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If Alex doesn’t stop snoring Marc is going to beat him to death with his own race helmet, blood and love and brotherhood be damned.
After one particularly violent snort practically reverberates through the wall that separates them, Marc lets his aching eyes open and finally gives up on his hope of getting back to sleep. There’s light filtering weakly through his dark green curtains, so it’s morning now anyway.
His head throbs a little as he leans over to grab his phone from his bedside table, and he presses his cheek into a cool patch of his pillow in an attempt to ease the impending pain. His mouth is dry, and he knows he should get up to shower, hydrate, eat. But his bed is so comfy and he’s warm and has a notification bar bursting with messages to scroll through, so for now Marc just wants to stay right where he is and try to ignore his sore head. And his brother’s snores.
Running an eye down his Insta notifications, Marc’s heart skips a few beats when he sees a like from vale-yellow46, but a split second of closer inspection reveals the name is incorrect. It’s just a fan account, not him. Sighing absently, Marc presses a hand to his aching forehead, then bites his lip and pulls open his text messages.
Not that Marc will see any message from the man himself there, either. He’s pretty sure his number has been blacklisted on Valentino’s phone since 2015. None of his texts have been answered in years. Worst of all is that the sting of rejection and the pain of his idol’s silence always cuts deep, with every vain check Marc makes in hope.
Marc still texts Valentino anyway, every now and then. He always hopes he might one day get a reply, or that he might say something witty or exciting or provocative enough to illicit a response, any response. He always hurts anew when he fails. Marc scrolls through their entire message thread from time to time, too, when he’s feeling particularly nostalgic or miserable, just to remember how good things had once been going between them.
Because it had been. Up until 2014 their text thread had been full of jokes, idle chat about TV shows, long introspective comments about their love of racing, silly emojis, wishes of luck and congratulations. It had been happy, friendly, eager, with the slightest hint of something deeper, something more carnal, simmering below the surface like a promise that laid in wait, growing in strength and size.
Marc had been on cloud 9 upon developing a friendship with his idol, at the excitement laced with pleasure that had screamed through him when Vale embraced him after a great race, gushed about him to the media, sought Marc out at any opportunity, smiling and friendly and receptive.
But since 2015, well... the few texts Marc summons up the courage to send have all been ignored.
24/04/2015
08:57pm
Me: I had an amazing seafood risotto yesterday. Do you like seafood?
09:33pm
Me: Is that a no? Are you allergic?
10:01pm
Me: Oh... Not speaking to me? Is this to do with earlier? I know I make mistakes, push too hard. I just want to impress everyone. To impress you.
28/06/2015
01:14am
Me: This is ridiculous! How come you’re allowed to carve me up, and all the rest of the field, but the second someone dares to push back, you don’t like it!
26/10/2015
05:22am
Me: I didn’t do what you think. I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. I’ve looked up to you for far too long. Do you really think I’d do anything for Jorge, before you? Do you really think anyone else matters to me on the track but you? I’d never do anything to hurt you, or your chances. I want you to win more than I want to myself, sometimes. There is nothing anyone could do to make me turn from even just the idea of you!
25/012/2016
12:24pm
Me: Feliz Navidad! How is your Christmas Day going? Happy holidays to you and your family xoxo
07/07/2017
03:46am
Me: fUck U valENTino!! fck u fr makng me hurt lik ths!
04:50pm
Me: Ah, sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. I was out drinking with some friends.
24/04/2018
06:59pm
Me: I’m dangerous?? That’s rich coming from you, as if you haven’t pulled the same shit!! How the fuck can you say that?? I can’t believe you! The shit you say! Why do you always have to hurt me?
07:06pm
Me: answer my calls!
09:33pm
Me: I didn’t mean to make contact, no matter what you think. When I realized it was you, and you were falling, I tried to reach back for you.
15/08/2018
11:15pm
Me: Do you still not understand?
