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It’s hard to contact Bumblebee, what with him being a large bright yellow fugitive and her being a “known individual” to Sector Seven. But they manage.
Once summer ended, and Charlie quit her stupid batter-fried job, and the military finally finished their questions and their cover ups and assured her and her family that they will be keeping tabs on them, life just keeps on going.
Memo and her end up at the same university(“What are the odds!” he exclaims, but he still can’t lie to her), Memo in a computer sciences program (“Just you wait! This is the new frontier”) and her in Engineering, a compromise between her mother’s insistence she gets herself an proper education and the apprenticeship she wanted. At first she chafes at the ties to her old life, part of her was still hoping for that clean split from everything, wanting to start anew and be free of everything she was before.
Still, she’s learning how great it is to not be alone anymore, and is grateful for his closeness as they adjust to their new, independent lives. With the scholarship she got for being on the diving team she doesn’t have to worry too much about tuition, but she still gets a job at a local mechanics, and eventually gets that apprenticeship anyways. And somehow, her mom and her don’t fight about it. Despite them being further apart than ever before, she starts getting closer with her mother again, letting herself be mothered a bit long-distance, and her mom letting her make her own choices. There’s still fights, still tension, still all this baggage that neither of them wants to open, but things are easier. Fights aren’t as bad. Even talking with Ron is no longer as terrible as it used to be.
She made friends: mechanic friends, school friends, more friends than she had ever had in her previous life. Ron kept telling her it was because she was smiling more. She doesn’t contradict him. And despite all this, there was a large gaping hole in her heart where Bumblebee was. It’s not the same as her dad, and even that has been better, but it’s still there. She misses him so much.
So she does what she does best: take a stupid chance. She make a call to a late night talk show, asking to dedicate a song to her friend Bee. She hopes “Mint Car” by The Cure gets her point across, but she doesn’t know. She spends the next few weeks in constant anxiety, what if he didn’t hear it, what if he did but didn't’ understand, what if Sector Seven knew what she was doing and caught him? But then, in the middle of the night when she was arms deep in an engine trying to think about anything except the catastrophes she might have incurred, so focused she almost misses is, comes a message made up of many voices turned into one, dedicating to a friend “C”, and she nearly cries as “There Is A Light That Never Goes Out” starts playing.
Of course, it’s not as easy as all that. They develop a code, requested songs across radio stations and time slots, letting each other know where they are, how they’re doing, to say ‘Hey, I miss you.’ Simple Minds, The Smiths, even the occasional Astley, listened to across an ever shifting schedule, trying to keep whoever’s listening out of their conversations. Charlie likes the idea of Bumblebee pulled up beside a payphone, cord straining through his window as he scans the radio for the right words to ask the DJ to play California Dreamin’. Planning to meet up is hard, with eyes and ears everywhere and the smallest mistake leading to Bumblebee’s capture. Charlie is anything but a quitter, however.
She learns to pick a tail out of a crowd, out of busy traffic, learns all the places they like to bug her dorm, learns code words, parkour, 3 styles of self defense. Memo learns how to mess with bugs without letting anyone know they’ve been touched, how to act cool under pressure(even when that pressure is holding her hand), how to listen in on every military radio in the county. Otis even learns how to lie properly to their mom.
For the longest time there’s only near misses, there’s so many near misses, ending in car chases, improvised make-out scenes with Memo, and, on one notable occasion, selling Bee at a car auction. And it sucks, the only glimpses they catch of each other a flash of headlights, the ‘no-go’ signal across a mountain, a splash of yellow on a busy street. So close to seeing each other that the disappointment crushes her harder and harder with each subsequent failure. Sector Seven is definitely on to what they’re trying to do, but they’re still suffering from one major, fatal flaw: underestimating her.
It takes over a year to properly set it up, in the end. A year of back and forth and ducking authorities and staying up to listen to late night shows hoping for a message. And now she’s driving around the bend into a secluded overlook of the city, heart beating a million miles a second. She’s got a walkie-talkie strapped to her belt, the plan is for Memo, hidden nearly a mile away with a pair of binoculars and a hacked radio, to send a signal if they need to bail. But given the run-around they have set up for Sector Seven, she thinks they have at least half an hour before they manage to catch on to what they did.
Charlie is there, heart clenched on the precipice of disappointment, sure that she’s turning into an ambush, an empty lot but-
He’s there. Her round, yellow bot is there, looking right at her as she pulls in, not even bothering to open the door just vaulting over so they’re standing, facing each other.
Bumblebee is there, he’s there, unharmed, safe, and whole and even though he would always send “All’s fine” in the form of Spectre General’s ‘Nothin's Gonna Stand In Our Way’, she could never know for sure, never truly know that he wasn’t just trying not to worry her. She can feel her eyes well up, and she promised herself she wouldn’t take up their short time together crying, so instead she just runs to him, leaping up, trusting him to catch her in his embrace. He spins her around in his arms, trilling and buzzing, before sitting down, letting her feet touch the ground as they hold each other close. They hug for a long, long time.
