Work Text:
you can’t just throw me away
so what if i can’t forget you?
i’ll burn your name into my throat
i’ll be the fire that’ll catch you
and what’s so good about picking up the pieces?
what if i don’t even want to?
Marc knows that he’s got so many qualities to him that so many people appreciate. So, at night, when his teenage hormones demand attention, he could imagine nearly anyone, any girl in his class, or the pretty neighbor, or that girl that always looks at him on the bus.
And yet, as he closes his eyes and he lets his nerves take over, like when he’s on a bike and his instincts are to be trusted more than any conscious decision, above him there are blue eyes, gleaming impishly in the dark as if exuding their own light, sharp and elvish features curled by the smirk that crosses his face, knowing and witty, some joke always stuck between his teeth. Weren’t both his hands occupied, one on himself and the other gripping the sheets like he could fall in the gravel if he let go, his fingers would hold onto the brown curls that caress his forehead – and because, of course, trying to grasp that vision would make it fade away in an instant, and all that would be left of that man would be the flat pictures on the posters and photographs plastered on his wall.
He disappears, soon, anyway, as, every time that he ends and he opens his eyes, his room is empty, an absence that the sob that slips out of his mouth is barely enough to fill, shaped like Valentino’s name.
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All that Marc’s dreams have ever included are racing bikes and Valentino Rossi, so, when they both come to him, there is nothing but happiness.
Moreso when Valentino laughs and jokes with him, grabs him and holds him in joy after the races, like he were his equal and not a rookie or just something more; something like a pain unidentifiable and undefinable tickles him in the realization that this is the same way that he’s always done with a lot of his teammates and friends across the years, but it’s barely any more painful than a random crash on a weekend that might cost him the race but not his good standing in the championship. So, he just lets his own laughter take hold, goes along with Valentino’s jokes and all his antics.
He amplifies them, in fact, puts all his wide smile and his playfulness into making them twice as funny and into making Valentino’s smile wider and wider and as wide as he can get it to be. While he likes to make jokes, it’s very often that he’s only thought of being funny to himself only. And it is nice that everyone laughs, amused or just simply endeared at his baby face and his voice that still kind of cracks every now and then, but nothing makes him fly seven feet above the ground like when he sees Valentino laugh, or when he plays along, even.
And oh, when Valentino praises him. There are butterflies raging in his stomach, and it feels suddenly empty, even if his diet is strict and calculated precisely to feed him just enough for his health to be impeccable, a lion roaring that threatens to eat at the rest of him like on a deer.
It’s not food that will satiate his hunger, likely. The racing soothes it, when he preys on the riders standing between him and the first place, and celebrating with Valentino is a wonderful, shared banquet.
His heart roars louder in his ears than engines have ever felt, and there is nothing that he knows better than that he has to do more, show him how deserving he can be of that praise. One thing that everyone has ever known about Valentino Rossi is how volatile he can get about his relationships, how easily they can deteriorate and how little shits he gives when it’s time to cut it. It is honorable, in a way, that there is none of that fakeness that are always just over the filter of the camera, but it also means that the slightest slip can have him fall out of his graces and back on his own.
No, well, he wouldn’t be on his own. There are many people who love him.
Still, none of them would be Valentino Rossi.
The thrill of the win, even if it means defeating him, brings with it his pride in him. Just another motivator for Marc to win.
And hell, does he win. Collects one podium after the other, he’s good, he’s great.
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“Marc.”
Alex interrupts him when Marc was barely aware of how much and how fast he was speaking, looking at the city out of their window.
Nonetheless, his words halt abruptly, as, barely acknowledging what he was even saying, Marc turns around to meet Alex’s eyes, his frown, a question in them. Usually, Marc can read it on the spot, knows his little brother’s mind better than he knows the palm of his own hand, now sticky with the popsicle that he hadn’t even noticed starting to melt, forgotten by his elsehow occupied mouth. Now, though, the whirring of the fan behind them is no substitute for the words that don’t come out.
It’s almost sheepishly that he gives a lick to his popsicle, and the strawberry feels oddly bitter on his tongue. “What?” Likely, it doesn’t really have anything to do with the popsicle itself.
“I get that he’s your idol. And that you must be on cloud nine about your relationship.” The fingers of one of Alex’s hands are tapping on the window frame, wood hot under the July sun. “But you are aware of what he’s like, right?”
Marc laughs. Perhaps it will subdue the sudden recoil in his chest. “What do you mean? What are you talking about, Alex?” It doesn’t.
A click of his tongue, a pensive lick to the popsicle, a space between breaths that has Marc’s lungs aching if for one second. “There is barely anyone on any grid he’s been in, ever, he hasn’t fought with, give him the time to get somewhat close.”
