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It doesn’t seem right to head back to town today. They know there won’t be any drinks at the 190 Club for them. Rick had almost started feeling at home there, funny enough, something to do with the whole crowd pouring in high on adrenaline from the races each week, or just that most of them had grown up together. Whatever it was, in there it was like they could all pretend everyone was friends for a few hours. It’s ruined now. But so what. Sooner or later he’ll be dead and he won’t have crossed any finish lines in the 190 or any other club.
Grant takes him to Riverside, says he can get the lay of the track early tomorrow, then takes him to a motel off the highway. The place isn’t exactly full, a week out from the race, but they’ve got one room with two beds in it.
Rick’s picturing the way Jolene last looked at him, trying to hear how she sounded, and before he knows it they’re at the bar one parking lot over. There’s three other people in the whole place and for some reason the lights are up, so Rick can make out every scuff in every wood and plastic surface. The air feels punched out of him. He wants to be dead drunk and half an hour later he’s halfway there. He wishes he was puking his guts out, rolling his car.
Grant frowns down at Rick’s growing collection of glasses. The lone bartender has figured out there’s not enough of a tip in it for him to bother clearing them away.
“You aren’t sorry, are you?” Grant says it like a schoolteacher.
It’s a simple question with a simple answer, but that’s just what’s eating him, he can hardly remember Jolene’s face, already she seems like she could’ve been just anybody. And he thought he’d never forget Hawk, towering and inhuman in the glare of his headlights, bringing down the axe, and he could feel when the blade split metal and it seared into him like a brand. But something had started to happen to Hawk, too, that same night, till the last Rick saw of him he wasn't any different from everybody else. And maybe in a couple weeks Rick won’t remember his face either. And what if— All of a sudden he’s so plastered he can’t see straight and he hears himself trying to say, “My whole life, I ain’t ever… I ain’t got any…”
There’s something hollow, inside him, between the two of them. He reaches his hands out on the bar in front of him and squeezes them shut, to grasp it, crush it in his fists, crumple it out of existence like so much scrap metal.
“Of course you don’t,” Grant murmurs, so gentle it does make him want to retch. He’s disgusted by all of it, from the way the man looked in the streetlights watching the money with his hand on the wheel to the way Rick goes so easy now, leans into Grant’s warm hand on his shoulder, the back of his neck, buries his face in Grant’s lapel.
“You’re a winner. You’re my boy,” Grant says into the hair above Rick’s ear.
---
Rick stumbles all the way through the doorway and straight onto his bed. He stretches himself out, propped on one arm, barely. The swirl patterns on the bedspread catch in his vision and spin. Grant is resting against the door, plainly looking him over like he’s a brand-new Chevy. Not the first time he’s caught Grant’s eyes wandering, and hell it’s not the first time he’s leaned back on his elbows and let him do it. This far gone he doesn’t have the stomach for lying and the truth is feeling like a Chevy doesn’t always make a guy think so badly of himself. Worse things to be.
Grant’s eyes twinkle in the lamplight. He’s giving Rick the fond look he sometimes does when Rick’s working on a car or they’re watching a race together, like it’s something only the two of them understand. Rick could never quite tell if it was supposed to make him feel the way it did, or if he was even meant to see it.
What if it was all bullshit, all that not wanting to be tied down, all that doing it on his own. He never got tied down to anybody, but that’s not exactly the same thing. Maybe he knew it when he let Grant walk him out of that jail.
“That was a good idea you had, the steel reinforcements.” Grant sounds proud as hell, gives Rick the feeling he's got something right no one else ever has.
And that’s… There’s something that was gnawing at Rick, getting him irritable, throwing off his focus, till he had it, a shiny little secret, morning of the race. He wants to say it to Grant, now, like how he’d show off a stolen gem, if he ever had one. “You know… when I was with Jolene… I wanted Jolene when I saw Hawk standing behind her. Wanted Ellen when I saw Ed McCleod on her back. Would you figure… figure that means something?”
It probably makes Grant smile. Rick’s losing his face in the dimness. “It means you’re a winner, that’s all.”
He wishes he could’ve not known whether he really said it out loud, and he’s gonna say, Hell, what’s the difference, when you die you’re dead and that’s it, but then he’s asleep.
---
He wakes up as the sun is rising and he doesn’t feel bad. His throat’s parched. He has the sensation he’s sweated out all the salt and all the water in his body. It’s sort of a pleasant feeling; dry, pure. Grant’s not there so he gets up and throws open the curtains for the hell of it and he still doesn’t feel bad. The hollow thing, it’s shriveled too, he hardly notices it. As he’s washing up he sees himself in Ed’s crash, sees that he gets out of the car, throws off his helmet, walks to the ambulance and past it, unharmed, untroubled. It makes him something like disappointed. He knows he’ll never feel the way he did when Hawk was raising the axe ever again. And he knows there isn’t any body and soul, not like Ellen said; it’s all one, and Grant has galvanized his.
