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For the five hundredth time, Marc wakes up next to Valentino, in a luxury hotel in Fuji, Japan. It’s friday and their room number is 246, one of the few with a view and a large balcony, western style. It’s friday and he doesn’t want to leave the bed, he doesn’t want the warmth of Valentino’s body to fade from his skin anytime soon, his scent to disappear from the bedding.
It was raining yesterday, and it’ll rain well into the afternoon today. Marc knows already that free practice is going to be postponed first, then cancelled. And he knows, with absolute certainty, that on saturday - tomorrow - Valentino is going to die doing what he loves the most nowadays, driving his ugly ass car at breakneck speed while chasing an impossible P1 on an impossible track at the feet of Mount Fuji, in front of a crowd that will go mute at the very moment his car, with its ugly ass livery and a huge number 46 painted on both sides, is going to bounce off the barriers, scattering around in a deflagration of carbon fiber and broken bones and blood.
Marc knows it’s going to happen in the afternoon. He knows it’s going to rain, and that the rain is going to pick up as the ambulance takes off – he knows they’ll administer CPR for 42 minutes before giving up. He knows he’ll think: four minutes more. Valentino would have appreciated it.
Marc knows all of this because he’s been there…five hundred days ago.
Five hundred days ago, it was saturday and he was a widower.
Now it’s friday, and it’ll keep being friday forever. Or, at least, Marc hopes so.
A time loop rarely stays the same. It is, in some sense, predictable and safe, but it’s always possible to work around it – divert the course of a conversation. Do something differently each time. Have breakfast or skip it. Valentino will, at some point, complain about his bad back. There will always be a call: free practice delayed for unsafe track conditions.
Marc stirs carefully, the tip of his nose brushing against Valentino’s, and under his breath he says “hi”, never missing the moment in which Valentino opens one eye, then the other, and Marc drowns in the blue – gets swallowed by it, actually, his heart growing three sizes at the sight.
Five hundred days, and the stretch of time in which Valentino isn’t awake, nor alert, only floating, keeps being his favorite.
Five hundred days. It’s sixteen months, more or less. Valentino should have died but here, in this sirupy pocket universe, he’s alive and he’s waking up. Slowly, because he’s a sound sleeper in the morning. Marc strokes his cheek. In one hour and fifteen minutes, Valentino will be called by a team member that will tell him about free practice. Tonight, they’ll go to bed and tomorrow will never come, there will only be a steady progression of todays and Marc will never witness him die on the wet, cold tarmac of the Fuji International Speedway, on a rainy september morning.
“Hi,” he says again, almost cooing. Valentino smiles, soft and loose-limbed, and Marc strokes his cheek, where the indents from the pillow crease the skin. He doesn’t tell him that he should shave; he likes the way his stubble pricks at his fingertips, the slight burn of it against his skin when he scoots closer to press a gentle kiss to the corner of his mouth.
This morning, Valentino mumbles: “I have a terrible morning breath”. Marc keeps his laugh quiet, sort of muted, and kisses him anyway. He does have a terrible morning breath because yesterday - five hundred and three days ago - they went to a restaurant and he had one weird soup that smelled like vinegar and miso and asked for seconds almost immediately.
Marc loves his stinky breath and unkempt stubble and crazy hair that show some balding spots, especially where it’s parted in the middle.
“Hi,” Marc repeats. Now, Valentino is slightly more awake, and he can wrap his long arms around him, hands warm and calloused that travel up and down Marc’s spine, making him shiver.
“Did we wake up clingy?”
“Is it a bad thing?”
Valentino smiles again, kisses him in earnest.
“Never,” he whispers, catching his lower lip between his teeth and tugging slightly. “I’m sorry for my awful breath, though. Would you like me to rinse?”
Marc’s throat clicks, closes in a vice.
“I would like you to stay in bed with me. Forever,” he hears himself saying, his voice quivering just so. Five hundred days, and he still thinks that Valentino will instantly die if he leaves the bed before he’s ready to let him go. As if a hole could open in the floor and pull him down at any moment. As if death’s looming, waiting for Marc to be too distracted, to make the wrong move, like in one of those movies he used to watch as a kid, late at night, when nobody was up to tell him not to do it.