Alex, rational and observant and thoughtful Alex, is right. They can make so many names – Biaggi, Gibernau, Stoner, Lorenzo. All of them have shared the track with him, all of them have notoriously built a friendship or honest rivalry with him, and all of them have fallen out dramatically, publicly, disastrously, the kind of fallouts that any sport journalist must have had incredible amounts of fun playing with and selling out with dramatic titles and gossip.
“Alright.” Marc is starting to see in the distance where Alex is going with this, and he doesn’t like it one bit. “And?”
In response, Alex exhales, the noise of his tapping just a bit more intense, almost reaching the volume of the hammer echoing from Marc’s chest, almost a sound of exasperation. In the street below, a girl is shrieking, probably making a scene that all the bystanders will stare at; a man screams back at her. Marc hopes they’re both okay. “You know exactly what I’m talking about, Marc. You’ve always been smart, you always are in everything else. Please.”
This please is for far more than just about letting Alex get through his thick skull. It feels like Alex is begging him not to hurt himself, not to play with fire, not to force him to watch his older brother reduce himself to ashes.
Even if his mind refuses to, his guts know it well, so does his stomach, threatening to regurgitate the popsicle with the sudden terror, and so does his ribcage, tightening to hold together all his fragile organs with little cracks opening for the fear to slip inside and poison his happiness.
However, for now, he just sucks out the poison closing his lips around the tip of the popsicle, utterly and miserably unable to reach the growling stomach that has dropped into his intestines, a laughter that is barely natural enough to drown out the girl in the streets that has effectively started crying. “Relax, Alex, I’m okay. It’ll be fine.”
It’ll be fine. Will it?
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When Valentino invites him to his ranch, while it might not be the best day of his life, upon waking up it certainly feels like it, no matter how Valentino has said it’s just a little race, a day together to bullshit it and have some light-hearted fun under the Marche sun in his private track.
But it’s still a race, and that can only mean one thing – winning.
Showing Valentino, and himself, perhaps, just how much he’s worth, in his own territory. See? I’m just as good. I might even surpass you, too, one day. It’s the kind of thing that a father could be proud of.
So he shows up with his mechanics, with all he might need to hop on a winning bike, and he does win, in fact, under the eyes of Valentino and all his boys, devouring brown ground and dust with a beast of a motorcycle.
He’s really proud of himself. Valentino should be, too. Doesn’t quite look it, truly, but it will pass, Marc tells himself. The resentment for the defeat will wash away and only admiration for Marc will stay, and he will praise him again.
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The crowd chants and screams in front of the podium, on the other side of the carton panel that feels like the curtain of the theater, that separates the real world where people exist around each other from the backstage where the true magic happens, a liminal space between the relaxation of the nerves after the win and the steps to celebrate a joy for the fans to absorb and share, where the riders become victors from tired humans. In here, they are, however, just something in between, gladiators that have survived their battle but that have yet to collect the spoils they have harshly fought for.
That’s how Marc feels, anyway. He wonders if it’s the same for Valentino, right next to him, brown curls drenched in sweat sticking to his forehead, barely done panting after the effort, and yet triumphant already and beautiful like a god; it must be some ontological quality of his, perhaps, almost twenty years of victories that have elevated him already to the Olympus, a winner even when he doesn’t find the access to this room.
At one point, though, his eyebrows lift over his blue eyes, an interrogative in his expression, and Marc realizes that he must have been staring.
The attempt at a save comes with a grin, a shrug, and a hope that the hotness of his face is not showing or, at the very least, easy to mistake for remnants of the fight to the death on his bike. “Congrats. You’ve been great.” As always. Doesn’t say, but he knows that Valentino knows anyway. Even if he just came second after Marc.
Nothing in his smirk, witty and elvish, lets out anything like that, anyway. “Thanks, thanks.” With that softer quality of his z that his accent gives him1, that reminds Marc of the clumsiness of his own Italian, despite their languages not being that different, some self-consciousness that should not belong to him and does not, in fact, when it doesn’t come to this man, the feeling that any word, no matter how he tries to voice it and scream it until his throat gives out on him, will never actually find its fulfillment.
But it’s okay. He doesn’t really need his throat to race, anyway, and, despite his passion for journalist shenanigans, Valentino values actions far more than words, too.
And with an action he goes, letting his body work for him, otherwise his brain, like his bike, will punish any hesitation, any doubt he might have in it, and how silly would it be – when was it that he has forgotten, that he has thought for a second that they could be separated, when racing has exactly taught him about body and soul being one. That both can be hungry, and that is only one hunger.
It takes barely a second for his feet to close the distance and lift him on his tiptoes, for his hands to grab Valentino’s sharp cheekbones, for his lips to hold onto his, like he was the only thing that could satisfy him in his life.
