Work Text:
6.
Touch and Go
Bruises, touch starved, hunger
It was his growling stomach which awoke him in the dead of the night. The biting pain in his stomach was so strong, and Lightning felt so weak that at that moment all he wanted to do was cry. He hadn’t eaten properly in almost a day. In the race the previous day he had wrecked, not badly, the car took the brunt of it but the left side of his body was marred with bruises. Lightning lay awake pondering his career and injuries as his stomach growled and gurgled.
The young man feared that one day the adrenaline would stop being enough, stop making it worth it. At the ripe age of twenty he was already feeling the effects of his fresh career. In the still of the night he reflected on it. At the brave age of seventeen Harv had signed him on, Lighting didn’t even have a highschool diploma to his name. And in spite of his success, there were times when he keenly missed the anonymity in highschool, of being an ordinary person.
Thrusted from his junior raceway courses and into the limelight of glaring lights topping the roofs of one hundred thousand person arena. His senior year was forgotten, Harv promising that none of that mattered when he was making more money than any of his old friends. With fame came loneliness. The more successful he became the harder he had to train to keep it. Fewer hours asleep, more calluses on his hands, less time to socialise. So Lighting wondered, how long could he keep doing this? His headquarters in Radiator Springs helped, it really did. But he didn’t actually spend a lot of time there. The cold baths, the tweak in his left ankle when he flexed it too hard after years of quick clutch changes, the loneliness. The loneliness was the worst of all. With a father who was never there and a mother who was out on the town every night, Lightning didn’t have a whole lot of reasons to say no to the contract Harv waved under his nose. But that feeling of being alone, no calls home, no lover to ring, no one to hold him on his worst days. It was down right crippling.
Another streak of pain twisted in his stomach, he sighed and swung his legs to the floor. There was a vending machine in the hallway, a quick snack would have to tie him over until morning before he shovelled another energy drink into his mouth. Another thing that hung over his head. His first season on the track he had lived off the things. By the middle of his second season, the energy drinks were finally taking effect. There was a morning when he had been watching Mack unload the 95 and his heart palpitated rapidly. Mack was so freaked out he unhooked the trailer with the 95 still inside and took Lightning to the hospital in the semi-cab. The young racer, still affectionately called a rookie by the other commentators and the media, had sworn off them unless it was race day or the day after.
He creeped out into the hall, credit card in hand and approached the vending machine. The selection was grim. In that split second as he stared through the glass and saw his sullen reflection and Lightning had an out of body experience. He saw himself, burnout, alone, turning to a vending to energise himself when he forgot to.
Lightning didn’t want to live like this. The racing he loved, Doc in his ear, the comments between Bobby and Cal. The rest left him tired and alone. With a stifled whine he smacked his hand into the glass and slid to the floor.
Half a minute later a door creaked open. “Kid?”
Lighting’s head shot up and he willed the heat behind his eyes to leave before whispering, “sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you.”
The crew chief, twenty two years his senior, stepped out of the hall, “I'm middle aged kid, I sleep lightly. What’s going on?” His eyes swept over the shape on the floor, his protege looked worn and desperate. Lightning tilted his head and looked to the roof, his eyes glossy under the dim lights. “You hungry?”
Lightning sniffed and mumbled, “haven’t eaten properly since yesterday.”
The older man walked forward, barefoot, sweatpants and a black shirt donned on his body. He approached the dishevelled young man on his floor and crouched down beside him, “c’mon kid. I’ll get something brought up. No point eating that crap.” He wrapped an arm around Lighting and pulled him to his feet and brought him back to his room. After dropping the kid on the bed Doc rang room service and got the closest thing they had to a comfort meal brought up, two gourmet chicken and avocado sandwiches.
“How you feeling from the crash?” He questioned the younger who had drawn his knees to his chest, back flat against the bed head. Lightning shrugged and pulled up his shirt to reveal what bruises from where he’d hid the roll cake against his torso. Doc winced, the skin had quickly mottled with colour. “Keep an eye on it, if it’s hurting to breathe let me know.”