Charlie doesn’t want to be the one to break it, but she does need to breath, unlike him, and the corner pressing into her side is starting to get uncomfortable. So she releases her hold slowly, making sure she keeps as much contact with him as she leans back to look at him. Her Bumblebee.
“Hey, I got something for you,” she says, fishing out a small wrapped rectangle from her back pocket and holding it out to him. It looks super ugly, paper creased ugly and tape all over, but Bumblebee delicately picks it up between his forefinger and thumb. He looks at her, big wide eyes confused.
“It’s a present, dummy. You unwrap it.” He nods in understanding, and she’s really hoping he does, and he’s trying to maneuver his oversized hands like he’s playing Operation or something. She suppresses a chuckle at his intense concentration.
“Do you need help?” It’s been almost a whole minute and he’s almost got the flap up. Bumblebee looks at her in a way that can only be described as petulant and his radio starts blaring.
“Don’t. Stop. Me. Nowwwww,” croons Freddie Mercury and now she does laugh, she had missed his voice so, so much. He unwraps it, eventually and with much difficulty, and the look of excitement/confusion/happy when he unveils the cassette tape in it’s small clear plastic container, flipping it back and forth, the only discerning marks are small doodled bees on either side and Charlie’s messy scrawl listing song names.
“It’s a mixtape,” she explains. “You record a bunch of songs off the radio onto a cassette so you can listen to them whenever you want. I thought I’d make you one.” It’s a little dumb now that she’s thinking about it. He has access to pretty much any radio station he could want, he’s an all powerful robot, why did she think this was a good idea? She’s about to try to take it back, but he’s trilling with glee and shoving it in his cassette player before she can even open her mouth.
The Smiths start playing, and she knows he doesn’t like them, but she’s sentimental underneath it all. Part of her still believes that the song makes the cars feel better and she wants him to be okay. Bumblebee transforms into a car, a tiny Suzuki Swift currently, and swings his front door open in invitation and she laughs and settles into the driver's seat. It’s perfect, hiding away from the rest of the world inside of Bumblebee, listening to music together with him slowly rocking back and forth on his wheels.
“I could show you how to make these, if you want.” Charlie hits the pause button just as Morrissey’s voice fades into silence. ”I have a bunch of empty cassettes in my trunk.” The words are barely out her mouth before Bumblebee’s transforming, leaving her trying to stay upright scooped in his arms as he carries her over to her car. He’s got an eager puppy look, excited for a new toy, as she slides out of his arms and pops the trunk. She pulls out the box of empty cassettes from beside her spare tire. She had got them with the intention of giving them to Bee, but was a little too nervous he wouldn’t like the first part of his gift enough to want them. How could she ever have doubted him?
He listens patiently as she shows him what to do, nestled back in his driver’s seat, when to hit record, how to stop. He destroys two tapes before he gets it right, but that’s why she bought a whole box. She’s in the middle of ranting about shitty DJ’s talking through a songs intro, lounging with her feet propped up on his dashboard, when the walkie-talkie on her hip blares to life. Three sharp bursts of static: times up. Bee whines. She smooths her hand over his wheel.
“I know, bud, I know. I don’t want to go either.” It’s easier this time, saying goodbye. She’s not coming off of an adrenaline high, pain and soreness suddenly registering in her body and fueled by the fear of seeing people she loves hurt. This time, it’s nothing but love. They hug, and she waves, and he waves, and he’s blasting “Don’t You Forget About Me”, and she’s laughing, and watches him drive off, watches him leave once more before leaving herself, picking up Memo and waving to the featureless black SUV that’s screaming in the opposite direction and laughing with him about how fast it screeches to a halt and the stupid pause as the agents presumably try to figure out what to do with their cover so terribly blown.
And three months later she gets an envelope sent to her dorm, no return address, basically mummified in tape, with a dot-matrix printed address stuck on underneath it all and the tell-tale signs of tampering. At first she thinks it’s a bomb, but even Sector Seven isn’t stupid enough to look at a bomb and then repackage it, are they? Is it revenge, she’s too much of a bother, required too much extra security, might as well kill her? Not even they’re that callous. Besides, it isn’t nearly heavy enough to be anything that could do much damage.
She nearly ruins a pair of scissors to open it, the layers of tape quickly gumming up the blades and it takes a bit of wrestling to pull them free of the tapes grasping tendrils, but any frustration is immediately dissipated the minute she dumps it’s contents out on her desk.
A cassette, with a bumblebee drawn on shakily, as if with too big fingers on too small a canvas. She runs her hands over the ink and knows, no matter what happens, no matter what, even if it means she has to fight off the whole government herself, they’ll manage.
They’ll manage.