This fic is part of an AU on Tumblr where Lightning grows up in Radiator Springs, and is there when Sally first arrives from Los Angeles!
When Lightning wakes to shine the gas pump at Flo's the next morning, the girl is still in town, drinking something plain and watching the sunrise change the color of the buttes. She's entranced but acting like she's trying not to be. Acting like she's seen it all before, and she knows where she is, and she's not from the city. But of course she is.
She's not trying to be high and mighty, though. Lightning knows what that looks like. One time - one time! - when he was little, he'd said something crass, gotten "too big for his tires" as Doc said, and Doc had made him sit in Ramone's hall of mirrors for hours and hours and hours, so he'd know what ego looked like.
This girl doesn't look like that. She's just trying to fit in.
Or maybe, he thinks, she's imagine what it might be like - what it could be like - if she stayed.
"You got that song stuck in my head, you know," says the girl. "From your humming."
"Oh!" Lightning says. It's supposed to be casual 'oh,' like 'Oh! I'm just minding my own business. An 'Oh! I totally didn't come out here to talk to you!' oh. "Do you know it?"
The girl shakes her head. "Is it new?"
Lightning laughs. "Uh, no. Not so much."
"What's that?" the girl asks, flipping her headlights on. Here in the shade of the mountains, Flo's not quite touched by the sun on Willy's, they're just bright enough to cast a warm arc toward one of the town's stucco relics.
Lightning shrugs. "They used to call it The Cone. Kind of a - red light sort of thing. I think."
The girl's eyebrows arch. "Cozy," she says.
"But I wouldn't know anything about that," Lightning adds quickly. "It's been closed as long as I've been here."
"What happened?" she asks.
Lightning shrugs again. "The owners moved on. I dunno if you've noticed, but people don't really tend to... stay. Here."
Highbeams. Just for a moment, but Lightning sees.
"Maybe they'd stay if they had a place to rest," the girl breathes. She's got a look about her, and she hasn't taken her eyes off the ruin that is The Cone. "Maybe - "
"Sure," Lightning allows. "But they gotta end up here first. That's the hard part. I mean, you got here by accident, didn't you? It's not like you plugged Radiator Springs into your GPS and - "
"You're not in the GPS," says the girl. She still hasn't taken her eyes off The Cone. "I checked last night. But - "
Lightning sighs. "You know Route 66?"
No, because no one does.
"YES!"
Lightning stops dead. She's not supposed to say yes. She's not supposed to sound excited. He's had this conversation with a dozen irritable, lost, dehydrated travelers over the years and not once has one ever responded like her. "Wait, what?" he says.
"There's a sign!" she says, animatedly. "In Santa Monica, where I'm from. There's a sign about Route 66. The Mother Road, right? Wait, you're telling me that's where we are? This is Route 66?!"
"I think...so...?" Lightning says. He reverses ever so slightly. They've gotta be taking about two different things, right? She's confused, he assures himself.
But god, he doesn't want her to be.
"This is amazing," she says, as she darts into the narrow alleys between the condemned buildings. She looks up at the rusted neon signs, some of the tubes shattered in places and dusting the ground with sandy glass. She treads lightly over brittle paint curls, brushed up against crumbling foundations like faded rainbow tumbleweeds, and peers through windows no longer filled with glass.
Her eyes - they're a nice green, soft, a little blue, the way Lightning imagines the ocean must look; Santa Monica, right? - behold something else entirely.
"The Route 66." Her tone is reverent. "I need to make a call. I have an idea. I think I know - Where can I make a call? Could you - "
If he'd never seen her smile like that, full-bodied, tires jiggling, he'd have still fallen for her.
That smile, though.
Lightning chuffs. "You really are a maniac, aren't you?"