01/01/2019
01:58pm
Me: Alex has bought another puppy, she’s so cute, so tiny
12/01/2019
07:49am
Me: I never know what I want more, to be you or to be with you
23/01/2019
11:27am
Me: I moved house. It was exhausting, but I love my new place. It’s up in the mountains a bit more, quieter than down in the village. It has a garden, so Alex’s dogs can play when he comes over
14/04/2019
08:35pm
Me: Congrats on your podium, that was a beautiful race
08/09/2019
03:23pm
Me: I’m still blacklisted, after all this time? And Alex dares to say I’M the one who won’t move on and let it go
01/01/2020
01:16am
Me: I miss you
01:17am
Me: I’m sorry
01:18am
Me: I wish I felt nothing for you
16/10/2020
02:25pm
Me: sorry to hear about the Covid test, I hope you’re OK and that you come back soon. I miss you.
03:51pm
Me: I’m driving myself a bit mad, to be honest, worrying. If anything were to happen to you... I don’t know why I’m panicking so much. A really horrible, painful thing happened to me, and you haven’t said a word. So I guess it means nothing to you if I wish you well. Still. Please be safe.
Marc never gets replies to his texts. Never. But he reasons that he’s hungover and it’s a Sunday morning, so he’s allowed to have a melancholic lapse in judgement and send a new message anyway. He hasn't in a while. He's been good.
Not that it matters, not really, because Valentino won’t answer.
Marc’s embarrassingly obvious crush has been firmly rejected, his hero worship turned aside. Valentino didn’t care about him anymore, not in any way, shape or form. He probably had, in the beginning, at least a little, and Marc would give anything to go back to that.
As it is, Marc tells himself, I’m still blacklisted. He doesn’t see the messages anyway.
They’re in the summer break, the big month off in the middle of the GP calender, and Marc is overcome by a yawn, squinting in pain as his head throbs in vindication at the movement. He and Alex had been up late drinking out on his patio with the Espargaro boys, which is why Marc’s little brother has been snoring in his guest room half the damn night.
11/07/2021
06:18am
Me: Just FYI, Aleix Espargaro drinks like a fish, but his brother was practically on the floor after just one. Go figure.
Marc’s scrolling absently through Insta again when a response pops into his notification bar, and he wonders if he’s fallen back asleep and is now in the middle of a blissfully perfect dream. He taps the message open in disbelief, his heart starting to pound.
06:21am
Vale: Pol has a baby girl, no? Maybe this is why he needs sleep
Marc stares in shock at Valentino’s name on the screen, his yellow colour message bubble there in all it’s lurid glory, just under Marc’s orange, for the first time in so so so many years.
06:23am
Me: You answered? You’re answering me?
06:26am
Vale: It would seem so
0 6 : 27 am
Me: You never answer me. I text but you never answer.
06:30am
Vale: I know. I haven’t had anything to say.
06:32am
Vale: I did want to ask about the puppy, but then I saw her on Alex’s Insta anyway.
06:35am
Me: But you have said nothing about anything else I’ve texted? We haven’t talked in years!
06:39am
Vale: There is nothing to say, Marc.
06:42am
Me: I’ve been trying all this time. And you haven’t even tried at all. So why speak to me now?
06:46am
Vale: The same reason as why you keep texting, even when I never answered.
06:49am
Me: I do it because I miss you! Because I want to go back to how it was in 2014. Before we hurt each other so badly, so often .
06:51am
Vale: Yes. But we can’t go back. We’re not friends. You were a star-struck boy, like all the others, and I was bemused, even impressed by you, for sure. But in Moto GP there’s no friends. On the track even my own baby brother, and my Academy boys, are my rivals.
06:54am
Me: Off the track.
06:57am
Vale: There was nothing for us off the track.
07:02am
Me: There was. There was, and you know it. If there wasn’t, you wouldn’t have so much anger. It would just be like with Stoner, with Jorge, all the others you fought with on the asphalt, but didn’t care about off of it. It wasn’t like that with me though. You’re still angry after all this time for a reason. You haven’t let me go.