“Forever? It’s a long time. What about the race?”
He chuckles, and Marc presses his forehead into his, closing his eyes as he inhales his sharp scent of clean sheets and fading antiperspirant, the faintest hint of sweat making it sweet, familiar.
“Fuck the race. Just stay in bed with me.”
“So we did wake up clingy, after all…”
“Stay with me? Please?”
“Yeah. Yeah, we have time, Marc.”
Now they do. In this weird wormhole or whatever it is, they have all the time in the world, because time has simply ceased to exist.
Today, Valentino doesn’t complain about the pain in his lower back until they’re in the shower, way late on Valentino’s schedule. They fucked and Marc’s happy. In a while, Valentino’s phone will go off, and someone will inform him that he’s free for the day “if nothing changes on the radar”. There will be a little chance to reschedule free practice around 3 p.m, but it’ll start raining again, and Marc will have Valentino all to himself until the cycle repeats.
“Do you want to have breakfast?”
“Only if we ask for room service and eat in bed.”
Valentino laughs and nods. He washes his hair, attentive, nimble fingers scratching his scalp the way Marc likes it.
“Do you ever feel like you’d be happy never moving on? Like…like you’d be happy doing the same thing forever and ever. Staying just like this, under the spray, together, and laze in bed all day long…”
He’s languid, hazy. Valentino presses a gentle kiss to the top of his head before rinsing the shampoo out of his soaked curls, then kisses him some more just because.
“You wouldn’t last a day, like that. You’re the one who can’t relax,” he jokes, engulfing him in a soapy hug. Oh, Marc would like to tell him that he’s learned, in fact, how to thrive in a super predictable, almost boring environment by living and re-living the same day over and over again, just to put Valentino’s death in stand-by, if not to prevent it forever. He knows he would sound like a lunatic, anyway, so he doesn’t tell him anything, he just shrugs, nose planted in the few scattered hairs growing on his sternum.
“We should place a bet,” he suggests.
Valentino snorts.
“Alright. But after we’ve ordered room service. I’m famished, and my back hurts like hell.”
In some loops, Marc gives him a massage. He considers his options, but he finds out he’s famished too - fucking tends to do that to a person - so he just offers a sympathetic smile and strokes Valentino’s back until he can ease the knots in the muscle just a little, relishing in the way his face goes slack, relaxed, almost instantly, making him look at least one decade younger.
Sometimes, they order traditional japanese breakfast, even though Valentino doesn’t like it very much. This morning, Marc goes for a simple continental plate of bacon and eggs, and the awful japanese coffee that reminds him too much of his days at Honda, while Valentino orders croissants and a watery cappuccino.
“I’m indulging my sweet tooth. I deserve it, no? The team is doing good in the championship this year.”
Marc doesn’t tell him how calories don’t count here. How he could ask for an entire sucking piglet fried in beef tallow for breakfast because tomorrow he will be the exact same way he is today, lean and strong and perfect, built for the speed that has almost cost him his life.
There’s a little shift in the loop, this time. The girl from WRT calls with news three minutes later than usual, and Marc wonders if it’s going to be a permanent change, or if for some reason it’s a one-time thing only. A butterfly effect of some sorts – he stayed in bed a little more with Valentino and someone else has had the same idea in his team. He doesn’t know how time loops work. He doesn’t care about the mechanics of it, as long as he manages to keep Valentino from dying. For now, he’s been content knowing exactly what’s going to happen, with minimal variations and, usually, no incidents. Death’s not following them around with a scythe and everything’s fine – as it should be.
The rest of the day is placid enough. It keeps raining heavily, which means that free practice is canceled until tomorrow, and Marc manages to drag Valentino to the spa, buying him with sweet words and the promise of something even sweeter if he doesn't protest too much and relaxes, which is definitely better for his hurting back than spending the afternoon studying old races. He doesn’t tell Valentino tomorrow is not going to come; he tried once, and Valentino almost choked on his own spit laughing hysterically. His memory gets wiped out every twenty-four hours, so he won’t remember anything, anyway.