It’s not the first kiss of his life, of course; he’s pretty and he’s well liked and he’s never been too bad with people.
But this is not just a kiss. This is something great, the final step on the stairway to heaven, the tip of the cliff above the edge of the world, it’s–
It’s just something he will never know. The only thing he can taste very soon is his own sweat, acre and sad, as his body falls back against the hand pushing on his chest. Back at the start of the climb, he looks up again, squeezing as his stomach turns upside down in the loss of balance on his two feet, to meet the hand still lifted in front of him like a bad dog and ice blue eyes staring right into him, with something twisting inside them, a cold flame in the wind fueled by confusion and horror. It burns through Marc’s heavy leather and skin, the same kind of scorching heat against the walls of his heart that warms the metal of a bike that’s still on and that careless teens always burn their calves against. When the metal shouldn’t be touched.
Truth be told, if it is for this man, he’s more than willing to touch and even grab or eat anything that burns, just to understand, or to take back that admiration that he’d torn from him with his teeth and nails by showing how goddamn good he is on that track time and time again and that he would dare revoking just or this. Whatever it is, anyway. Not that Marc is too sure either.
With no cameras behind this wall, his mouth is more than ready to spit out something, or to maul away that horror from Valentino’s face and make up some words to explain the way the whole world has choked for a second.
Those few seconds that they could have been, though, barely a breath between a scream and the other that rise from the crowd outside, end as soon as they came, that they might as well have been Marc’s imagination, a flash in his own eyes presented by the adrenaline wearing off and the euphoria of the victory, and a part of him almost wishes it really was. Nonetheless, Valentino’s gaze doesn’t let him believe this hopeful fantasy, still piercing through his head, a thousand arrows in the reflections in his irises of the little light in this space, the lips that Marc can still feel lingering on his own in a taught line, no emotions slipping through them, and nor does Jorge Lorenzo, walking up to them, not a word in his mouth but a tactlessly curious frown that says that he knows. Probably knows not what exactly has happened, the capital mistake that Marc has made, worse than any crash in his career this far, or the dark turmoil that must be roaring inside Valentino, but knows that there was something, like stepping over blood trails with no corpses on sight.
Of course he can’t see them. They are all inside Marc’s body, after all.
Marc doesn’t meet Valentino anymore after walking out, and he doesn’t even meet his eyes as they spray each other in celebration with the champagne; the last thing that is left of him is the bitter drink flowing down his cheek and into his mouth.
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It’s days where the anger consumes him from the inside, pushing his bike, training lap after training lap, more than the industrial fuel does, that the other people in the gym can probably perceive from wherever they’re standing in the room, that is closing his esophagus when his mom calls the family to the table and his only choices are to force feed himself or to lie about whatever the reason for his nervousness might ever be, the result being nausea growling in his intestines in either case.
His parents don’t know what it is. Alex does.
It had been a desperate confession for a sin he had not acknowledged as such until after his tongue had tasted its own blood, wet with tears and snot next to a bike that he’d crashed into the fence that was much easier to look at than Alex’s eyes, nose stuffy with the shame of such a statue as the eldest, the point of reference for his younger brother, crumbling on himself, let alone that the reason would be something as complicated and grand as Valentino Rossi being fucking horrified by his person. The shame stands even now, that Alex is anything but a little child reliant on him, an adult himself with his own bike in the third most important motorsport in the world, and it only contributes to feeling as small as he’s never felt, even than when they had to weigh his bike by more than twenty kilos just so he could participate in the race.
He couldn’t even find it to let himself lean against the hand that Alex was resting on his shoulder, holding him as if he had been the one to gather three more years of life experience to give them to Marc. His fingers rub his back gently, silently, as a sputtering flow of words leaves his mouth without even passing by his brain, like trying to vomit all that his heart can’t quite handle; Alex can, though, picks them up one by one and unweaves them better than Marc has ever learned to, always too busy running forward to notice any pieces of himself left behind.
So it just makes sense that Alex would look at him like that, when Marc announces that he’s leaving for Tavullia for a couple of days, a few changes in his backpack and bright hope in his chest.
Out of their parents’ earshot, it’s almost a fight that he tries to put up, about Marc walking right into danger, about being careless if not self-destructive.
But Marc is young and impulsive and hungry and no amount of worry from his little brother can stop him from leaving a kiss on his head, pulled down against his will, and the door behind himself, his lips pressed to the phone that holds in itself like a treasure chest the first sign of life from Valentino since the Sepang incident, a new invitation to come to the ranch, even promising to pick him up at the airport in exchange for the maximum discretion. Needless to say, in less than a minute he had packed his things and hopped on a taxi to book the first plane available, sunglasses covering his eyes between his favorite yellow cap with the forty-six on the front and the collar of the jacket that he could almost nibble on with the nervousness, fingers fidgeting with the straps of the backpack.
