was nothing to distract her from the fact that she was completely and totally alone. The world was dark and empty—the sun had set hours ago and overhead was a velvety, infinite expanse of star-strung sky—empty—and the heat of the day had not yet fully dissipated, leaving the air feeling humid and stuffy.

She hiked her purse higher up onto her shoulder, breathed in a deep, steadying breath, and began what was surely to be a very quiet journey home.

It was no more than half a mile's walk. Mike's shop was located nearby a twenty-four-hour truck stop at the edge of a big clover-leaf freeway junction between the Interstate and a local highway—the bright lights from the overpasses behind her shone white, casting a long shadow as she entered the narrow alleyway that would take her into the residential neighborhood beyond. On one side, it was lined by the truck stop's parking lot, and a rusted chain-link fence ran along the curb here, marking the property line. On the other side of the laneway was a line of messy, un-cared for hedgerows.

The pavement was broken and full of potholes, so Mikaela walked with care, the clack, clack of her high heels making some of the only sounds in the night. The only other noises were the rumble of distant traffic on the Interstate exchange, and the slamming of someone's car door a few blocks away. Someone's dog with a very yappy bark yipped several times in reply.

It was so quiet—a summer night's breeze swept through the alley, rippling her hair and thin t-shirt, and still her thoughts drifted to Sam again. She hoped that he was having fun wherever he was—god, she missed him. They could still do goodnight phone calls and all of that, but it just wasn't the same. They'd have to think of an even better way to keep in contact while he was at college. She pulled out her phone to send him a text letting him know that she was just about home from Mike's, wondering if he was still awake, when something happened.

It was no more than a prickling feeling at first—the unholy, creeping sensation that someone was watching her. The wind gusted again, and shadows flickered among the messy hedgerows beside her—was there something inside of the bushes? Or was it just the wind that was making her feel this way?

Mikaela made to turn around nervously to check that she was still alone—but as she did, there was an immediate blinding flash and the laneway was filled with light. Frightened and unable to see, Mikaela tripped on a pothole, twisting her ankle a little. Her purse fell to the ground, and it was all she could do to not fall over with it.

Her heartbeat stuck inside of her throat. Mikaela saw that two twin headlights were making their way slowly toward her, accompanied by the deep rumble of a revving engine and the crackling of gravel under the tires as the vehicle rolled forward. Her first thought was oh God, Decepticon, but as the car passed underneath the closest streetlamp, its paint job was suddenly illuminated, and she realized that it was a very shiny yellow-and-black Camaro with black racing stripes. She gasped—"Bumblebee?"

The Camaro flashed its highbeams at her and stopped a few meters away, idling lowly. The driver's side door swung open in the darkness, waiting.

"How did you find me?" Mikaela asked the car as she approached, sitting down inside gratefully. "It's almost one o'clock in the morning—you scared the crap out of me, Bee."

"I had a feeling—are you okay, man? That looked like it had to hurt—" the Camaro's speech was nothing more than a few random broken voice recordings played low over the radio.

"Oh, I'm fine," said Mikaela, rechecking that everything was still inside of her purse, which had been retrieved from the pavement. "My ankle is a little sore, but it'll be fine." She patted the dashboard affectionately as she settled into the seat. "What're you doing here, though?"

"Aw, I'm sorry," the recording sounded regretful before he added some of his own speech. "Sam's gone, 'n someone's gotta watch over you, kid. Where are ya headed?"

"Well, I was on my way home, but…"

"But what?" the Camaro asked.

Mikaela grinned. "Well since you're here… it's Friday night, and I'm starving. Would you mind hitting a Taco Bell on the way home? You don't have to…" she always felt weird asking Bee for rides places. She hardly ever did, and she knew that he really didn't mind, but she was a very independent person and was perfectly capable of driving herself places on her own. "I just thought it might be cool to hang out for a bit. It feels like it's been forever since the last time we stayed up late together."

"No problem-o, buddy," said Bee, playing a recording that sounded very much like it had come from a Yankee cab-driver as he revved his engine and Mikaela saw the accelerator pedal move of its own accord as the Camaro's tachometer spiked, and she knew that he was excited. Night driving just happened to be a pastime the human and the Autobot shared a passion for. "We'll be there in a jiffy—buckle up, sweetheart," he instructed, still as the Yankee cabbie.

She did so, feeling a lot better now that she was no longer alone. It was Friday night, on the most beautiful weekend of the summer so far—and if she couldn't have Sam for company, well, at least she had Bee. Bumblebee was definitely the next best thing.