It’s not until six loops later, though, that Marc starts noticing something…concerning, so to say.
Morning starts the same way every time. He wakes up before Valentino, watches him sleep for a while. Sometimes, Valentino wakes up on his own. Sometimes, Marc wakes him up gently, kissing him, stroking his face. It’s all pretty predictable, but then – time starts going all wild. Marc loses track of it too fast. One moment it’s morning, the other it’s the afternoon. On day five hundred and six, he finds himself in the paddock, surrounded by puddles and shouting, without knowing how he’s gotten there, when and why.
He feels dizzy as he looks around, searching for Valentino in the crowd. Disoriented, he bumps into several people before locating the WRT hospitality, his legs shaking like twigs when he finally manages to slip in, finding Valentino busy in a conversation with a mechanic, hands moving around as he speaks.
“Marc! I thought you had gotten back to the hotel?”
He catches his own reflection in a window. He looks pale, like he’s about to throw up.
“Yeah,” he stutters. “Yeah, I wanted to. I got…lost.”
Valentino frowns, excusing himself. He’s wearing his suit and there are beads of perspiration across his hairline. Which means –
“Hey, amore. Are you okay?”
“Free practice…was it canceled?”
Valentino looks at him as if he’s grown a second head.
“Just postponed. You were there when I was on the phone. Are…are you okay?”
Something inside Marc gives way when Valentino presses his big, warm palm on his forehead, feeling his temperature. An ugly, strangled whine erupts from the depths of Marc’s chest. Something’s happening, something sinister, bad, he can feel it in his bones. And it’s not the fucking fever, but something far worse, monumental even.
“Yeah, no, sorry, I…I have a headache. I think it’s…migraine, perhaps.”
Valentino’s lips are soft and familiar against his temple. Marc’s eyes flutter close, his heartbeat foreign and all too fast in his chest, a sledgehammer hitting against his ribs.
“You’re probably dehydrated. I haven’t seen you drink an entire bottle of water all day. Let’s fetch one from the fridge, eh?”
Marc nods. He experiences some more blackouts during the day, but nothing compared to this. Little things, he loses ten minutes here, five minutes there. Valentino keeps looking at him with that barely concealed worry in his eyes, probably thinking he’s got concussed again and didn’t tell him because he had a race to win, or whatever. Even in bed Marc keeps feeling uneasy, electric, as if he’s stepped on a livewire. Valentino falls asleep first. Calls him amore and kisses him tenderly before saying goodnight. Marc fights to stay awake, but to no avail.
Rinse and repeat.
can a time loop break?
breaking the rules of time and space
time loops broken
effects of time loops on real time
The clock on his phone reads 15:45. No spa for him today, no breakfast. He hasn’t even watched Valentino sleep. He straight up went to the desk, opened his laptop, and started typing increasingly crazy questions into Google, hoping to find answers for whatever’s happening around him. A tear in the space-time continuum, perhaps. A black hole created by a paradox. He’s been sitting here, on this chair, in the same position for so long all of his joints ache, and what he’s found is…disheartening, to say the least, and all the articles and threads that begin with the line “from an exquisitely theoretical point of view” have started making him sweat.
“Nothing” would be the best way to describe the hollow pits of paranormal woo woo he’s gotten across, but he’s a stubborn bastard, and mamà didn’t raise no quitter. He has presumably created a time loop to save Valentino from a certain death, he’s sure he can make it work a little more without forcing the time and space continuum to fold on itself. But yeah, the internet isn’t being useful. Aside from fantastic theories posted online by people that believe the government is injecting tracking devices into citizens via flu shots and interminable discussions over classic fantascientific literature on obscure forums that haven’t been updated since 2007, Marc has found nothing.
Time loops are universally recognized as pseudo-science and a funny divertissement for nerds at best, and Marc would feel the same way if he hadn’t lived in a loop himself for more than sixteen months.
Sixteen perfect, wonderful months in which Valentino hasn’t died.
Now, it feels like he’s constantly jetlagged, slowly losing any track of time whatsoever. Things unfurl under his feet like a scroll written in a language he doesn’t understand; Valentino glances worriedly at him. Marc glances worriedly at the clock.
