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It's dark, it's raining, and the call drops without showing any signs it was received by a phone of any kind.
Lightning slams the phone down hard enough to crack the screen. Cal is sitting next to him with his hands folded in front of him, resting on the flimsy trailer table.
"He'll show back up, Lightning," Cal drawls sadly. Lightning pinches his nose and resists the urge to scream.
"What if he doesn't?" he snaps. Cal, patient as ever, just takes it.
"He'll show up," he persists. "One way or another." Cal looks out at the rain coming down in sheets outside. The race finished just in time before the clouds dropped their deluge on them. Lightning didn't even notice that Storm got first (again), he was more focused on the next gen in the purple car, wearing Bobby's number.
"How could they just replace him like that?" Lightning juts forward and just barely resists slamming his hands down on the table. Sally hates it when he does that, so instead he picked the now cracked phone back up and redials the same number, letting it ring until the automated voice kicks in.
He has half a mind to march down to the Octane Gain tent himself and ask them just what the hell they were thinking.
But Lightning knows what they were thinking. Cause Bobby's a great racer, one of the best out there. A fan favorite for sure.
But the problem is that his name doesn't carry the weight that some of the other racers' do, like the King's or even Lightning's. Hell, even Cal has his Dinoco and Lightning'll be damned if all jokes aside Tex would just throw Cal to the curb like Bobby's sponsor did to him.
And from the sad look Cal shoots him, he knows all that too. "It's about the money. You know that."
"After everything Bobby did," Lighting starts, incensed, "after getting that number to where it is now, they're just gonna go an replace him like that?" He huffs an angry laugh. "What has this guy done for them?"
"He made it on the podium, McQueen," Cal snaps, and Lightning now sees just how much this is affecting him too. He looks stressed. Bags under his eyes and everything. And Cal might stress about a lot of little things in life but this is true, adult stress. "Second place. That's what he's doin' for them. Winnin'."
Lightning breathes. He waits just a second too long and the urge to ask if Cal's doing alright dies on the tip of his tongue. He sighs and settles on a pathetic, "Yeah."
Cal rubs a hand through his hair, making it stick up all crazy. The tense quiet is broken after a minute by a gentle knock at the trailer door. It opens after a beat and a very wet looking Strip Weathers steps just inside out of the rain.
"C'mon," he says softly to Cal. "They're all packed up. Just waitin' on you." To Lightning, he gives a smile. A sad one. It seems to be all sad smiles recently. "Y'all did your best out there." He's obviously trying to be comforting, but it falls flat.
"Yeah, yeah." Cal stands up from the table, laying a hand on Lightning's shoulder and squeezing it once before heading to the door. Lightning watches as the King tries to lay a hand on Cal's head as he goes past, maybe even ruffle his hair a bit like he has a million times before, but Cal ducks down and away from the touch, popping his collar up at the rain and not looking back.
The King sighs and looks back at Lightning. "How you doin'?" he asks.
Lightning doesn't answer, just asks a question of his own. "You hear from Bobby? Or anything about him?" Pit chiefs tend to talk and without one of his own, the King is the best he's got.
Weathers sighs and looks back at Cal's retreating form, then back at Lightning. "He'll show." It's all he says. Like deja vu.
Lightning stares down at the contact in his phone. "Yeah," he says, feeling defeated. "That's what they keep saying."
Bobby doesn't show. Not for months. Not 'til after Lightning's own crash.
Lightning doesn't have it in him to keep up with the current racing. He knows who's probably in the lead anyways.
He does know Dinoco still hasn't announced a new racer for them, even going on a month since Cal's retirement. "Retirement". Ugh. It would be a lie if Lightning said he wasn't angry at Cal for just giving up like that. He had avoided Cal like the plague for a small time, but ignoring phone calls is a lot easier than trying to ignore him when the whole Weathers family showed up to his hospital room. The two had a small talk and while Lightning's still a little pissed, it's diminished. Muted.
Everything's become a little muted.
They've become regular visitors alongside Lightning's friends. Everyone from Radiator Springs has made the trip out to the hospital at least once. Some, like Sally and Mater and Mack, never left.
The Weathers come and go. Cal visits the most, bringing an obnoxious amount of flowers, enough to rival even Mater. He half thinks they're in a silent contest and Lightning's gonna have to put a stop to that before his room turns into a botanical garden. The King, whenever he's by, watches Lightning like he's looking for something in him. Lightning's afraid that if he doesn't find whatever this 'it' is, then they're in for a heart-to-heart.
