Chapter Text
Alex is the one who buys the drinks, because between him and his older brother, he is less likely to get ID’d by the barman.
“So what is this emergency about?” he asks, putting the beers down on the sticky surface. Marc doesn’t answer until he’s taken a long slug from a bottle.
“I had a revelation.”
When no more is forthcoming, Alex raises his eyebrows. “…And?”
Bottle and head meet bar top with a dull thud. Marc mutters something into the wood that Alex can’t make out, so he hits his brother lightly on the back of the head. “Oi, get up. I can’t hear you down there.”
Marc straightens up, and looks so miserable that Alex gets worried, beyond the ‘What’s Marc being a drama queen about now?’ question that convinced him to go drinking with his brother tonight.
“Daniela Pedrosa.” Marc says the name with equal parts reverence and despair.
Alex shakes his head slightly. “What about her?” He hadn’t heard any problems between his brother and Honda team mate on the grapevine.
“I've finally worked it out.” Marc fidgets with the bottle in his hands and refuses to meet his brother’s eyes. Just in case they know more than they should at this point. “She’s like the drop-dead sexy babysitter I might have had as a teenager- you know the one that’s genuinely nice and caring but keeps up the slightest bit of professional distance between you? The one who, years later, you meet at a job where you’re on equal footing and you think Christ, she’s still so pretty and you’re no longer a kid but she keeps that distance because she won’t see you as anything else?”
Alex eyes his brother warily. “You need help, Marc.”
“I know!” The immediate response tells Alex that Marc’s sort of missed his point. “I’ve won the World Championship and she still sees me as a kid! What can I do?”
“I didn’t even know you still had a crush on her,” Alex muses aloud. When Marc glares at him, Alex can’t help but laugh. “Come on, you aren’t the only Marquez who had a poster of her racing on their bedroom wall. I grew out of it a couple of years ago, though.”
Marc hangs his head in his hands. “I didn’t.”
“Yeah, I noticed.”
“Then they made me her team mate.”
“I remember. You were over the moon.”
“Still am, really.”
“Yeah, the constant smiling kind of gives that away.”
“Shit, do you think she knows?”
“You are slightly obvious-”
“Dani doesn’t have a clue.”
The brothers jump when an unexpected voice enters the conversation. Unnoticed by either of them, Jorge Lorenzo has joined them at the bar. The two extra beers with him cements his place, so they drop the guilty looks at being caught gossiping about another rider and welcome him into the circle.
“What do you mean, she doesn’t have a clue?” Marc is both desperate and pleading.
Jorge smirks. “What, you think Pedrosa-fascination was exclusive to the Marquez household? She’s denser than a neutron star when it comes to this sort of thing.”
Marc slumps on his stool.
“What you need to do,” Jorge says encouragingly, and Alex would like the advice giving if it weren’t for the devilish glint in the Majorcan’s eyes, “Is be completely honest with her. Make it so completely obvious a blind bat couldn’t ignore it.”
Marc perks up, and Alex feels a hint of trepidation.
“Write it on the sky, that sort of thing?” Marc wonders, and Alex feels like putting his head in his hands because he does not need to know how much of an incurable romantic his older brother is.
But Jorge’s shaking his head, “Nah, Dani’s never had her head in the clouds,” He drums his fingers on the bar. “You need something closer to Earth, I think.”
Marc shoots bolt upright on his stool. “I’ve got it!” He slogs down the rest of his beer, then he’s up and running. “I need to talk to-” the rest of the sentence is cut off as he runs out of earshot.
Alex frowns at Jorge now his brother is absent, wondering how, as the younger brother, he gets put in this position so often. “Do you know what you just did?”
Jorge takes a triumphant sip of his beer. “Hopefully, I just unleashed weeks of torment upon Daniela Pedrosa.”
Now he’s confused. “I thought you said you liked her?”
“I like to rattle her cage, and she does the same to me,” Jorge says cheerily. “If she finds out what part I played in this, she’ll know exactly what it’s in revenge for.”
Now Alex is very interested, but something tells him he’s not going to hear that story any time soon. “I should be annoyed you’re using my brother like a chess piece,” he says, as though this is just occurring to him.
“But you’re not,” Jorge snorts, “Because you know as well as I do that this has the potential to be the funniest thing that’s happened on the grid in years.”
Alex smiles, because like Marc himself said, Dani is nice, and he can’t see her hurting his brother, even if she rejects him. Then something between the lines hits him like a truck to the head.
He turns to Jorge, eyes very wide. “Did you- did you and Dani ever..?”
Jorge raises his eyebrows.
“It’s just- you seemed to be talking from experience, and with the friendly rivalry thing now…”
Jorge puts his hand on Alex’s shoulder, and leans in close. “A gentleman never kisses and tells,” he whispers.
“But you’re not a gentleman,” Alex points out, no offence meant with the simple truth.
“Besides which, she’d kill me if the news ever got out,” Jorge casually adds, no offence taken.
“Sweet Jesus,” Alex mutters. He might not have a crush on her anymore, but the image in his head now-
Jorge waggles his eyebrows, and finishes his beer. “I know, right?”