“You’ve been buried inside this room all day long. You weren’t there for free practice.”
Valentino’s tone is a bit accusing. Marc opens his mouth to speak, then promptly closes it, his teeth rattling horribly into his skull.
“I know. I’m sorry. It’s jet lag.”
They don’t really have a fight, but Marc can’t wait for this day to start again. There’s tension between them, silence filled with that kind of buzzing electricity coming from a frayed livewire, the brewing intentions of a fight that never really happens, it just hangs between them and sours the mood – acid leaking from a cracked battery. On top of it all, the sensation of being pushed and pulled like an elastic is starting to get on Marc’s nerves.
They go to sleep, then it’s Friday again. This time, Marc tries not to come off as an asshole, but it’s hard not to worry to the point of making it an everyone problem when the world around you is slowly disintegrating.
They’re back to square 0. He wakes up tucked against Valentino, watches him sleep, wakes him up with a kiss and smooths out the indents left from the pillow on his sleepy face.
“I’m not feeling well. Would it be a problem if I stay here?”
“Is it the arm?”
Marc nearly chokes on his own spit.
“No, it’s…the jet lag, I think. I feel a little dizzy.”
“Then you should sleep a little more.”
Promptly buried back into Valentino’s chest, engulfed by his warmth and his familiar heartbeat, Marc fights against the urge of closing his eyes but, ultimately, he falls asleep. When he wakes up, it’s friday, and Valentino’s face is pressed flat into the pillow, and he’s snoring quietly, a cute little whistle in his nose.
“Good morning,” Marc whispers, lips brushing slightly against the shell of his ear.
He’s starting to lose count of the days, but it’s fine as long as it keeps being friday and Valentino is still alive. Five hundred something. Does it really matter?
Time is slowly unraveling, and perhaps the world will soon end, but it will always be worth it.
It will always be worth it, to keep Valentino safe.
“There’s something wrong with the rain.”
Marc frowns, the cigarette hanging idly between his fingers, curls of blue smoke merging with the fat drops of rain that have soaked his socks. It must be around day five hundred and twenty something. He doesn’t remember, doesn’t really care enough to make a real effort to remember either.
“What do you mean?”
Valentino stares off in the distance. Free practice is canceled for unsafe track conditions. His back doesn’t hurt.
“I don’t know. Just that…something feels off. Don’t you think something feels awfully off, Marc?”
Marc doesn’t really know how he manages to keep a straight face hearing that. He could erupt into a hysterical laugh, but the urge only pricks at the back of his throat, and he’s sure it would come out as a wrecked sob anyway. He’s been stuck in a loop of his own creation for months. Months of fridays. Months of keeping Valentino safe from a certain death, fixed there on his own volition, because he’s experienced what it means to lose him for good and he doesn’t want to go there, no fucking way.
What’s worse, though, is that he would do it all again in a heartbeat, even if he knows now it’s affecting the whole fabric of reality, not only his own little portion of it. He would watch the world collapse on its own gravity to prevent Valentino’s fatal accident from happening. He would do it smoking a cigarette and overlooking a Mount Fuji that’s started to appear more and more warped with each passing friday.
And the rain, also. There’s something ominous in it, downright wrong. It’s about the way it falls, maybe, in a super detailed slow motion, at times nearly silent, then suddenly so loud it sounds like an ongoing clap of thunder.
“I think it’s disintegrating. Time, I mean. It doesn’t flow the way it should,” he ends up saying, nonchalant, as if he’s asking Valentino to pass him the salt at the dinner table.
Valentino tilts his head towards the sky, eyes squinted, the clouds bright, blinding white.
“Scheduled end of the world?” He muses. Marc snorts.
What if I told you I’m the one scheduling it? He thinks. He doesn’t find the courage to tell him just yet.
“Well, it was about time, no?”
Valentino scoots closer. Around Marc’s back, his arm is long and warm, and it wraps all the way to his stomach, where Valentino rests his large palm, fingers slightly drumming against Marc’s firm abs.