There’s a voice in the back of his head that repeats what Alex told him, or that insists on projecting on his eyelids the look on Valentino’s face when he pushed him away, like a whisper snaking among his organs if something like dread, harsher and sharper than any wise fear that might give him directions when he’s riding at all those miles per hour, far more irrational and slipping between his teeth making them titter with cold.
He knows how to helm his bike, knows her like an extension of his own body and like a second mouth. On the other hand, the man that will find him in just some more than a couple hours is all but an enigma, ten seconds all that it took for years of adoration and attempts at knowing him to feel like wasted time, all the trinkets and photographs in his room child’s toys with little to nothing to do with the superhuman thing that is Valentino Rossi.
It keeps him awake during the whole flight, louder than the music in his earbuds, interrupts like continuous crashes the attempt at mentally going through the track for the next weekend, or any track at all, really, and his anger is probably visible to the people around him in the plane even under the layers that cover most of his face, in the slow banging of the head against the seatback or in the fingers tightening around his crossed arms. It almost regrets having been brought here, more than a thousand kilometers away from home on a random Wednesday night.
Still, with some luck, there might be another direct flight in two, three days, if all goes well, and, most importantly, Marc Marquez does not back down. If his pride, Valentino, his heart, his doubts, dare to challenge him, they’ll better be ready for him to come out on top and higher than that. Whatever that might mean in this case, and for how unpredictable it can be, with no trophies to win or checkered flags to get to.
In races there is always some level of unpredictability too, anyway, from misinformed weather forecasts to technical inconveniences, and overcoming those, winning despite, is also a skill, and one that he has, plenty of.
So, even if his lips are still well closed to keep from shaking and his knuckles are going white around the strap of the backpack, he steps down from the stairs of the airplane on Italian ground, to follow the paths and directions of the arrows on the floor and on signals, not any happier than a criminal bracing himself to fight death.
And in fact there he waits, car parked close to the entrance of the airport, leaning against it with some hoodie decorated with his own symbols, blue and yellow and red bright on the black fabric, almost, or perhaps actually glowing in the purple dusk, sun and moon present together like they are in the clear sky above.
“Valentino.” It sounds less like a greeting and more like the intro to a prayer, melting on his tongue as honey, a sweetness that, for the first time in days, isn’t making him want to throw up all his insides. His hand tears the sunglasses off, their color polluting his view.
It is almost some dream, in this low light, to watch Valentino as he gives out, oddly wordlessly, a small smirk, like the ones he’s always given him, wide in the perfect shape of a half-moon with the corner digging into his cheeks, sideburns framing a face that, even with the creases of the age, has the mischievous gleam of something to be left unsaid, a shared secret that Marc is supposed to know already. But does he? Especially when there is nothing anomalous, nothing out of the ordinary or gut-wrenchingly wrong past a flickering star in the back of his eyes.
Thing is, if there is one thing that Marc has learned in a lifetime of racing, it’s that not the smallest alarm can truly be ignored; even the most insignificant little cloud in the distance can mean rain, and the wrong choice of tires has been the ruin of many races and riders.
Therefore, his smile is nothing short of timid, as he walks up to Valentino to leave the luggage in the trunk that he’s opening for him. He could swear that the way he avoids direct contact is intentional, though it’s not like he blames him entirely, with the electricity between them that could set them both on fire, or the car or the whole city.
Moreso when, seat belts on and wind caressing the skin of his face from the crack left open by the window, there is no word, not a stupid joke or a mean word to interrupt the muffled silence of the purring engine or the croaking radio and its half futile attempt at delivering the music and mindless conversation of some local station that Marc can’t understand. The dim colors of the sky are much more comfortable to look at, a pale moon and a soft sunlight coexisting in their daily dance, than the fluorescent and aggressive ones on the hoodie of the man next to him, still impassible despite the way his fingers tap on the steering wheel.
Maybe he should be the one to break this silence, before it suffocates them. Should ask something, anything, instead of letting himself be toyed with, whether in enemy or friendly territory.
In the time that it takes him to ponder the right way to do so, anyway, Valentino pulls up to the parking lot of the ranch, and there is no background noise to cushion the fall of his voice.
Nonetheless. “Vale–”
“So.” It’s the first time that he opens his mouth since Marc landed, and the first time that he speaks to him since Sepang. His voice is serious, almost solemn, and, at this volume, somewhat husky. A part of him wonders if Valentino smokes, and it strikes him that the question had never occurred to him, even the chance that he could smoke at all. How would a cigarette look between his lips; how would his lips look with a cigarette between them. “What the fuck was that about?”
