Archive of Our Own ^beta

It happens in a single moment.

Doc is just trying to have some afternoon oil, but Lightning won't stop pestering him, boundlessly full of energy.

He’s been tailing Doc’s bumper all morning, yapping about anything and everything just to get a response. Even a morning run hadn't toned him down.

Doc supposes it's all good and well; his driver is healthy and well-prepared for the endurance sport of the Cup Series. 400 miles in a few hours, hardly a sweat. They're both doing their jobs well.

But he’s still getting on Doc’s nerves, despite all the patience he tries to muster for the young racer. Sometimes, it runs out.

Lightning gets just a little too close to Doc’s tasty can of oil, and Doc snaps on reflex. With a sudden turn of his frame, he growls sharply back at Lightning, loud enough for everyone to hear, and definitely more raw and feral than he meant it to be.

Doc is planning to brush it off and move on, but before he’s even done making the damn sound, Lightning responds.

Lightning whines back instantly, loud like he’s been struck, and he rolls into reverse and presses his chassis toward the ground. Doc turns to stare at him incredulously, an apology dying in his throat, and Lightning’s face crumples up, and the whimpering continues, like once he's started he can’t stop.

What.

Everyone has stopped to look at the commotion now, and Doc just sits there confused like an idiot. Lightning always pushes back on the things Doc says or does, defiant or mischievous, always searching for the boundary’s edge and crossing it with devious glee to challenge him boldly, again and again. But now here he is, backing away from Doc, a sign of submission never so clear before.

Doc apparently hasn't responded fast enough in the moment since he growled, because Lightning hasn't shut up yet. He’s flush to the ground now, shuffling backward to make himself smaller, practically begging with each uncontrolled pule.

Doc blinks. Snap out of it!

“Hey. Lightning. Take it easy,” Doc tries to keep his voice calm. He wants to laugh at Lightning’s ridiculous reaction, but he can’t, not with the way even his scent has yielded, dulled and plunged into petrichhor. 

The kid’s eyes well up with Doc looking at him, still whining on loop. Chrysler. He stress-response swallows, keeping his teeth partly hidden in terror or embarrassment, none of it good. The longer it goes on, the more Doc hates it. Lightning should listen to him yes, but not like this, this isn't at all what Doc wants. He’s somehow fucked it all up again.

Okay, sure, Doc snapped, but it was just a normal little growl, one any packmate should be able to handle-

Oh.

Right. Lightning and Doc are pack now, aren't they. Lightning is submitting to him, but for some reason, he's really, really bad at it, and it's stressing him out?

Lightning is a racecar, he knows these things intrinsically. Why would he be bad at communicating with his pack? Unless…

Doc’s eyes widen as he stares at the difficult boy, heart torn in two as he realizes the truth. Lightning never learned how; no one taught him the intricacies, he has no experience. His parents must have either not given a damn or been roadcars (or both), and no other racer had ever wanted him before; he’s never been anyone’s pack. Until now. Until Doc.

Doc is going to maul something. Later. Keep it cool.

“Look at me,” Doc tries again, so carefully. Lightning obeys, fighting to keep eye contact and not rip them away again, swallowing again like he’s nauseous. Doc stays still. “Everything is all right. All I meant was give me a little room.” 

Some of the tension leaves Lightning’s frame, the whimpers starting to trail off, and he only loosens up enough to start shivering.

No. Stop that. Doc tries to think of what else he can say to fix it. Maybe if he explains more?

Fillmore whispers from a few pumps away, “What are they talking about?”

Guido shushes him. “Cose da corsa,” he whispers back.

“I see,” Sarge mutters.

“Lightning,” Doc is trying so hard to stay calm and not also freak out. Jesus, Lightning’s moods are infectious. Maybe Doc needs more practice with pack cohabitation, too- it’s been a long time since he lived in tandem with other racecars. “Easy. It’s just normal pack banter. Trust me, you’ll know when I'm mad for real-” he cracks a smile, still trying to diffuse Lightning’s fears.