“I didn’t know you were one of those people who are always waiting for the asteroid to strike,” he jokes. Some specks of cinder fall from his cigarette, floating in the wind before landing at his feet. He wriggles his toes. The flecks of gray ash disappear.
“I’m pretty neutral about it, to be honest. I just wanted to share a bit of dark humor.”
“It was a nice one.”
“No, it wasn’t, but thanks for your support, it means a lot to me.”
Valentino laughs with his mouth open. He’s got pretty teeth, even though they’re a bit crooked and too tiny for such a large mouth.
“Sometimes I think it would be nice to stop the clock for a little. Take this moment between us, right? I like standing in the rain with you, not doing anything, not having to be anywhere else. Just for a while, you get it? A small break from everything.”
Oh, Marc gets it. Loud and clear. He says: “be careful what you wish for” and winks when Valentino seems confused by his statement. They kiss under pouring rain.
Valentino isn’t entirely wrong, though. It is, indeed, nice to stay like this.
Marc closes his eyes and, in the distance, a nearly silent lightning strikes, the rain coming down heavier over them.
It’s late at night. Or so Marc thinks, given that night and day don’t matter much since time has stopped working the way it should, in a steady forward progression. Now it’s more like a stretchy elastic band – before and after don’t matter either.
Like a building surrendering to the embrace of ivy, he’s just succumbed to it, and he supposes everyone else have done the same. He doesn’t check the news. Valentino’s phone has been sitting on his nightstand, turned off, for God knows how long.
“Would you doom the world for someone?” He asks, carding his fingers through Valentino’s soft curls, relishing in the feeling of his face pressed into the crook of his neck, occasionally mouthing at the skin, leaving a slightly wet impression behind.
“What kind of question is that?”
His voice is muffled, and his breath tingles Marc when he speaks, the tip of his lips brushing right where Marc’s the most sensitive, a sweet little spot next to his pulse point.
“It’s just a question. Can you answer it?”
Valentino purses his lips in a tight, thoughtful line. It takes him more than just a beat to answer.
“I suppose I would, yes. For Luca, for you. For a very selected group of people.”
“I think I’m dooming the world for you, Vale.”
Marc is surprised at how calm he sounds through it all. Time is cracking open like a fucking watermelon before his eyes, and he can’t bring himself to feel sorry for it, nor in a rush to fix whatever damage his sorrow has inflicted to the fabric of time and space – it’s okay if the world ends here and now, because he’s holding Valentino, and he can’t fathom a better setting for his demise than this.
Just the two of them, cuddling in a bed. It sounds almost romantic.
Valentino shifts slightly, even though Marc’s arms tighten around him, holding him close. He’s just – looking at him like a weird meerkat right now. Eyes big and all too blue, neck stretched back so his eyes don’t cross while he’s staring in dumbfounded disbelief. A subtle tension in his muscles, sinewy lines jumping slightly under Marc’s palms.
“What are you talking about?”
Marc sighs, easing them both in a position that can be more comfortable without letting go of Valentino’s bony frame, and he just says, as casually as possible, “do you know what day it is?”
“Friday, of course. You know it’s friday, Marc.”
He sounds mildly offended with the implications. Marc thinks he should take a picture of his face right now, to commit this confused and outraged expression to his memory forever, but he figures it wouldn’t be of any use, since the world is slowly dying around them so that Valentino could live another sixteen months more or less.
“Yeah. Yeah, I do. But do you know for how long it’s been friday?”
Valentino’s face does something weirdly funny, like shrinking on itself and then growing wide and a bit panicked, his translucent eyebrows touching on the bridge of his nose.
“I don’t…I don’t think I'm following you?”
Marc kisses the crease between his eyes, that now looks a little like a dimple. A small, sweet crater on his overly expressive brow. He closes his eyes and breathes him in. His scent is somewhat stale, but not unpleasant. Unwashed hair under the rain. Valentino at his rawest – skin and flesh and a whiff of old deodorant.
“Five hundred something days. I stopped counting, after a while. Time’s stuck, and I don't want it to get un-stuck because that would mean…that would mean that it’s going to be saturday at some point, and I’m not ready for that yet.”
