Disclaimer: do not own Transformers.
Rating: T
Summary: Movieverse, drabble. Sam thinks that Clark Kent isn't the only Superman hanging around.
Author note: Inspired by Rosieknight's "A Good Question" over on LJ.
Title: The Clark Kent Enigma

The Clark Kent Enigma

It's a Friday night, and Sam and Mikaela have gone out for a movie. It's a drive-in movie, naturally, so that Bumblebee could be with them too.

Not that way.

Get your minds out of the gutter.

Sam isn't really paying much attention to the movie—to be fair, it's kind of hard to pay attention to anything when the girl of your dreams is leaning right against you and when you're sitting in the interior of your best friend—so his mind draws a blank when Bumblebee says, "I don't understand it."

Sam blinks. "Don't understand what?"

"This Clark Kent character," Bumblebee says. Oh yeah, they were watching an older version of Superman. Sam knew that. Shut up, he did. "All he does is wear glasses, and his colleagues do not associate him with Superman. Are humans really this blind?"

Sam and Mikaela chuckle comfortably. "It's just a movie, Bumblebee," Mikaela says, patting the dashboard.

Bumblebee makes a noise of discontent—all the Autobots, Sam has noticed, seem to have trouble grasping the concept of human fiction and subsequently have a problem giving a little leeway for suspension of disbelief—but makes no other comments.

Sam just grins, because he remembers that, as a child, that question used to bother him too.

"But Mom! He just wears glasses! There's no disguise in that at all!"

Sam isn't one of the brightest boys of his generation, but he does have his moments.

Shut up, he does.

The movie ends, and Bumblebee takes Sam and Mikaela home. He's called off to an emergency meeting—something about more Decepticons being found on the radar—but refuses to let Sam go along, because, of course, it's past the boy's curfew.

As he goes down the road, holographic driver in place, Sam thinks that Clark Kent isn't the only Superman hanging around, even though the Autobots' disguises are slightly better than Superman's. On the other hand, no human vehicle opened the doors for the passengers, threatened to lock you inside when you were angry or bothered, or automatically put on the seatbelts.

They have problems acting insentient sometimes.

Sometimes Sam wonders how humans miss all these little things that add up to: Oh freaking snap! Aliens live among us!

And Will still hasn't forgiven Ironhide for making all those crop circles in his neighbour's field, even if said neighbour was a jerk.

Sometimes Sam forgets the Superman side of the Autobot equation. They laugh, they play, they fight, they love…just like humans. And they're always aware—always so gentle. Ironhide with Annabelle, Bumblebee with Mojo. Sometimes it's easy to forget that they are hardened soldiers, coming from a broken world beyond all imagining.

Sometimes it would do the humans well not to forget that fact.

Barricade's just attacked his home. His claws tear through the house, and he reaches for Sam, cornered in the remains of his living room.

Living room.

Irony was such a bitch sometimes.

Then something rams the Decepticon to the side. The warriors are nothing but black and yellow blurs.

There's a terrible screech in the air as one gouges out the others' optics. The other twitches, and then is still. Sam instinctively tries to shrink back into the shadow of rubble, where he can't be seen.

The victor straightens, and Sam tries to hold back a flinch as Bumblebee rushes over to him, and, hands still coated in energon, picks up the shaking teen.

He's saying something—something soothing, reassuring—but Sam can't hear past all the static and noise. He's still in shock. And through the haze, an answer comes to him.

The Autobots do have a Clark Kent side to them, but their alternate forms aren't it.

He wonders how people could ever mistake Clark Kent for Superman.

He wonders how the same hands that hold him so gently, as if he were a doll of porcelain, a wisp of cloud, can do the same things that he had just witnessed.

Is it all in the acting? That Superman and the Autobots really are that good?

Or is it something more? That people just can't believe that Clark Kent is Superman? That there is no way that mild-mannered, meek Kent is really the strong and confident Superman?

That people won't believe that the Autobots are soldiers? That there is no way that beings so beautiful and strong and good and gentle can ever kill an enemy?

That, he believes, is the answer to the Clark Kent enigma.