07:07am
Vale: Yes. I’m still angry. Because you’ve learnt nothing. You haven’t changed. You’re still dangerous, and unpredictable, and one day you will hurt someone in a way they won’t heal from. As if you haven’t come close with me already so many times. I don’t trust you.
07:08am
Vale: And I don’t trust myself around you.
Marc’s starting to wonder that he might not fully be grasping what the conversation is truly about. But he just dives straight in at the deep end, as ever.
07:10am
Me: I never did what you think, I never did anything, or was told to do anything, to help Jorge. It was all in your mind. You invented a narrative and still won’t let it go and I’m sick of it continuing to hurt me after all this time
07:13am
Vale: So don’t let it. Stop caring.
07:15am
Me: I can’t. I don’t know how.
07:18am
Vale: Just let it go, Marquez, and move on.
07:22am
Me: I can’t! Tell me how? How did you, so easily?
07:23am
Vale: Who says I did?
Marc lets out a yell of frustration and hits ‘call’, needing to speak to him properly, but Valentino rejects it immediately.
07:27am
Vale: What do you want, Marc? What are you trying to get out of this? These stupid texts. This stupid conversation. Because whatever it is, I won’t give it to you
Marc’s lost, the whole cyclical conversation too confusing as it starts to repeat itself again. He falls for it anyway. When it comes to Valentino, he can never resist. He always falls.
07:31am
Me: I told you. I want your friendship back. I want you to care about me again and share the podium with me again and laugh with me again. We were going somewhere, things were going somewhere. I want that back. And I think you want me still too.
07:36am
Vale: We will never go back to that. That’s over. I 'll never have another podium. I’ll never look at you and be able to feel joy, to laugh. I meant what I said when I told the press you are a dangerous rider. I don’t trust you, and I don’t want you.
07:38am
Me: I’d never do anything to hurt you! Or anyone!
07:42am
Vale: But you have! So many times! You take stupid risks, make stupid dives up the wrong line!
07:44am
Vale: You don’t think, you act like it’s all a video game, a joke. Bumper cars or Mario Kart! Not real riders with lives and families!
07:46am
Vale: Do you forget Sic so easily? Or Salom? Daijiro Kato? Tomizawa?
07:47am
Vale: Do you forget Jason?
07:50am
Me: Of course I don’t forget! Why do you say such horrible things?! Why you do you always have to hurt me like this! We all suffer when a rider falls.
07:55am
Vale: You need to stop with the risks, and stop the games.
07:57am
Vale: One day you’re going to face consequences that you can’t laugh off and can’t turn away from.
08:03am
Me: You never have. You’re a God, the rest of us are scum under your boot. Laguna Seca with Casey. Laguna Seca with me! You’re a hypocrite to criticize me, when you’ve built a career doing the same thing! The same moves, fueled by the same desperation! Where do you think I learnt it from? Who do you think I imitate, who do I always watch? Only you, always only you!
08:05am
Vale: I know you think you idolize me. That by trying to copy me you’re showing some form of worship.
08:06am
Vale: But you’re wrong. And you’re not me. You’re not as good as me. And you never will be.
08:07am
Me: You’re a hypocritical, lying, has-been!
08:09am
Vale: And you’re a reckless, irresponsible, stupid boy. You should be put over someone’s lap, and taught a lesson.
Marc’s breath catches in his throat, his tears at Valentino’s accusations still streaking hot down his cheeks. What the fuck was going on now?! He didn’t understand. One moment Vale was saying he didn’t like him, didn’t want him, didn’t trust him, hated him, despised him, revoked him. Thought he would kill someone. Now... this?
Nothing made sense, but then when did anything ever make sense when it came to Valentino?
With his heart hammering in his ribcage and his fingers trembling, Marc slowly, carefully, taps a reply.
08:11am
Me: Are you offering?
Too anxious to keep still, Marc scrambles from bed and starts to pace his room, mindless of leaving the sheets flung half onto the floor or of the dirty laundry under his feet. He scrubs the tears from his face, not really surprised by them. It was no different to how their interactions, or lack thereof, usually went for him. He cries easily, and never so easily than when it was due to Valentino.