Valentino looks stunned and, perhaps, a little sick to his stomach. His cheeks have taken on a sickly grayish hue – it usually happens when he’s got an upset stomach, or a brain-shattering migraine.
“What…what’s wrong with saturday?”
There’s no way to put it nicely, so Marc does what he does best: he rips the band-aid off at once, still keeping Valentino close, close enough that he can feel his heartbeat pressed into his own chest, strong and fast as it ripples through the mattress.
“You die on saturday. And the world is ending because I don’t want you to die.”
The silence between them is tense and electrically charged. Marc is suddenly hyperaware of his own body, of the tendons stretching around his joints, of the dull, omnipresent pain in his right arm, of the few hairs he hasn’t lasered away rising along the goosebumps that travel up his spine and turn his neck into a stiff wooden stick. Inhale. Exhale. Even his own breath grates against his ears, too loud for the pivotal moment that’s passing between them.
Then, Valentino clutches his fingers around Marc’s hip, where he’s recently acquired a scar but doesn’t remember why or how, and squeezes, as to make sure he’s not dreaming.
“That’s absurd,” he says, the air coming out stilted from his throat, voice slightly strangled and unusually thin.
“You don’t believe me?”
“How could I?”
Because the world is ending. Because I doomed it for you. Because I love you, and I’d rather see the whole planet die before seeing you die.
Marc opens his mouth, then he quickly closes it around all the things he could say, swallowing them down like a surge of acrid bile. He doesn’t ask Valentino to believe him. He runs his fingers through his hair instead, and listens to the rain pattering against the window.
“Do I really die on saturday?”
“Yes.”
Valentino scratches his chin. There’s a patch of rough stubble growing there, framing a scar so old it’s almost invisible.
“I still find it hard to believe it. Is it still friday?”
Marc kisses his ruined knuckles, one by one, reverently.
“You’re not dead and the world is still collapsing on itself, so I guess it is.”
“Fuck,” he breathes out.
Marc doesn’t really think it’s such a big deal.
“Do you think there’s a way to fix this?”
It’s friday again, and they’ve taken on the habit of smoking inside, the rain too heavy for them to chill on the balcony – biblical level of shit, but without a Noah that can build an ark and save them from the cataclysm.
“I don’t know. I haven’t been looking for it.”
I don’t care if there might be a way to make things right, as long as you’re alive.
“Let’s suppose I have to die,” Valentino says, with the same casual tone in which he’d ask for Marc to pass him his phone, which still lies abandoned on the nightstand. Suddenly, Marc is finding it slightly difficult to breathe, the sickly gray darkness outside thick enough to choke him.
“Can we not?” He says, each word piercing like a barb through his throat, making him taste blood and bile on the tip of his tongue.
Valentino smiles, sad and indulgent. Martyrdom isn’t really his color, but there’s something behind his eyes that sends unpleasant shivers down Marc’s spine – his sheer determination. He always sports that resolute look when he’s already made his choice without hearing from Marc first, it’s a habit that has always scared Marc, this stubborn hyperindependence of his.
“Let’s suppose I have to die,” he repeats. “Please?”
“Okay,” Marc concedes. His voice still sounds strained to his ears, too thin and not at all convinced. Still, Valentino’s hand is cupping his cheek, and he can’t help but lean into his touch, into the familiar pattern of calluses and smooth skin he knows so well by now. It’s stupid, of course, to come to such a conclusion right now, but he regrets having wasted so much time. A decade of their lives spent pursuing an all-consuming cold war, when they could have used their time more wisely. But it’s all hindsight now, isn’t it? He didn’t know Valentino was about to die so soon, nor did he know he would have almost destroyed the world to save him. Something that could only belong to an episode of Star Trek, or whatever fac-simile his grandpa used to put on for him when Marc was sick and couldn’t go to school – destroying the fabric of time wasn’t on his bingo card, to put it mildly.
“If I die, maybe things are going to…I don’t know, improve, somehow?”
Marc lets out a humorless laugh.
“Meaning that the world doesn’t end? Is that what you’re suggesting?”