It's fine. The hospital stay is fine. He's on enough drugs so that he doesn't hurt. Sally never leaves his side. He's got enough flowers and get well soon cards to start his own hallmark shop.
He can't watch racing. It hurts too much to think about. Sometimes he'll put on an old one, from their glory days, just to have something on the TV. Those hurt the most.
He's miserable, but it's fine.
And then one day, out of nowhere, Bobby shows up.
"What's up, Lightning?" he asks so casual-like, waltzing into the room like he hadn't been MIA for months. He flashes that award-winning smile and once the shock of seeing his friend for the first time in forever passes, Lightning white-knuckles the cheap hospital blanket with his good hand.
Sally looks between the two, and after a moment stands to leave. She gives Lightning a kiss on the cheek, tells Bobby it's good to see him, and leaves the two to talk.
The room falls painfully quiet once the door shuts behind her. After a minute, Bobby waggles a little stuffed bear Lightning hadn't even noticed he'd been carrying. It's wearing a little 95 jacket. "Here, I, uh," he stutters and shuffles forward awkwardly, flinching back with every step forward like Lightning's going to bite if he gets too close. "I got you this." He settles the bear in the crux of Lightning's good arm, the one not wrapped up and in a brace to keep him from moving his wrist, and then backs back out of swinging range.
Lightning turns the bear over to look at it. It's a stuffed bear. Nothing to write home about. But the little jacket's cute. He sets it on the nightstand next to a pile of cards and turns back to Bobby.
"How are you doing?" Bobby asks when it's clear Lightning isn't going to be the first to say something.
"I feel like I should be asking you that."
Bobby gestures at Lightning laid out in the bed. "Well, you're the one in the hospital bed. Not me, so..." he trails off.
"Where'd you go, Bobby?" Lightning has to ask because it's been killing him. "Two months. No calls, no texts. Nothing."
Bobby seems to be caught between wanting to keep up the carefree façade and letting it go. He makes up his mind with a sigh, dropping into the chair Sally just vacated. "Went on a bit of a bender," he admits quietly, not looking at anything except his hands he keeps wringing together. "Just woke up one day to a phone call saying I was done. No warning, no fanfare. Just suddenly everything I knew life to be was over. Just like that." He snaps and lets his hand fall back to his lap. "Wouldn't even let me finish out the season."
Lightning's anger melts away just as quick. "Yeah." It's pathetic but it's all he can think of to say.
Bobby looks up at Lightning then. He looks like he wants to say something but then seems to settle on something else. "I watched it, y'know. The race after I got booted. I mean, I was piss drunk in a bar somewhere in, like, Toledo or something but I saw it. He's good," Bobby admits. "All of them are."
Lightning hums as opposed to saying something mean.
Bobby keeps talking. "I saw... your race, too. I was back home. In Atlanta, with my mom. Saw you..." His eyes drift to the scratch marks on Lightning's jaw and down to his hurt hand.
Lightning cuts this conversation short quick. "I'm not talking about it," he snaps. Sally's been trying to get him to talk about his feelings and he can feel the King zeroing in on him like a predator wanting to have a talk with its prey.
And now Bobby? Too much.
Thankfully Bobby nods and changes the subject easily. "You know my mom has my first race on VHS?" he says lightly, with a small, jokey smile on his face.
Lightning relaxes, grateful for the change. "Really?"
"Yeah," Bobby runs a hand through his hair, which is noticeably longer with coils starting to fall down towards his eyes and not kept short. "It's not even my first win, either. Just my first televised race. On VHS of all things. I didn't even know they made those anymore."
"Maybe for mother's day you should get her a CD burner. Bring her to the next decade."
"She already has one. She just likes VHS more, I think." He leans forward like he's telling Lightning a secret. "You know, I put it on one day, just because, and the entire time I kept yelling out advice to my past self. Like 'No stop what are you doing?' and stuff like that, right?"
Lightning, who's also been on a bit of a nostalgia streak, nods.
"Man, it's amazing how time flies. And how stuff changes so much. There were guys I didn't even remember racing with until I rewatched it. Like Bordeaux, you remember him?"
"Uh, yeah, I think so. 52, right?"
"Yeah. Nice dude, y'know? But it got me thinking," he pauses, letting out half a breath, "did they feel the same way about us? When we joined the scene?"
