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So, college huh.
Turns out it’s super expensive—who would’ve thought—and these funds don’t just spontaneously come out of nowhere with a few prayers and crossed fingers. Even if you helped save the world. Especially if you only secretly helped save the world.
So yeah. Back to being a normal girl for Charlie. A normal girl who has to balance several summer jobs at once like a waitress with one too many trays in their hands—and believe her, she’s been there—one of her latest jobs is as wait staff. It’s not as great as her new part time shifts at Hank’s Marine Repair and Parts—thank you Uncle Hank—but it’s a step up from the corn dog stand and it’s going to get her into college. So she’s not complaining. Much.
Charlie has also started a job at a drive-in movie theatre.
Working a ticket booth and selling overpriced popcorn is hardly what anyone would consider thrilling, but she does get the perks of watching the occasional movie under the guise of scoping out the area for individuals who have snuck in. And that happens. A lot. Especially with people she went to school with—looking at you Tina.
With the money her family has, you’d think she’d have got a replacement car for the one Bee totalled.
Bee…
It’s not the first time being at the drive-in has let her thoughts stray to him. She works around cars for goodness sake, yellow cars. So whilst everyone else is busy punching each other, she’s busy going on a trip down memory lane because her movie-loving best friend would love it here.
Charlie wonders what he’s doing now. If he’s still able to watch movies, wherever he is. Maybe he’s watched that new one, Who Framed Roger Rabbit with the cartoon car in it that—
“I’m sorry, how much for popcorn?!”
Right.
Charlie has a job to do.
Well.
That had been a busy stream of people.
Charlie slumps in her ticket-booth seat, sighing. The mad rush may be over, more or less, but she still has an hour left until she can clock out, so until then, it’s not over yet.
Speaking of the less, Charlie hears the rumble of an engine as another car starts pulling up to the booth, but something about it, something about it has her skin tingling, electrified, and—
Oh no.
That car—no. She shouldn’t get her hopes up. No. It’s just another factory line camero. Yellow like he was, the same black stripes she’d last seen when they’d parted ways by the bridge last year, but it’s not.
Can’t be.
Charlie can’t keep doing this every time.
She opens her mouth, shaky, but she has to greet them, it’s all part of the job, and then she can move along and forget about the swell of hope that has let her down far too many times to count, each time only to be squashed down by the reality that no, that was it. Charlie saw that golden gate opportunity, and blew it, foolish. Responsible.
That very well may be the last she’ll ever see of—
The car window rolls down.
And what.
The.
Hell.
At first she thinks it’s part of some weird prank, a bizarrely weird prank, that there’s a mirror maybe. That’s the only explanation she can give as to why apparently her doppelgänger is sitting in the seat of that car, looking directly at her—and oh if what those people say is true about meeting your clone she is definitely going to die tonight.
Alien robots, clones.
Sure, why not?
And then the figure—who is her in a black and white Bee printed shirt, how is this her?—seems to notice Charlie, really notice, and then she flickers, pixelated blue, rendering her a projection, nothing more as she’s snuffed out from existence.
No driver.
No driver—
And a Bee printed shirt—
In a car that—
::Charlie:: Comes a voice swallowed by static. Her voice, but her likeness this time is a blessing, a comfort, because she knows, without a doubt, with all this hope blossoming fireworks in her chest—
“Bumblebee?” she breathes, takes to his name like oxygen in her lungs.
::Charlie!! [Bzzzt]—Charlie Charlie——𝙘𝙝𝙖𝙧𝙡𝙞𝙚𝙚𝙚𝙚𝙚[zzt]—Charlie!!! ♫⋆｡♪ ₊˚♬ ﾟℐ’𝓂 𝓈𝑜 𝑒𝓍𝒸𝒾𝓉𝑒𝒹, 𝒶𝓃𝒹 ℐ 𝒿𝓊𝓈𝓉 𝒸𝒶𝓃’𝓉 𝒽𝒾𝒹𝑒 𝒾𝓉 ˖ ݁♬⋆.˚𝄞::
And though he’s not safe to go into robot mode here, as much as she wants him to, this is enough because that’s him, that’s him, those thousand voices all belong to him and she can’t help but laugh, a little crazed—a little insane maybe, but insanely over the moon, and past stars and galaxies and wherever he came from because Bee’s back. He’s back and she’s rushing out of the booth to meet him, job be damned.
Charlie’s hand trails over his bonnet, smooth, yellow, and exactly how she remembers it. Remembers him.
The hologram though, that’s new. Charlie had seen the large projection, the one of that red and blue bot that had towered into the sky. But copying her with such finesse that the image is unmistakable from reality, almost as if Charlie’s still the one driving him around, it’s as oddly touching as it is really, really weird.
(Replaced her already, Bee?)
At least she knows who to go to if she ever needs an alibi. You know. If the situation ever arises.
Not that she would like it to.
Charlie places a hand on Bee’s roof as she leans in, casual, just—
Just catching up with an old friend.
Charlie beams.
(Seeing him again—she doesn’t think this smile is ever going to leave her face.)
::𝙲𝚘𝚖𝚎 𝚑𝚎𝚛𝚎 𝚘𝚏𝚝𝚎𝚗?::
“I work here, among other places,” she says, light, light as a feather, every word so buoyant and floaty and she has to be dreaming right now, up in cloud nine. But it’s not and he’s real, and she has so much to say now that he’s here again. First though— “Did Memo put you up to this? Did he tell you I work here and send you over or—wait, you were shocked to see me. Were you seriously going to come all the way over to Brighton Falls for a movie and not say hi?”
There’s a playfulness to her glare, but also, the more she thinks about it, there’s sincerity too. Had he?
::I came—to see ɎØɄ. ♬⋆.˚ 𝄞 𝓨𝓮𝓼, 𝓘 𝓼𝔀𝓮𝓪𝓻, 𝓲𝓽’𝓼 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓽𝓻𝓾𝓾𝓾𝓾𝓽𝓱 ｡♪ ₊˚ But—[zttt]—𝐧𝐨 𝐨𝐧𝐞’𝐬 𝐡𝐨𝐦𝐞. [BZzt]- ˢᵒ ⁱ drove heRe for—[zzzzzzzz]-a—movie::
For how many sound bites and radio stations Bumblebee has to flip through for that, he manages to get through it all very quickly, dispelling her worries as soon as they come.
Huh.
In their time apart, he’s got pretty good at using that radio.
“Well, we’re both here, and that should be it for ticket sales tonight, so why don’t we do both of those things? No need for a body double if you have the real deal, right?” And then she tacks on, “Oh and don’t think we aren’t talking about that. ‘Cause you’ve got some explaining to do, bud.”
She feels his body hunch slightly on his wheels before bouncing up again.
::It’s a date::
(And maybe it’s just a sound clip, just something he has floating around, but—
Huh.
She doesn’t mind the sound of that.)