Valentino shrugs. His cigarette cinders, unsmoked, a cone of ash falling on the bright white duvet.
“Maybe the world is ending because I didn’t die. If I die, on the contrary…”
“And you know this because…?”
A brief pause. Valentino realizes he hasn’t taken a drag in a while, and tries to rekindle the embers, but to no avail. He lights up another cigarette; perhaps he’s trying to kill himself with all the tar stacking up in his lungs.
“I watched a lot of movies, Marc.”
“Which makes you an expert on time loops.”
“Exactly.”
Marc watches him inhale his smoke, then exhale it in a blue-gray cloud that hoovers over them, thick and a bit ominous.
“I don’t want you to die,” he finds himself saying out loud. It was supposed to remain a thought, because they’re not really entertaining the idea, of course, why should they? If the world has to collapse on itself for Valentino to live, so be it. Who cares about the world, anyway?
“But what if I have to?”
Marc shakes his head. Valentino has never been a hero when it comes to death and injury, so why is he acting like it’s his duty to save the world, now? It isn’t, it has never been.
“Please, Vale,” Marc begs. He’s never felt so exhausted – like an elastic pulled too thin for too long, on the verge of snapping in a half. “Let’s not talk about this.”
Another long stretch of silence in which, if he strains his hearing enough, he can feel the subtle thumping of Valentino’s heart in the still air, strong and steady, soothing even right now, when Marc’s nerves are all flaring up at once with terrified jitteriness.
“Alright. What about we get a nice bubble bath and we sleep some more? Witnessing the end of the world is taking a toll on me.”
Instead of a nice bubble bath, Marc and Valentino have sex on the bathroom floor, in a makeshift nest of towels and bathrobes, and Valentino keeps telling him he loves him, oh, he loves him so much. Marc wraps the warm feeling of it around himself like a blanket, basks in the warm sunlight of Valentino’s smile as he peppers his face with kisses, the litany of sweet nothings between them steady, like a gentle tide sweeping him away as he slowly drifts off to sleep. He knows his arm is going to feel dramatically sore once he wakes up, but does it really count when time simply reverts every twenty-four hours?
Marc is in bed, and Valentino isn’t there. He groans, the room engulfed in molasses-thick darkness. It’ll be friday again in a while. He rolls over, searching for Valentino’s familiar warmth, but the covers are cold, and air coming from the balcony door is brushing against his naked skin, making him shiver.
“Smoking without me?” He calls. No answer, just that dense, swallowing darkness.
Progressive hearing loss is a hazard of the job, after all. He doesn’t blame Valentino for being a little cloth-eared.
“Vale?” He calls again, before peeling himself out of bed, still a bit hazy, his legs weak and gelatinous. He should cover up, but he doesn’t feel like putting on his briefs, so he just throws a pair of shorts on and drags his numb feet across the room, finding the glass door slightly ajar.
It’s still raining. It’ll probably never stop.
“Vale?”
Outside, everything’s quiet. Traffic stopped some fridays ago, and so did the birds. It’s unsettling, but nothing unmanageable, considering that it’s the end of the world.
It could have been worse. It could have been a stupid zombie apocalypse, or an outbreak of another deadly virus. Marc is glad it’s just…a gentle, slow unraveling of some sorts, without the fuss and the violence of a horror movie. This, however, almost feels like being rocked to sleep by the inescapable forces of nature. Nothing you can do about it, except to surrender.
He takes a deep breath of damp air. It doesn’t smell clean, but sulfury somehow, like something that comes from the underground.
He notices the cigarette first. Smoke rising from it, but no Valentino in sight. He frowns, looks around the corner, and scratches the back of his head.
“Valentino?”
He doesn’t know what compels him to look down from the balcony railing, really. Perhaps it’s fate. Perhaps it’s just that you can keep death off only as long as you keep your guard up. Perhaps it’s just – that even stopping time isn’t enough. Because Valentino is laying on the tarmac, several meters down, sprawled up like a broken doll, long limbs bent at unnatural angles. If there’s blood, it’s too dark for Marc to see it.
