He can only take so much of a quiet seascape and Optimus Prime's careful watch of the sky before the urge to flee overtakes him. Sam, at heart, is brave. He's survived so many times because when the dust is clouding up and cities are falling around his ears, he gets back to his feet. But when all is said and done, he's more than ready to curl up in a ball in some corner and close his aching eyes and just sleep already.
There's a time for courage and sacrifice, and there's a time to be a kid. He feels like being a kid now. While it lasts. It never seems to last long.
Sam doesn't touch Optimus before he leaves, though instinct makes his fingers twitch; he's not so sure it's real yet. But he murmurs a goodbye, and he does reach out to Mikaela as he passes her, in that sort of I'm okay but I need space so I'm going to go but it's really okay, we're really okay way. She smiles at him. She's got a great smile. He wishes he could tuck it up inside of him to fix all the stuff that feels wrong, because it's that great, it's that powerful.
But he is empty, and he goes to find Bee.
Bee, whose beaten and dented body is crying out for him, for rest, for this. The soundless plea resounds in his bones like the vibration of an engine. Even when they can't see each other. It's in him, and around him, and only for him. Sam doesn't understand it. He doesn't pretend to. But he goes to Bee, now that he's not normal anymore, now that it's okay because it's over.
Bee, as always, is waiting. In his alt form, silently parked in the corner of a large exterior storage bay on the ship, Sam's car is both a pitiful and welcome sight. The air is cool in here, and Sam feels relief. He wonders if it feels good to Bee, too, after Egypt and the heat that scorned flesh and custom paint alike. Sam feels like Egypt is still in him. Like there's sand in every crevasse of his body, in his bloodstream, in his mouth. The sun that touched him too hard when he'd been unconscious (dead) has permanently fried his circuits. His veins. Not circuits, because he's not like them.
Except for this, strange and ethereal as it is. Except for the tiniest of connections: the curve of his fingertip against Bee's fender, the worn press of tire to his cheek, and the way he can sink into that cushioned seat like it's a hug, a big ridiculous hug, that absurdly wonderful and slightly disturbing pleasure and safety at being inside of Bee, hidden away from where any enemy can get at him. Sam greets Bee now with what they have between them (the smallest of sparks in the dark, an understanding felt in electricity: hello, oh god, aren't you tired, aren't you tired, please shut down with me).
He doesn't know how he ever thought he could keep away. Those plans, now so distant, disappear and reality makes him want to cry. But here is Bee. Bee is here.
"Sam," says Bee softly, as Sam opens his door. The mechanical voice is ever-raspy, disused, thin. Sam loves it. He loves this car. He burns and bleeds and falls apart with this car, sometimes, and that, with everything it entails and especially the things it can't, scares the shit out of him.
Bee says his name again: "Sam."
Sam has no words. He just wants to be a kid again. Hadn't he run away from Bumblebee to be a kid again? But he'd been wrong. So wrong. He climbs into the backseat and locks the doors behind him.
Bee has nothing else to speak of, either. As if heaving a sigh, his compact body dips down closer to the compartment's floor. It's not an exasperated sound; more like, if Bee could express it, he'd be telling Sam that this is just perfect and pleasedon'tgoagain. Which is just fine, because Sam can't go anywhere, he doesn't even plan on going anywhere. He's done. They're done.
It's done.
Sam can hear tires shift, getting comfortable. He closes his eyes, curls up like a child, and rests his ear on soft leather.
They have no words to give each other. Just the nothing, certain and comforting, that wraps about them. He's been aching for it; exhaustion follows on the heels of relief.
Sam drifts for a while and when he wakes, Bee is shifting through the radio on low volume, searching for something elusive. Sam blinks, sleep crusting his eyes. He breathes, deeply, and listens for the faintest noises that indicate Bee's mechanical systems. He listens for something he might recognize.
Finally, he asks, "What now?"
Bee hums gently.
Shifting, Sam brushes his fingers down the buttermilk lines of Bee's upholstery. "Do I go back to college? Find a higher calling? Maybe save the world next weekend again?"
Bee chirps in alarm and chastisement. That's a no, then.
"It's never going to stop." He doesn't have to make it a question.
The radio hesitates and then plays. "Brutal machines, unbending laws. Can't slow me down, I'd go on. I'd go on."
Sam whispers, "But where am I going?"
Immediately, without hesitation, without doubt, there is music made to soothe and surrender. (And how screwed up is that? An Autobot warrior, one of Optimus Prime's steadfast soldiers, and he gives his all for a boy, a stupid human boy, Sam who hasn't deserved this and isn't sure he wants to.) "I don't know if you drive, if you love the ground beneath you. I don't know if you write letters or panic on the phone…"
"Bee…"
Bee's engine rumbles beneath Sam's palms. "I'd still like to call you all the same. If you want to, I'm game."
"Anything, huh?" Sam almost smiles. "I don't think everyone else is gonna be up to doing things by my terms, Bee."
A movie clip. He recognizes the voice, but not the message. "They abide and they endure."
"You gonna make them?"
There is silence, and Sam knows the answer. He exhales shakily and rubs his thumb over the shiny seatbelt clip, metal warming. He tries not to think about the answers to his own questions. His stomach rolls, and settles, undecided. He adds, because it has to be said, "I don't think we'll get off so lucky. That'd be cool. That'd be perfect. But things right now? They aren't so cool or perfect, and between everybody there's plenty of ideas of what to do and how to fix this, because everybody wants to do it, but it's all gonna be different, and at the end of the day, just you and me, that's not going to matter. What I want. Or we want. If you want it. Which, I'm not even sure."
There is a pause, Sam's heart sinking as he realizes he can't even begin to untangle his own expression of this. But Bee understands. He shouldn't have doubted. Bee always understands.
And Bee's answer, in Bee's voice, is simple. It is truth.
"Wherever you go, I follow. Sam."
And oh, that shouldn't be a big fucking relief, but it is. It is. His head spinning, Sam lets go of something hard and wary in his chest, some instinct that warns him against abandoning his post. It's all right here, because Bumblebee is with him. Won't leave him. Is not normal, but is not wrong. They are in this storage bay with Egypt scratching at their insides, soldiers but not soldiers, bleeding but not licked, better miserable together than lying when apart. They are more than this junk heap and these tattered, idealistic hopes. If he burrows himself deep enough, digs hard, Sam believes he can almost touch that part of Bee that is dangerously in tune with him; they transverse species and stars and cores.
"I love you, Bee." Like a child. Like a friend. Some stirring thing that takes hold and is alien in its enduring nature. He is awash with it, at peace.
And Bee murmurs to him, old film and old song and old, old voice, beneath the thrum of life, be with me always take any form hello hello more than myself I love you do not go where I cannot find you find you find you always sleep.