Paradoxically, he’s caught off guard, despite having known from the start what the point would have been. His teeth hang onto his lower lip, in the hope of holding back any expression. “What do you mean?”
“Marquez, you know what I’m talking about.” Marc’s whole body jolts under Valentino’s touch, hand grabbing his knee as to balance himself to crouch enough that his eyes can stare into his, suddenly as blue and deep as the sky that has gone, by now, to sleep. His voice merely a whisper, just as loud as it takes for Marc to hear him clearly, a secret that not even the crickets outside must know, something dirty and shameful to stay locked inside this car. “Don’t play games with me, y’know it doesn’t end well.”
Marc can only bite harder on his lips. He just wants to hear Valentino say it out loud, it’s not like he’s playing games. Not exactly.
All he does in response is, thus, widening his legs a bit, offering his knee for Valentino to tear off entirely, if he wanted to, and rest his head against his hand, elbow in precarious balance on the window frame, his only reply a lifted eyebrow with a question under it.
It’s exasperation that, with a groan, has Valentino’s hand tighten against Marc’s knee. It would only be a shame for the races, if he happened to break it. “The kiss.”
Just a hum. “And?” But nothing more before a pause and a swallow, lest his voice threatens to crack like it was already giving a demonstration of with a single, brief syllable, palm basically cupping his own jaw just to find something to hold on to, preserve some semblance of composure. “I don’t see what there would be to talk about.”
A glint in Valentino’s eyes, a twitch at the corner of his lips that would seem contradictory with the clenching of the jaw, and Marc knows that his learnt nonchalance has betrayed him. It’s that formality that almost switches on automatically, a cordiality to ornate his sheepish smile with, in front of the cameras – or more in general when there is something to muzzle inside him. Whether it’s that this demon can just read through him this effortlessly or that his very presence hinders his masking in the first place, it’s probably something that is not appropriate for him to know. What is, though, is that half of Valentino’s weight is pinned on his knee, almost holding him hostage, let alone how he could just open the door and leave.
Perhaps it’s true. Perhaps, in a way, Marc has been playing with Valentino. But let it not be said that it wasn’t true the other way round, too. He’s just staring up at him through his eyelashes, something like a smirk hidden behind sharp aggression, anticipation for the moment that he will cave in, that he’ll lose just a bit of ground and he will be able to dash right past him; barely looking back at him, just once he’s got his answers.
But is that something that Marc won’t let him have.
He can feel his own shoulders square up. “Well, I think the gesture was pretty self-explanatory.” There is a decision that he doesn’t even choose to make, that his heart just takes in a beat and chains it to itself, doesn’t let the shame get to his stomach and poison him whole, that being that he will not apologize, and he will not make a sin out of it that he could regret or wish never happened. Whatever Valentino might say now, whatever might happen afterwards.
And he won’t even regret it when, unprompted, he straightens his back up, a sound just in between a sigh and a groan, and he’s shaking his head with a click of his tongue. “No, look. You’re young and stupid and you don’t know what you want.” All of his cheeky challenge drained out like his closing eyes were dying rivers leaving tired, old debris.
Among all things that he could have ever said, in the whole repertoire of a lifetime of comebacks and digs for this or that thing, this is the one thing that manages to sting Marc, right where they both, clearly, know well being his weakest spot, where his pride is the softest and where the crashes hurt the worst.
It’s his pride that’s bleeding all over the car seat, voice almost in a snarl, like some hound that is suddenly struggling to find its prey. “I do know what I want.”
The snort that comes is just salt on the cut, has his fists clenching until his nails are carving moons in his palms, with the symbol on Valentino’s clothes as their reference, rage shaking him whole as he finds himself unable to do anything but glare. “Yeah? And what would that be?”
To bite into him, of course. Jump out of his strategic hiding, snap out of that fear of the one that he’s trying to hunt, and finally confront him.
So he does – almost leaps out of the seat, climbs into his lap, one hand grasping onto the base of his hood, the other one right under his jaw, holding his head up, right where he can’t but look at him, instead of sending out his gaze among the endless prairies before them, immersed in the dark of the night that has finally come, out of fake disinterest or, for how unbelievable it would be of him, fear for what might come as an answer. He probably does know, anyway; it’s the only thing that Marc has ever wanted. Other than the only thing that Valentino has ever wanted. “To win.”
In all fairness, and it is embarrassing that he’d only realize now, Valentino should be angry, or scared, or just confused about Marc’s sudden gesture, about the way he’s, if not blocked, got him stuck under his body, straddled and pinned him down in his seat, or about the hand that is holding his head, fingertips digging into his skin that they might as well leave bruises in the morning. Yet, his hands are simply laid, nonchalantly, on his thighs, and their warmth, even in spite of Marc’s heavy jeans, seeps through his skin to his bones, harsh and scorching like it was breaking them both. Until he had no way to run if not in Valentino’s arms.
