Chapter Text
The smell always hit him first. Burning rubber, hot brakes, engine oil. A smell so biting you could taste it at the back of your throat. Jay Walker loved it. He always told himself if someone bottled the scent and sold it at department stores, he’d buy it off the shelf, spray it on his pillow, and maybe even wear it to fancy dinners. Not that he went to fancy dinners, but still.
Today, though, the smell carried something sweeter. He’d just qualified P1.
Better than he’d dared hope, honestly. He’d beaten Griffin Turner on pace, and not by a fluke either. Half a second, clean and repeatable. He could already hear Turner’s interview later: how qualifying didn’t matter, how he hadn’t been trying, how he’d destroy Borg Racing on Sunday. With all that, the man was never at a loss for excuses.
Jay yanked his gloves off as he ducked back into the garage, pulling at the collar of his fireproofs. The noise of the track muffled behind the half-shut door and was replaced by the cacophony of metal tools clattering in the distances and the faint, yet steady, hum of the fans. . Kai sat slumped in a folding chair, still in his race suit, helmet in his lap like he was deciding whether or not to chuck it across the room. His head hung low, spikes plastered damp to his forehead. Kai wasn’t the most gracious loser, and unlike Turner, he’d lost by more than a little today.
“Tough run?” Jay asked, trying to sound casual. He heard the danger in his voice as soon as it left his mouth, but it was too late to pull back.
Kai’s head snapped up, eyes blazing. For a second Jay thought the other man might actually swing the helmet at him. Instead, Kai cracked the seal on a water bottle and drank like it was a contest. The plastic caved under his grip, crinkling loud in the echoey garage.
Jay raised his hands in surrender. “I’ll take that as a yes.”
Before Kai could spit back, a new voice cut into the charged environment of the garage. It belonged to a girl pushing the navy blue coverall sleeves up and holding a wrench loosely in her other hand, her pace confidently direct enough that Kai looked like a passing raincloud.
Jay blinked. He didn’t recognize her.
She crouched by Kai’s car first, eyes flicking over the front suspension. Kai muttered something that sounded like about time and leaned back in his chair. Relief, not surprise—which was interesting.
Then she glanced up, and Jay realized he was staring. Not exactly at her face, though she had soft features framed by the way a wisp of hair kept slipping free of her ponytail, but at the way she moved, like she was perfectly at home here among carbon fiber and grease.
“Who’s this?” Jay asked, tugging at his collar again, suddenly too aware of the sweat drying on his shirt.
Kai set his water bottle down with a thud. “My sister,” he said flatly. “Nya. She’s filling in for Doc.”
That stopped Jay cold. Dr. “Doc” Julien had been Borg Racing’s chief mechanic since before Jay joined the team. He was reliable. Unshakable. He was the one who used to slap Jay on the back before a race and mutter, 'don’t overthink it, kid.' If Nya was here instead of him…
Jay tried to keep his voice level. “Since when is Doc gone?”
“On leave or something,” Kai said with a shrug, standing up. “For family time, he has a son named Zane, I think.”
Jay frowned. Doc had a kid? News to him. He opened his mouth to ask more, but Kai was already halfway to the door, helmet tucked under his arm.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Kai muttered, eyes cutting between Jay and Nya as if he didn’t trust either of them but couldn’t be bothered to say so. Then he was off, with the door slamming shut behind him.
Which left Jay alone with Nya.
She stood and crossed to his car, gaze flicking over the front wing. “Angle’s off,” she said, matter-of-fact. “Probably cost you on the straights.”
Jay blinked. “I adjusted that myself.”
That earned him a sidelong glance, skeptical but not unkind. Like she was measuring whether he was another driver who thought torque was a gourmet pastry.
“Not wrong,” Jay added quickly, crouching beside her. “It was pulling a touch high. But I compensated with brake bias through sector three. That’s how I stayed clean through the chicane. Otherwise Turner would’ve closed in on me.”
Her brow lifted slightly, a flicker of amusement there and gone. “Huh. Didn’t think you’d notice something like that.”
Jay felt himself grin, a little too proud. “I notice everything. It comes with the job.”
Nya knelt to check the bolts, tightening the knot of her sleeve as she bent over. A streak of grease caught on her thumb, which she wiped absently across her coverall leg. “The job’s not just driving, Jay Walker,” she said, with a soft smile. “It’s keeping your car in one piece, too.”
Jay watched her for a second too long again before blurting, “You’re not wrong. Here, watch me for a second.” He loosened a nut, spun it back, quick but clean. She steadily mirrored the motion with her own wrench.
Before the two of them could even speak, they fell into a natural rhythm, her slow, methodical checks balancing with his faster, almost instinctual touch. She calmed the nerves, and he fanned the flames. She smoothed, he sparked. She steadied, he pressed forward.
Jay noticed her hair had slipped loose again, and was brushing against her cheek. She simply blew away her hair without thought or hesitation, and moved her sleeve up as far as she could with the back of her wrist as she leaned closer to the wheel, concentrating. He caught the faintest curve of her lips as she worked, like she wasn’t letting herself smile but couldn’t quite stop it either.
And he was smiling too, which was completely ridiculous, as they had hardly exchanged even ten sentences all day. And yet he felt ease in it, this little moment of wordless partnership bound by the whims of chance, and he felt light in his chest. And for the first time all day, Jay was not thinking about Kai's glare over the top of his helmet or Turner hanging in shadow on the waiting grid. Not about interviews or headlines or the endless, exhausting game of proving he belonged.
His thoughts were here, in the clink of tools and the faint grease on Nya’s hands, in the way her calm steadiness made room for his restless energy.
And he wasn’t sure what that meant. Not yet.