Lightning grimaces, remembering his own rookie year. "I'm pretty sure they felt that way about me."
Bobby hums. "Maybe what that Storm kid needs is you to throw him in a cactus," he says with a knowing smirk. If it worked on you, maybe it'll work on him. "I'd pay to see that."
Lightning scrunches up his face and mocks Storm under his breath. "Don't tempt me," he says. "The way he speaks is just like..." He groans. "It made me want to go back and shake the hands of the older guys and apologize, 'cause like, if that's how I was then I don't know how they ever put up with me."
"The same way you put up with Storm," Bobby says. He leans back in the chair and pitches his voice into an annoyingly high pitch. "The patience that comes with old age," he mocks with a shit-eating grin on his face.
"Shut up." Lightning thwacks him on the knee he can reach. "Maybe next time you come to Radiator Springs I'll throw you in a cactus," he threatens.
"Just make sure Jackson Storm goes first so I have something to break my fall." He says Storm's name like how the media and Storm himself says it: sickly and dripping with drama and panache.
"I'm going to hurt you," Lightning threatens.
"Didn't you also have to do something like pave a road?" he asks.
Lightning laughs a little at the memory. "Yes," he says. "And it sucked."
"Okay, now imagine Jackson Storm—"
"—if you say his name one more time—"
"—doing that shit." Bobby rolls right over Lightning's interruption. "He would probably die," he jokes.
Lightning pretends to think about it. "Yeah, probably," he settles on.
"Now that I'd pay to see," he says again. "Not the dying part but the pretty prince having to do hard labor? Count me in. It'd probably ruin his perfect eyeliner."
Lightning tsks. "I don't think Cal'd be happy to hear you reallocating his precious nickname to a Next Gen."
Bobby shushes him halfway through his sentence and Lightning gives him a flat look that probably makes him look like Doc. "Don't say his name."
"Who's? Cal's—?" Again Bobby shushes him. "What?" he asks, exasperated.
"You'll summon him," he whispers, leaning forward into Lightning's space.
"Oh, you're also hiding from Cal. Well that makes me feel better I guess."
Now Bobby shoots him a look. "I don't know how I'm gonna apologize to him."
"Same way you did me," Lightning says without missing a beat. "You don't."
"Shoot," Bobby winces. He rubs a hand down the back of his neck, now looking very awkward. "Look, Lightning. I'm sorry. Really. For leaving, and also for not apologizing."
He can't help but huff a laugh. "It's fine, Bobby. Just try not to ghost us again and I'll consider it even."
"Deal."
The conversation falls and Lightning half debates putting the TV on just to have something on in the background, but the remote's out of his reach. So he picks the conversation back up. "You doing better?"
A pause. Bobby tilts his head to and fro. "A bit," he admits. "Not great but I'm not downing a bottle of wine every night so there's some improvement."
"Bobby..."
"I'm fine, man. Seriously. I got my whole family willing to march down to Octane Gain HQ and keeping them from doing so takes at least half of my fucking brain power at any given time. Plus it was almost good timing since my sister needs a babysitter anyways." He shrugs, trying to pass it off as carefree. But then he zeroes back in on Lightning. "You know what I got last week, though?"
"What?"
"OGain asked, of all things, if I wanted to come back and be their new guy's pit crew chief."
"You're joking." Lightning almost asks if Bobby told them where they could put their damned offer, but he doesn't. Because that is one of the only ways Bobby can come back. Half of him wants him to tell Octane Gain off for pulling such a selfish stunt, but the other half of him wants Bobby to say yes, just so he can see him back in racing scene again. "What'd you say?"
Bobby scoffs and looks away. "Told them to shove it. Throw me out and then ask me to be the man in the tower for guy they replace me with? Hell no. I got more self respect than that."
"Crooked bastards," Lightning mutters. Crew chiefs retire all the time. Bobby still has a chance to come back so Lightning won't worry too much about it.
"I know right?" Bobby scrunches his nose and shrugs. "Like what the hell did they expect me to say? Yes? After all that? And on top of that—" Bobby doesn't get a chance to finish the thought.
Outside in the hallway, a rhythmic thumping sound starts up and gets increasingly louder. Like someone loudly running towards Lightning's room.
The door bursts open. Cal is out of breath and half hanging on the door knob when he points at Bobby. "You!"
And Bobby is launching himself over the bed to put Lightning between himself and the door. "Oh, sh—"