And breaking him, or perhaps toying with him, finding out how much of the warmth of his sun it will take for him to burn once and for all as a comet, might as well be his very goal, with the amusement that he doesn’t even try to hide away from his hum. “And, excuse me very much, but what would winning be like, here?”
That’s, well. That might be something that Marc had not considered.
He has beaten him on the track, many times already, has snatched first places and pushed him away from the top three. Valentino has praised him, and admired him, but the growling of his stomach tells him that that is still not quite enough for him to consider himself victor. Not as long as he will always stand right behind him, as he will wait on his knees and worship him like man worships the Sun and the Moon.
What he needs is for Valentino to be as devoted to him as Marc has spent a lifetime learning to be to him, look into the open wound that Marc has opened in himself and believe what his glory will be, how his kingdom will be just as great as his. And greater, even; he still has to win, after all, hasn’t he.
The thing about MotoGP is that there are so many rules and regulations on how and where the bikes can move because it’s a ruthless sport. Go fast and don’t hesitate, because the slightest hesitation can lead to horrible defeat at the very best, and either accept it, once the predator has bitten into your trajectory and surpassed you, or walk into an even worse mauling, until the next chance to sink the fangs into meat. In either case, there is no tie.
And Marc has never been the kind of kid to just sit back and cradle his own injured flesh.
Unfortunately, there are no words to express all of it. And, even if there were any, his mouth would probably be utterly unable to articulate them, barely managing to keep inside all the saliva that is pooling under his tongue, breaths heavy like a hungry dog while all the faculties of his body are stuck staring at Valentino, head now tilted back without even resisting Marc’s grip, grin crossing his face from side to side, pupils shot wide until his blue eyes are an eclipse that he should probably not watch without proper sunglasses.
But, oh, for this moment Marc would be willing to sacrifice his sight and his life whole, these seconds where Valentino truly is looking at him like a Jesus transfigured.
Adoring.
It’s one shaky exhale that he tries to give, an attempt at preparing his vocal cords to just put together something, as his hand glides up over the side of Valentino’s face, skin feeling out the sideburns and the hair, pinky finger touching the shining earring, reaching where his fingers can fist in his brown locks, sharp shadows between them drawn by some yellow streetlight in the distance. “Just this.”
His own roaring heartbeat covers whatever has come out of his mouth, and Valentino isn’t helping, either, with the now clearly deliberate pressure on Marc’s legs, the fingers that reach and poke, almost spitefully, close to his ass or to where the sweatshirt meets the jeans, or with the low laughter he breathes right into Marc’s mouth. “So this would be you defeating me?”
It’s almost endearingly puerile, the way he’s clearly just provoking him, the same way he’s loved doing since the beginning of his career, snotty comments and skits that would tear laughter out of all the people that weren’t fuming from their ears. Marc has always been among the ones who would laugh, of course. He has got a vivid memory of how viscerally he desired to own a tee with a bright yellow seven printed on it, and even of the sadness of not finding any even close to his size.
In hindsight, it’s probably not that bad; he would reassure his younger self that, while he might have missed a replica of a piece of clothing that his idol was wearing on the TV on one epic day, he can just have some patience, for how dreaded it can ever have been for him, and find himself not only with his eyes, but with Valentino Rossi in the flesh all over him, hands mapping him like there is no other track he needs to know the twists and turns of by heart.
This isn’t just all he’s ever wanted. It’s all that he could have ever wished for, beyond his wildest dreams and his teenage desperate fantasies.
“No.” Leaving the hood alone, some presentiment that it will be useless soon, either way, his hand snakes up Valentino’s jaw, and the way his thumb is touching that hundred million dollar smile that has driven crazy the audience of the whole world feels almost sacrilegious; not for that, still, holding back from toying with his lip, feeling the wet tissue and the gum below. “I have already won.”
There can’t quite be any certainty on who was the first one to attack, the young lion or the old leader of the pride – after all, they are both viscerally hungry, haven’t found one satiating prey in such a long time that small animals were barely enough anymore to satisfy their stomachs.
The time of the cannibals has come.
It’s all a frenzy and indefinite words and sweating as if under their leathers and whines of the small car shaking around them, with each second in which Marc can’t even remember the one that came right before as if they were all melting into one, into the wonderful, precious, regal dawn that finds them at the end of the ritual.
Marc is crying, by the end of it. He can’t remember his own name or locate the ache in his muscles, figure identifying what he’s feeling, that must be filling him this much, overflowing from his eyes and his nose, a fullness that his body could have never predicted would have had to contain. He just knows that he can taste tears and blood, whether his own alone or Valentino’s too.