There was a knock at the door, thank god room service. Lightning quickly scoffed the sandwiches, the hunger hurt more than usual-probably because of the bruises. Doc observed him, the pinched look on his face had lessened but he couldn’t shake the look on Lightning’s face in the hall.
“What’s chewing you? You looked wrecked in the hall, like you’ve been crushed from the inside.” The glassy look was back on his eyes and Lightning placed the plate on the bedside table.
Silence stretched before them and Doc was about to drop the topic before Lightning spoke up. “Do you ever feel lonely, Doc?”
Okay, not where I thought this was heading , the retired driver though.
“Like, when-when you were racing?”
Doc took a seat at the foot of the bed, settling his right on the elbow on the footboard and swallowed carefully, “no...no. Racing wasn’t lonely for me. We all traveled together and had fun along the way, Lou, Junior, Smokey, River, we were close friends.”
The kid nodded, eyes darting around the room as the silence lengthened once more and eyes welling with tears neither mentioned. “If you didn’t get kicked out, how-how long would you have kept racing?”
He sighed and tilted his head, pursing his lips at the question. “I don’t know. As long as I kept winning I guess. Why, thinking about retirement?”
Lightning gnawed on his bottom lip, “Harv signed me on at seventeen.” He relented after a few minutes. “I walked away from everything because I didn’t have anything to stay for. The racing I love, the rush. But the second I walk off the track everything drops. I’m tired, I’m in pain, I’m lonely. But without racing I have nothing.” Lightning paused, heat flushing his cheeks.
“I don’t even have a high school diploma,” he mumbled. Doc watched the man slowly crumble before him. He recognised something had been off with the kid for a little while now, slower to smile, harder to wake up.
“What can I do for you right now?” Doc asked gently. Before him was a boy who had been thrust into the big time and had never had the time to mature naturally, leading to his brash and confident personality when the pair first met. Lightning’s cheeks flushed and he looked down to his knees. “Kid?”
Lightning knew what he wanted but various men in his life had proved that he wasn’t deserving of it, that it wasn’t what he should want or even need.
“Monty, talk to me. The long term solution has to wait until morning. But is there anything I can do for you right now?” The use of his given name made Lightning take a sharp intake of breath. He had admitted it to Doc in a booth of a bar at the end of the last season. He threatened the man with never using it and Doc had complied for the most part. Every now and then he would use it quietly, in Lightning’s vulnerable moments to remind him of the trust they placed in each other.
Lightning mumbled something under his breath which the older man struggled to hear.
“Sorry?” he asked gently.
Setting his jaw and refusing to look Doc in the eye he mumbled again, “I haven’t had a hug in a long time.”
“Oh Lightning,” Doc sighed, shifting to sit beside Lightning. The phrase touch starved came to his mind. Kid didn’t even have any friends when he went soaring through Radiator Springs. From what had slipped out when he was tired or drunk, or struck by a moment of honesty, his dad was a dead beat and his mother gave more time to strange men than her own son. The young man was starved of affection and praise. He preened when any one older praised him for whatever reason. That desperate eagerness to please had never died.
Doc lay an arm around Lightning’s shoulders and the kid turned towards him. His arms wrapping around Doc’s middle. The height difference between them was a little ridiculous (Lightning just scraped five-foot-four whilst Doc stood a whole foot taller at six-foot-four.) His fingers wrapped themselves in Doc’s t-shirt, terrified to let go now had been enveloped.
Just a moment later Doc felt a shake go through Lightning’s diaphragm, and then once more. Lightning rose a hand to his mouth, embarrassed about his breakdown and instinctively made to pull away but Doc held firm.
“Sorry,” he choked through stilted gasps.
Doc hushed him gently, “it’s okay. I promise, you’re okay.”
“I’m so tired,” he cried softly into the man's chest. A large hand ran up and down his back soothingly, being careful of the bruises that rumbled beneath the shirt. Lighting heard the steady thump of a heart beat in his right ear. The hands that held him were firm and comforting, almost protecting.
“I know,” he whispered. “I know. I’m sorry I didn’t realise you’re hurting. But I’ve gotcha, we’ll figure it out.”
And for that moment, that’s all Lightning needed to fear.