Besides, the line was crossed, perhaps just now, perhaps eight years ago, or perhaps during any of the infinite times between their first meeting and this very moment. Maybe at some tangible point, or perhaps they simply carried along on their own inevitable trajectory. Maybe it had always been this way – for Marc it had, at least. His crush had been a constant for as long as he could remember, though it had taken different forms, meant different things, shown itself in different ways as he’d grown from a child to a man.
Vale had always been friendly to him, always kind; before things had gone bad, they’d joke around, have a drink occasionally, and Marc had even been out to the dirt track ranch in Italy where Valentino trained his Academy proteges. They’d gotten along well, and there were times, even after it all got awful in 2015, when he’d catch Vale watching him, eyes regretful. And angry. And disgusted. And wanting.
Marc’s phone lights up in his hand at the same moment as he trips on a discarded T-shirt, and he squawks in surprise as he drops it, then scrambles to grab it up again and clambers back into bed to pull the sheets over his head.
Whatever Valentino’s response is, hiding feels like the only appropriate way for him to deal with it. Taking another breath, Marc opens the messages.
08:15am
Vale: I’m not sure I’m the right person for the job. I wouldn’t hold back.
08:18am
Me: Do you really think, after all this time, I want you to hold back? And you call ME stupid.
08:20am
Vale: You are stupid.
08:21am
Vale: If I did it, it would hurt.
08:23am
Me: Good. I want it to. Anything you want to do to me, I can take. Anything you want, I’m all yours. Always have been.
08:24am
Vale: In that case... my bare hand... your bare ass.
Marc lets out a helpless, choked up whimper, but Valentino isn’t finished.
08:25am
Vale: Until you’re pink. And writhing. And screaming.
Feeling his eyes grow heavy with need, Marc shoves his balled up fist into his mouth to stifle his moan, mindful of his brother’s presence through the wall.
08:26am
Me: What am I screaming for?
08:27am
Vale: Perhaps for more... perhaps to stop. We’ll just have to see, won’t we?
08:28am
Me: Yes, we will.
Marc doesn’t know what possesses him to do what he does next.
Or rather, he does, he’s just not that familiar with it, can’t handle it, has never felt it like this before, so hot under his skin. All he knows is that his need is fierce, and real, and has been building for so many years, on the back of so many glances, so many touches, so many daydreams and fantasies. Painful exchanges on the track, painful exchanges in parc fermé, painful exchanges at the press conferences, and so many tears shed, as soon as Marc was alone. But good times too, the happiness of shared podiums, shared hugs, shared looks... all of it culminated into rivalry, friendship, lust, hero worship... need.
The aching want sends Marc stumbling from his bed, struggling into some clothes and rushing into his bathroom. He uses the toilet, then washes his hands and face, brushes his teeth and staggers out his bedroom door. He grabs a bottle of water from his fridge and then with absolutely zero presence of mind, he finds himself in his car and peeling from his garage.
“What are you doing,” Alex’s mystified voice comes on the back of a yawn, echoing through the Bluetooth on Marc’s dash, when he answers his brother’s call as he leaves his street. Alex must have heard the car.
“I’m... going to visit a friend.”
“A friend? What friend?”
“It doesn’t matter the friend.”
“Well, when you come back, bring more milk. I need coffee.”
“Not a friend in Andorra. Get the milk yourself.”
Alex is silent for a long, suspicious-laden moment.
“I’m... going to Italy,” Marc admits, as he navigates onto the main road of the village.
“You... oh my God, Marc! Jesus Christ! You haven’t even taken a bag, do you even have a flight? Did you even shower?!”
“I’m driving there,” Marc mumbles, too scared to turn back now.
“You can’t drive to Italy!”
“I can so,” Marc points out, because of course he can.
There’s a beat, and then, “I’m telling Papa!”
Their father calls not even a full minute later as Marc is passing through Encamp, his voice chiding and gentle.
“Marc... what are you doing, son?”