And he’s also able to wonder if Valentino has that same acre and bittersweet flavor on his tongue, behind a smile that, even without missing an interview or a race, always spending all the time handed to him in his presence, Marc doesn’t recognize.
Loving, it almost looks.
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There are other people at the ranch, too, so there’s nothing much happening again, more than some audaciously stolen kisses from Marc and the best makeout session of his life in the common bathroom, with his own body pushed against the door to keep it closed. Of course, none of the boys of the academy know.
A part of Marc can’t help but think about how they are much closer to him in age than Valentino is, how it would be much more reasonable and, perhaps, ethically irreprehensible to get close to someone among them. But Valentino’s smile is always waiting for him behind every corner, so the doubt vanishes from his mind as soon as it comes.
His parents won’t know, either. There’s not even telling how they’d react to their firstborn prodigy having relationships with men, figure – him.
Alex, though, knows, because of course he does. Marc narrates most of the details, hands flailing and gesturing in the dark of the room that they have shared for a lifetime, lets his heart pour out of his mouth without controlling one word.
And Alex looks happy for him; he truly does. That softness in his smile that Marc has always loved with all the forces in his chest, that he’s always lacked in himself and that he couldn’t find in anyone else, the depth of his brown eyes where he could just bathe into and warm himself for life.
But, just in the backlight of them, only visible in the weak light of the desk lamp that hardly reaches the other side of his face, there’s an anxiety that looms as great as terror rising straight from his heart.
It ends up trickling into Marc’s, too, his own smile wavering and his limbs with it, as his mouth pauses to let Alex speak.
Are you sure?
Of course he is. What can go so wrong?
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Sepang goes wrong.
Sepang goes horrible, in fact, in all the ways that it could.
That was a goddamn kick, and it is scandalous that it would take so many cameras and meetings to assess that, giving Marc’s patience the hardest test he has had to endure in a long, long time.
They are the only occasions that they give each other to speak, Valentino and him. Things had been tense for the whole season, and he wonders if the nosy, overbearing journalists had noticed as well, even without access to the rooms that they couldn’t share without a fight nearly erupting or to the hair pulling and the hugging that felt more like manhandling.
Yes, very likely. Both because they are horrendously stubborn in their scavenging for pieces and because Valentino isn’t the most subtle rider on the grid, or the one who cares the most about putting up appearances, with no reservations to express all that festers in his chest about his fellow riders.
About just how much he’s come to hate Marc.
At times, it’s almost funny, like the rambles of some old mad man making up conspiracies against himself; some say he’s trying to compensate for his envy, but Marc doesn’t want to cave into this kind of malignant narratives. It’s not that they are unbelievable, just that he doesn’t want to believe them.
Other times, it simply hurts.
“I wonder, is it true that he idolized me?” It’s from the other side of the room, but Marc hears it clearly.
Some other journalists were asking him questions, too, about his version of the story or some other triviality of the fact that never could be quite as heavy and meaningful as the truth that was rotting at the center of his chest, vague voices that were replied to with some cordial smile and the most neutral opinion that he could make up without leaving cracks that all the blood he’d lost and drank in the last year could flow out of, voices that he could in fact barely hear at all.
But Valentino’s voice, he could recognize it, distinguish every word, if he was a world away. Valentino knows that well, too, moreso when he’s being loud and bright and smiling like a star. “Is it true that he had my poster at home?”
How stupid. He is a star.
And Marc’s favorite shelves are a testament to that.
“I don’t know, I’m not that sure. I’d love to see it in person.” Louder than his last words, only the subsequent laughter comes to Marc’s ears – and louder than that, whatever is breaking inside him.
He can’t quite identify it, give it a name, to this sorry creature sitting in his stomach, grabbing at his lungs and strangling his throat, crying inside it and leaving his voice to wade a lake of tears and tumble out of a trained smile that he can only hope exudes a picture of formal nonchalance. The media will probably fall for it, anyway, nor would they care if any of the coils of this beast surfaced, when Valentino is already giving them enough material for their columns, maybe for years to come. After all, gossip about their rivalry has been around for a long while, and Valentino’s bigmouth statements won’t but fuel the narrative, challenge the audience to pick a side.
It can only be a rhetorical question, to ask whether the grand majority of the motorsports world will defend the newcome alien with two trophies on his back or the living legend that has shaped motorcycle racing since the beginning of the century for what it is today and that at least two generations of fans have idolized.
Marc included. He wonders if, wasn’t he on the other side of the fence, he would have taken Valentino’s parts, too, and hates himself for the answer.