The silence stretches, and now it’s unnerving. Minutes and minutes of it as Marc doesn’t dare tearing his eyes off Valentino’s lifeless body, the smoke from his last, abandoned cigarette stinging in his eyes. Only when it stops burning abruptly Marc starts to scream.
Sunlight floods the hotel room when Marc wakes up, a massive headache leaving him almost stunned for a moment as he takes stock of his surroundings, unfamiliar and blurry, as if he’s slept for days instead of his usual handful of hours.
Valentino is curled in a ball by his side, his impossibly long arm draped across Marc’s middle as he snores quietly in the pillow, mouth slightly parted, pink and slack.
The first thing Marc thinks is: it stopped raining.
It’s a weird thought to have in the morning. He had an even weirder dream, but it’s distant now, unreachable no matter how much he tries to remember why he was screaming.
It had something to do with the zombies, maybe. The end of the world or shit like that.
He doesn’t want to wake Valentino up, so he outstretches his bad arm slowly to take his phone from the nightstand, where he left it charging. Something must have gone wrong with the cable or the outlet, because he’s got only 52% battery left.
It’s saturday, and it’s going to be a fairly warm day, unpleasantly humid as it usually happens in Japan.
There is – some sort of a bad feeling creeping up his toes, like the rhythmic crawling of a thousand ants. Valentino stirs, pulling him closer, his soft sleepy face nuzzling into Marc’s chest.
“It’s too early. Why are you awake?”
Marc kisses the top of his head. It smells a little like cigarette ash, but he doesn’t mind it.
“I had a strange dream,” he whispers, hoping that Valentino drifts off again. His voice is still gravel-rough, so there’s a good chance he’s going to fall asleep on him before the conversation ends.
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. A zombie apocalypse or something.”
Valentino’s sleepy laugh is muffled, squeezed against Marc’s pectoral, and nothing has ever sounded this sweet to him, nor more beautiful.
“A zombie apocalypse,” he echoes.
Marc kisses his hair again and whispers: “sleep”. Valentino sleeps until the alarm goes off.
Japan has got a fetish for weird sweet treats. Despite the fact that he can’t indulge on a race weekend, Valentino insists that Marc orders a fancy japanese-style french toast for breakfast, so he can have a bite. Marc’s stomach is – not exactly closed and tense, but something like it. He only eats half the toast, and doesn’t really enjoy the mildly sweet, slightly watery coffee he ordered alongside it. If Valentino notices his discomfort, he’s kind enough not to comment on it.
It has something to do with his nightmare, Marc is sure. The zombie apocalypse, or whatever it was. The end of the world.
Nobody calls Valentino to tell him that qualifying has been postponed. On their ride to the circuit, Marc meticulously chews on his own cuticles, only paying half attention to what Valentino is telling the WRT engineer on the front seat.
It’s not raining. The track is dry, the sun a pale yellow ball that makes the air thick and humid. Marc kisses Valentino good luck and his heart keeps beating, beating, beating, like a sledgehammer between his aching ribs.
“I remember the dream, now. Parts of it, at least.”
Valentino offers Marc a forkful of rice, which he declines politely, dissecting his own lunch instead of eating it.
“The zombie apocalypse?”
A nearly hysterical chuckle bubbles up to Marc’s lips. His fingers brush against Valentino’s, and it feels like being zapped with a little surge of electricity.
“You died, in my nightmare. And then the world was ending because I couldn’t…I don’t know, process my grief or something.”
Somehow, Marc knows that Valentino is touching his own balls to ward off bad luck, right now, because it’s something he always does. His face betrays unease at first, then it relaxes when their fingers entwine, the bones of Valentino’s hand fine and delicate compared to Marc’s, a bit more intact.
“Then it’s a good thing I haven’t died, no?” He says, with a little smile that makes Marc’s heart flutter. The lump in his throat is slowly dissolving. Marc smiles back and the memory of his nightmare pricks at the roots of his hair, like a hand tugging a little, demanding attention.
“Please, don’t you ever dare,” he replies, squeezing Valentino’s hand until the itchy sensation in his scalp is gone, and it feels a little easier to breathe.