“It’s alright, Papa. Don’t worry about it.”
“Think about this, Marc.”
“I have. Papa...” Marc can’t explain it to him, not this.
His Papa sighs, sounding so much like Alex that Marc would laugh, if he felt up to it.
“I’m fine,” Marc insists again, even though he’s almost definitely not.
He almost stops and turns the car around, half a hundred times. Any point where the flow of traffic slows, where there’s any barrier to the open road, where he’s forced to actually think... at the entry to the Envalira tunnel; when he hits the A61; when he stops for coffee and to use the restroom in Béziers; to eat in Arles; at the border into Italy from France, 9 hours into his drive...
He’s being too much, as usual – too presumptuous, too hasty, too risky. Valentino still hasn’t responded to his last text, was probably just having a bit of fun flirting – he hadn’t invited Marc to do this, to come to him. And even so, Marc has driven out of Andorra and through fucking France all because of some dirty texts and a lifetime of need he’s never fully comprehended until now.
“Yeah, you’re pretty fucking stupid,” Alex agrees, when he calls to check up on his big brother.
Alex’s voice is tinged with disapproval, but he stays on the line with Marc for almost an hour to keep him company as he drives. He does mostly just huff and sigh, though, so Marc extends an olive branch by trying to make conversation.
“It’s pretty here. The view is stunning.”
It is too, the sun starting to sink over the sparkling water of the Mediterranean Sea on his right, the sweeping green hills and countryside of northern Italy to the left.
“Where?” Alex grumbles.
“I think a sign said Cipressa?”
“And so? What? What will you do when you get to Tavullia?”
Get spanked, I hope, then fucked until I can’t walk... Marc thinks, before he recalls he’d never actually told Alex he was going to see Valentino, specifically.
“I don’t know,” he says instead, and it’s not a lie.
Alex sighs again, and hangs up.
Marc heads inland at Genoa, stopping again for more food, his eyes heavy with exhaustion and his body cramped and sore from sitting for so long hunched at the steering wheel. He ignores the stares as he bolts down a meal he doesn’t taste in the back of a trattoria on the outskirts of the city. The other diners gape and whisper, some arguing with each other about whether it’s really him.
He throws his pasta back up in a gas-station bathroom in Modena, his nerves too thick in his throat, churning his stomach.
This was a mistake, he thinks, as he staggers back to his car, and is surprised to see that darkness has fully descended. I should just go home...
He keeps driving.
He seems to speed through Bologna, Imola, Faenza, Forli. And it’s really not far now to the ranch, less than hour. He’d felt all along like he would never arrive, and now that he’s about to, Marc still doesn’t quite know what he’s going to do.
He keeps driving.
He passes Misano, which he’s familiar enough with from racing there so many times, and this is landscape he now knows.
It’s not a comfort.
Through Tavullia at 46km's, and God, he wants to be sick again. To distract himself, he studies the little village, its buildings, the streets Valentino must walk daily, must know so intimately, like the back of his hand.
The way Marc wants to know him.
Then the ranch with its flag-post, the yellow banner snapping in the cool night air.
The long, twisting drive, same as Marc remembers.
The yard before the farmhouse.
The farmhouse.
Marc parks and climbs from the car on shaking legs.
He walks to the front door, and holds the frame for a balance as a wave of dizziness washes over him.
Breathes in. Breathes out.
Knocks.
The door opens after a few long moments, and Marc is frozen. Valentino stares down at him, bewildered.
Marc hadn’t expected it, somehow, that Vale would answer his own door, though in hindsight it’s stupid of him to be surprised. Valentino just seemed like someone who doesn’t answer doors. Who employs someone solely dedicated to answer them for him, because he’s that bloody famous... Marc had expected a butler, or even Luca. Or Uccio.
Anyone but Valentino.
They stare at each other in mutual shock, and Marc struggles to try and process what’s happening – because apparently driving 14 hours from Andorra isn’t enough time for him to comprehend that he would come face to face with Valentino at the end.