A childhood has been spent building his altar, faithfully collecting merchandising and dreams, building around him all his inspiration for his career, yearning for his praise and setting his own bars higher at every race against him, and it’s only for the sake of his religion that he’s sacrificed his own body and soul to this sport, in search for the light like a moon attempting to become like his sun; the same sun that is burning him.
And the worst offense, the most unjust part of this divine punishment, is that he’s doing it just because he can. Because outside of the track his claws can reach much further than Marc’s, can feed him to the wolves if he cannot cannibalize him himself following the rules of the game, and he will do it, no matter how useless it will be on the track. Marc can be harsh and painfully hard on himself, but he’s not masochistically self-hating, and he knows that Valentino is striking him on purpose far more than he is defending himself.
But if Marc were to blame himself, to just convince himself that it was his own fault and that he deserved these pieces of teeth stuck in his meat, would it hurt less?
Would this internal hemorrhage, this spring in his stomach that keeps spewing blood and lets it boil in his organs without closing, feel like self-flagellation, something that he could stop if he wanted to and that out of his own will he’d keep going.
Instead, all he can do is clenching his teeth through the day and then the trip back home, denying himself sleep, lest his unguarded eyes let out tears that he has promised himself long ago would never feed into journalists’ thirst for drama, so much so that comes a point where they are fundamentally stuck behind his eyelids, leaving his sight just blurred at the edges but his cheeks dry.
Even when his mom hugs him in front of the door of his home, tight as a baby that she still needs to protect from everything that is mean and vile in the world, and then his dad, his insides are tense and unmoving, floating in a different reality, perhaps one where the idol and love of his life isn’t turning the world against him and they can still kiss in the bathrooms of the paddock or hiding during celebrations. Something does creak when Alex’s arms wrap around him, who has become taller than him, just the perfect height for Marc’s head to fit in the crook of his neck, but a shaky breath is all that comes out of it.
Then, there’s his room.
The backpack falls on the ground with a thump that, for how harsh, barely reaches his ears, its importance null in front of the void in front of his eyes, shelf empty and well dusted; square shapes on the wall like chalk outlines where his soul lies.
“Mom?” What was supposed to be a call for a question falls out of his trembling lips like a child’s plea, and his chest is finally moving again. For how much he wishes it didn’t, not like this. “Where is everything?”
What is in her eyes is a kind of grief that echoes in his ribcage with a sob, for having pulled a knife from his son’s back so that he wouldn’t have to.
Nonetheless, when the weapon is removed, it can only mean it is the time for the wound to bleed. And it does, all over his sheets as he climbs on the bed, holds onto the shelf like his life depends on it, and, in some way, it is just how it has always been, like a piece of himself has been severed off him by Valentino’s sharp tongue.
It’s there that what was bending and twisting finally breaks, kneeling on the bed folded on himself, that he cries at the vacant tabernacle of a false god.
In all fairness, it is a bit annoying that they’d keep asking him about Rossi after ten years.
Not that he ever says it out loud; he wears the scar the same way he does all the others on his body, just spots on his skin like any other, even if no one seems to treat it as such. For all the marks left by the surgeries and the crashes there is sympathy and admiration, the recognition for all the hard work of fighting a body that seems to want to give up on him every other race. That one injury, though, is just some excuse for drama, for recycling the same three questions for another interview for this podcast or that talk show.
Nonetheless, he smiles, politely and sincerely, answers the questions with all the neutrality that the topic deserves, a healed wound that has scarred his career not any more or any less than the others.
They tell him that Rossi was in Austria, apparently, though he only witnessed it on YouTube afterwards, and there is a part of him, youthfully spiteful, that wonders if he had done it on purpose, to pass just by his paddock, though it might just be right; the camera focuses on this middle-aged man’s impish smirk that he has had burnt into his eyelids for almost thirty years, enough for him to know that it was brazenly deliberate.
Bastard manchild.
He’s barely angry anymore, though. Just finds the guy’s persistent grudge somewhat laughable.
“But,” His interviewer is insisting on the topic, on the way their paths will keep crossing, whether Marc likes it or not. He really doesn’t, by the way. “If you happened to see him, you’d simply greet him, cordially, no?”
“Well, no.” It doesn’t even hurt to say, besides some phantom pain at the edges of his lips, and there is no need to elaborate further.
Even as the host keeps asking and pushing, a bland denial is all Marc gives him, all he has in himself. “Everyone does their own thing. Certainly, he doesn’t need me and I don’t need him.” If his twenty-two years old self were to hear him, now, he’d probably weep tears and blood until his body would be dried out – and he did do that, at the time.
Just, he’s grown up, now. Even when Valentino still holds him in his sleep, chuckles in his ear or towers over him, it is but shadows in his dreams.
It’ll be fine.