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Hot Rod had thought he’d fit in well on this planet—surely all he had to do was stay in alt mode, and no one would notice anything different about him compared to the rest of its inhabitants.
That was before he’d realized that they all had eyes and mouths in their alt modes, which was a Pit of a thing to notice at second glance. Luckily, once the inhabitants of the small town he’d crashed a few hundred miles outside of realized that he could see and talk just fine, they seemed to just accept that he was another car like they were. Even the fuel they drank, though it didn’t look like much, seemed to sit in his tanks just as well as energon did.
It was slow going, trying to repair his ship without revealing to the vehicles here who he was or saying anything about the millennia of war on his heels. Nobody seemed too suspicious, at least, which was… probably sort of suspicious in its own right.
Whatever. Hot Rod was too busy trying to get his ship fixed up and his slag together to think too hard about it, and their refueling stations accepted his creds just fine, so he wasn’t going to think too hard about the weird cars here.
At least, he wasn’t planning on it.
And then he saw two racecars one morning, blowing past each other on a dirt track with clouds of dust trailing behind them. The way the red one—he was named like a seeker, something about weather, Hot Rod was pretty sure—slammed into that drift with moments to spare before he’d spin out of the turn into the canyon beyond was a thing of beauty. His own tires itched to join, but he’d been sternly talked at by the older navy racer about speeding in town the other night, and did not feel like inviting another lecture.
So he kept going, hauling the trailer full of scrap metal he’d traded for some random knick-knack to the tow truck—Mater—who ran the junkyard, and really, really wishing he could put this slag in his subspace already without bringing up a bunch of questions. Fragging trailers and magnets in their tires, Primus, he couldn’t wait to get back to his ship and transform so he could have thumbs again.
It turned out that the two racers were out there practicing almost every morning, except when the red one, who Hot Rod finally remembered was named Lightning Mcqueen, had an official race. The cars in town (at least, the ones who didn’t go with him) always gathered at the gas station to watch him race (and win, more often than not).
Eventually, they had invited him to watch enough that he couldn’t resist the urge to actually join them. Even if the weird old Model T slapped his aft bumper when he parked next to them.
Unfortunately for Hot Rod, the way Lightning raced when there was something on the line was just as gorgeous as the way he raced for fun. Primus, he needed to share a track with that Corvette, and soon.
He had an unintended opportunity one morning. There hadn’t been any useful scrap in the junkyard for him to take, so he hadn’t bothered hauling the trailer back from said yard. The thing was half scrap anyway, so if it got trashed with the rest of the lot it wouldn’t be too great of a loss.
What that meant was that there was nothing stopping Hot Rod from letting his engine rev a little as he cruises back along the dirt roads to the ones that got him closest to his ship.
The fact that Lightning was practicing alone that morning was just a stroke of luck.
Hot Rod didn’t bother announcing his presence with words, just letting himself slide down the hill to the dirt track in a cloud of exhaust and dust to stop just before he’d have hit Lightning’s side. To his credit, the other car didn’t even flinch. He raised a… Hot Rod wasn’t sure if these guys called them optic ridges, but whatever, that was what it looked like. He raised an optic ridge and gave Hot Rod a cocky grin.
“I was wondering when you were gonna join Doc and I down here. I told him you were a racer.”
Hot Rod laughed, a bit more nervously than he would have preferred. “I prefer my competition a little less likely to give me a talking-to about speeding, I guess.”
“Oh, are you planning on speeding?” Lighting asked, fake shock in his voice. “Y’know that’s a crime, right Mr. … You know, I’m not sure I actually know your name?”
“Hot Rod. Friends call me Roddy,” Hot Rod answered, with a slight shrug of his front wheels. It was an awkward movement to make, requiring the flexing of a transformation joint in a way he wasn’t used to, but he’d picked it up anyway after seeing the cars here do it often enough.
“Well, Roddy, that’s quite the name you’ve got. Only question is… is it compensating or advertisement?” Lightning grinned at Hot Rod with obvious delight. Hot Rod hadn’t noticed that the cars here had electromagnetic fields until right now, teeking the way Lightning’s field shone with joy against his own.
This kind of pre-race trash talk was something Hot Rod hadn’t even realized he’d missed. His laugh now was more genuine, and he let it fall away in favor of revving his engine. “I dunno, why don’t you tell me?”
“Oh, it’s on. Think ten laps’ll be fair?”
“I mean, I’d kick your aft at any number, so sure, ten sounds good.”
The race was a thing of beauty. It spun by in a blur of tight curves and long straightaways, with Lightning either a shifting (gorgeous) target just in front of him or a turbohound nipping at his heels, neither of them ever getting too far from the other.
In the end, Hot Rod wasn’t sure which of them won.
More miraculously, he wasn’t even sure he cared. Dust still spun through the air around them as they came to a stop, and the canyons kept echoing with the twin roars of their engines. Or maybe that was Hot Rod’s audials ringing.
Lightning’s audials must have been similarly worn out; he gestured for Hot Rod to come with him rather than trying to say anything out loud and headed up the side of the slope, back towards the main road.
“That was fragging amazing!” Hot Rod hollered after him, obeying the request to follow for, well. Lack of anything better to do, honestly. “And,” he said, at a more normal volume as he pulled up beside Lightning, “I definitely won.” (Even if he wasn’t sure, there was no way he was going to just admit that.)
“Oh, did you?”
Hot Rod couldn’t give Lightning his shiniest, most flirtatious grin is his alt mode like this, but he was pretty sure that the cheeky tilt of his spoiler would get his feelings across. He purposefully didn’t think too hard about just how much he wanted his feelings to be known (or returned). “Sure did. I’m surprised you didn’t notice the taste of my dust, ‘cause you ate a lot of it.”
Lightning laughed, the sound ringing through the red desert around them, and Hot Rod had to suppress the urge to rev his engine showily.
… He had definitely been on this planet for too long. Stir-crazy, or whatever. That was the only reason he was thinking about if it would be worth looking into figuring out how to kiss someone in his alt mode.
Right?