Valentino, for his part, looks as though he can’t quite believe Marc is standing there, on his doorstep at 10:30pm. Which feels pretty fair.
“Marc?”
“Hi,” Marc breathes back, voice a nervous squeak as he tries to gather himself.
There’s noise emanating from behind Valentino, music and laughter and voices; a party, or maybe just the Academy boys winding down after a day of training on the dirt bikes.
“Marc? What are you doing here?” Valentino’s wide eyes are very blue.
“I... I just...” Marc is lost. 14 hours of driving. 14 years of wanting.
As his answer – because there's really nothing else for it, he’s driven all day, for fuck’s sake – Marc steps forward and kisses him.
Valentino’s so tall that Marc needs to clutch at his shoulders for balance, but he only realizes this when he’s practically fallen against the older man's torso. The next thing he notices is how perfectly soft and warm Valentino’s mouth is.
The kiss is gentle, tentative, slow, not representative of them at all, with their fraught tension, the bitter, barbed exchanges, the jealousy, the pain they’ve caused each other. But it’s still so perfect that Marc’s stunned all over again, until Valentino eases him away with gentle hands, his eyes questioning.
“I... I’ve wanted that for so long,” Marc whispers to him by way of explanation, and Valentino’s gaze softens as he lets out a small sigh.
After watching him for a long moment, Marc goes up on his toes to kiss him again, needing to feel his mouth once more. Valentino doesn’t try to stop him, so Marc dares a little harder, presses a little closer, clings a little tighter – he’s always been a risk taker – and he urges Valentino’s lips to part with his tongue.
Valentino freezes at the sensation, and for one terrifyingly heart-wrenching moment, Marc thinks he’s about to be shoved back, thrown out the door, chased out of town by the Academy boys as they wield flaming pitchforks. But then Valentino whimpers – honest to God whimpers – and his hands encircle Marc’s waist as he tilts his head to side to deepen the kiss, pulling Marc’s shorter frame tight against him.
Marc’s shaking from pent-up emotion when they separate, but Valentino still looks shocked. He touches a hand to Marc’s flushed cheek, and shakes his head slowly as if in wonder.
“What are you doing here, Marquez?”
“I just wanted you to know. What I feel. How much I feel it. I just thought... that you should know, once and for all. So I wanted to come, to tell you. To show you. To kiss you.”
“Oh, Marc, mio amore...” then Valentino’s sky-blue eyes flick from Marc to the car in the driveway.
“Isn’t that your car? Did you drive here?!”
“Yes...”
“What?! Why? You drove here... in what 16, 17, hours? Since we last texted?”
“Yes. 14 hours, give or take.”
“Why?!”
“I... wanted you to know...” Marc repeats, then trails off.
Know what, exactly?
That he loves him? Yes, but he can’t say that when he’s swaying from exhaustion on Valentino’s doorstep.
That he wants him? Yes, but he can also barely keep his eyes open.
At last, Marc’s starting to feel ridiculous.
“I’ll leave now... I’ll get a room in the village, and maybe tomorrow, we can talk properly?”
He starts to pull away, but Valentino stops him with a hand on his shoulder, then winds his arms around Marc’s waist and re-claims his lips in a searing kiss.
“No, il mio ragazzo, you’re staying,” Valentino murmurs when they part enough to speak, as he tugs Marc properly across the threshold and into the farmhouse. “There’s plenty of room in my bed. And, as I seem to recall, we had some plans, no?”
Marc practically sobs into his mouth in relief as he’s kissed once more, a sound which turns into a gasp when he’s hoisted up off the ground completely without warning. He eventually manages to get his legs around Valentino’s waist and his arms around his neck, as Valentino walks their fused bodies deeper into the house.
The music gets louder, but Valentino passes straight by the lounge room without removing his lips from their journey up Marc’s neck, and Marc is too delirious with pleasure to properly look around.
He does manage to wave a distracted hand when someone calls out to him – he thinks it might be Luca.
“Oh, hey, it’s Marquez! E bello vederti, Marc!”