---
Grant comes back with breakfast. There’s a crinkle around his eyes that wasn’t there before, he's all relaxed and warm and almost smiling. No good reason for it. Rick hasn’t had any ideas between last night and now. He’s not a better driver than he was twelve hours ago. Except he is. He can feel it, clear as day, down through to the tendons of his hands.
Rick realizes he never even saw Grant take more than a step into the room last night. Maybe that was for Rick’s benefit, though Rick wasn’t nervous, hadn’t been ever since Grant folded out the flyer for the Figure Eight. Or, Grant had a few drinks too, maybe he hardly trusted himself— But Grant does trust himself. Rick couldn’t say the same about anyone else he knows. Grant’s touch had been sure and steady and measured just like everything else about him. He missed it, in bed last night, the brushes of wool coat and calloused hands that had gotten him back to the room, misses it more now that Grant’s back solid in front of him.
And now each texture and scent he can halfway remember is hitting him in waves. He closes the distance fast and nuzzles his face back into Grant’s collar, presses lips to his neck. He can smell sweat, old cologne, maybe Grant hadn’t slept, maybe he’d just leaned there and stared at Rick all night. Before he can help it he’s grinding his cock against Grant’s hipbone.
His skin prickles where Grant presses against him. It takes him a moment to understand Grant’s trying to push him back to the bed, another to realize he’s clinging onto his shoulders like a child. Once he’s sitting Grant kneels down between his thighs. He shudders. Grant tilts his head up, looking fond again. It does more for him than any of Jolene’s tricks. He wishes the sun hadn't risen yet.
Grant says, “I’ll bet people always liked to tell you you’re not too smart. They’d say you don’t know what’s good for you. But that isn’t true, is it?” He leans in, curls his hand over Rick’s knee, presses his fingers into the inside of his leg.
Rick bites his lip hard enough to hurt. Yeah, he can pick winners too, even if maybe he didn’t realize it until now. Grant’s not the only man in the state races cars. Truth is people like Grant need guys like him on the track. Just the way he needed a man like Grant to put him there. And they could both do a hell of a lot worse…
Grant’s big hand burning into his thigh. Grant says, a little insistent, “You know what’s good for you?”
Rick nods. Grant slides his palm up over Rick’s cock, and that’s all it takes and he’s seeing bright white.
He’s got an impulse to drop to his knees himself and return the favour, to kiss Grant hard on the lips, or sock him one right on the jaw, or go for the car keys and never look back. He doesn’t. He drinks the lukewarm coffee Grant presses into his hands and then he lets Grant guide him to the shower.
---
Rick revs the engine experimentally. He figures they're pretty much tuned up for Riverside.
Grant nods his approval. “Listen, I told you I fool around with all kinds of racing. I don’t fool around with all kinds of drivers.”
It could be a joke, but it isn’t, the way Grant says it.
Rick says, “Don’t worry, I’m gonna be doing circles around these chicken farmers. They won’t know what hit them.”
Grant sizes him up with another nod. “I’m in the business of making good bets. I want you to know I had you figured for a sure thing the first time I saw you. And after what you did with that arm…” Grant chuckles indulgently. Shit, of course he could tell. Rick’s not sure anymore why he bothered hiding it. “Stick with me, huh?”
“Sure, and all that stuff you said about me when I was on the Figure Eight circuit, that was just good business too, right?” Rick says for no reason, no heat behind it.
“Of course. It got you here, didn’t it?” Grant says with a little laugh.
Easy enough to believe he means it, and either way it’s true. Nothing to get sore about. Easier than the last day's been, trying to tell himself nothing happened at the motel, or that Grant hadn’t really meant anything by it anyway. And if he's getting this routine even after the other morning it's because California Custom does need him. Because Grant knows Rick can do a hell of a lot more for him than any other guy on the track.
He feels a bit like he’s dreaming again. He’s glad he can reach out and grasp Grant’s arm, find him solid and flesh and blood.
“Alright, alright.” Grant claps a hand down hard over Rick’s. “So, I’ve got myself a winner?”
“Alright, you got yourself a winner.”
Of course he’s gonna win Riverside. He’s gonna win after that, too, can see all the tracks and all the trophies ahead of him like everything’s happened already. He wants to say he knows why, and then he wants to say something like, What if I never felt like I ever really won a race, not yet, not really, something they’d have a big blond guy saying in a picture he’d take a girl to.
---
He starts his engine— Hears the power in the hum of it— Feels nothing— nothing— nothing—