It works; one of the words Doc says somewhere in there stops the trembling. Lightning’s eyes widen, still a bit glossy and damp, and he sits up straighter on his wheels again like he’s had some sort of revelation, pauses there for a few seconds to compose himself. He glances away with a little huff at Doc’s joke, and nods to himself. 

“Right, yeah. Okay,” he says, voice quieter than normal, but he smiles at Doc again. There’s his boy.

***

(Many years later.)

They're in Kentucky running practice laps, and Cruz is having a hard time keeping traction today. Mr. McQueen heads out with her, putting himself between her and the wall until she figures out this track’s lines. She's sliding all over the place, and you can only scrape yourself along the wall or spin out too many times before it isn't funny anymore.

Around and around they go for twenty minutes, and Cruz still doesn't have it right. Mr. McQueen explains it to her over and over in exasperation, trying to find new ways to phrase it but instead losing further meaning with each attempt. He’s straight up speaking in riddles.

Cruz had joked about it once, and somehow made it worse.

“Just pretend you're Luke on Dagobah, it'll make sense later,” he told her, which was just an upsettingly nerdy thing to say, and she asked him if he saw Car Wars when it was new, just to piss him off (it did; "I'm not that old, for cryin’ out loud!”).

So now here they are on the speedway, and Cruz is having a rookie moment trying to nail this driving line. A little less throttle out of the curve of the turn before laying on thick, yes, she’s getting it-

-she skims the slick part of the turn wrong again, and shoves Mr. McQueen into the wall with a squeal of metal. Oops. “Sorry!”

He recovers fine, and they head down the straight to the next turn. Brake, downshift, she tries again-

And just before she overdoes it, he growls at her in warning. Like, a real growl, all mean with engine and gears and breath, teeth bared and loud over the wind.

The noise is so unexpected she forgets to overthink, and comes out of the turn into the next smoothly.

Why would he growl at her? Is he mad at her for screwing up so much??

She manages to take her eyes off the track and send him a questioning glance for a moment. “What was that for?” Cruz asks.

He shakes his hood out. “Nothing, it’s fine. You're doing good, keep going,” is all he says, and he goes back to speaking in his grammatically upsetting riddles.

Later, after most of the crews head off for the day, it clicks.

He was speaking racecar to her.

Okay, not really, it's not a language, it's more of a set of ingrained behaviors, traits that come with the ecological niche of evolving to be fast. But it still means something.

Cruz is a racer; but she wasn't born a racecar. Racecars didn't seem to like it when roadcars 'encroach on their turf’ so to speak, Cruz remembers all too well with a frown, but the Cup Series is just a sport; anyone can participate, and Cruz is far from the first roadcar to do so. Anyone can be a racer.

But he was speaking to her. Like they were one and the same, like he really doesn't believe any of those nasty things he once said, that she couldn't possibly understand what it was like. It’s like he’s treating her like one his own, one of his pack-

Cruz squeals and rushes toward him as he appears just then. “You goober!” she laughs, and thumps him in the wheelhouse.

“What?” he freezes, bewildered. “What’d I do?”

Cruz basks in the warmth of her own heart, and grins at him.“Just the dark and twisted crimes.”

His brow pinches in confusion. “I told you, I'm not watching Batcar.”

“Batcar not watching, I am,” Cruz does an impression of his voice in Yoda’s syntax. She still hasn't figured out why he’ll reference Car Wars, but not Batcar. But she’s solved enough mysteries today.

“Hey, I don’t- Cut it out,” he says.

She leaps away from him, feeling silly, and mock-growls at him to test her theory.

Instantly, he growls back at her on reflex, much quieter than earlier that day with hardly a flash of teeth, and Cruz just laughs all over again.

“What’s so funny?” he just cocks his hood at her, unable to put the pieces together that he’s shown his cards.

Oh, Cruz is going to have fun with this.

***