Then the noise lessens as a door is shut, and he’s being laid down gently on a bed. He opens his eyes, which had been screwed tightly shut, and gazes up at Valentino, who’s smiling as he kneels over him.
He reaches up a hand to stroke through Valentino’s curls, then down his flushed cheek to his kiss-swollen lips.
I did that to him, he just has time to register before Valentino is pressing down against him, all long, warm body and clever, experienced fingers that seem to be peeling off their clothes with complete ease.
Marc shifts under him, wanting to help rather than just lie there getting kissed and stripped, but Valentino pulls back completely when he feels him trying to move, suddenly looking concerned.
“Are you alright with this? We don’t have to do anything, if you’re not ready. Are you tired? Have you eaten, are you hungry? Do you need anything?”
Marc’s exhausted, starving, dehydrated, and has a splitting headache behind his eyes, but none of that matters in the wake of the fact that Valentino has stopped touching him.
“No, everything’s fine, I just want you,” he grits out, reaching up to pull the older rider back down, wanting to feel more of him.
He’ll feel embarrassed, later, at how quickly he cums, not to mention that he practically shouts the house down around them as he does so. But with Valentino’s long fingers wrapped around him, just wet enough from his mouth, and his lips on Marc’s neck, feeling so debauched with his jeans and underwear barely down his thighs and his shirt rucked up around his chest, any hope of prowess is out the window.
“Sì, urla, questo è tutto...” Valentino mutters as he watches him lose control. Marc hasn’t got the slightest idea what he’s saying, just chokes on his own gasps under the heat of his gaze. Valentino licks him clean, tongue dragging warm and wet up his abdomen and ribcage, over his own fist. Marc can’t watch that, it’s too hot, too much, so he sinks back against the sheets and scrubs his heated face with his hands.
“Fuck.”
He’s completely drained now, but he tries to reach for Valentino’s fly, then pouts when he’s gently pushed away.
“No, not now, not tonight. You look about ready to pass out.”
Marc is, yeah, but why should that be a reason not to carry on?
“I didn’t drive all this way here not to get my hands on you at last,” he grumbles, as Valentino helps him properly into the bed and under the blankets.
“Sleep. We have tomorrow, still.”
“Tomorrow,” Marc agrees. “If nothing else.”
He face-plants into a pillow and falls into dreamless sleep before he hears Valentino’s reply.
*
Marc wakes to an empty room the next morning. He’s still feeling tired, and wouldn’t hesitate to just go straight back to sleep if that didn’t feel awkward in someone else’s bed. So he forces himself out of the nest of blankets to retrieve his dead phone from his jeans pocket and is relieved a charger plugged into the wall by the bed is compatible with it.
He showers in Valentino’s en-suite, laughing at the sunshine yellow tiling around the walls as he does so, but not really surprised that the colour gimmick extends to Vale’s own home. Once Marc gets out, he’s just starting to panic about not having brought any spare clothes, not even a change of underwear, when Valentino comes back into the bedroom.
They stare at each other, Marc frozen in Valentino’s oddly predatory gaze.
Valentino looks hotter than sin, in a tight black singlet and baggy yellow running shorts, his skin a little flushed. Marc still isn’t dressed, hasn’t even dried off properly, and is standing naked in the bathroom holding a towel to his wet hair.
The silence lasts a few seconds, then they’re both moving forward in an urgent frenzy, mouths meeting with a ferocity that feels so primal it scares Marc a little.
Valentino groans against his lips as Marc drops his towel and lets his hands delve eagerly into the waistband of Vale’s shorts, urging them down so he can touch him at last. He’s just curling his fingers experimentally around Valentino’s hips when he gets lifted back onto the bed. Valentino’s longer body pins him to the mattress in an echo of last night, and Marc gets his legs around his waist, drags his ankles up and down his thighs, his ass, as he writhes, trying to get enough leverage to press himself up.
The skin-on-skin feeling is so good that Marc’s whimpering from it, and his own cries are loud in his ears. Valentino doesn’t try to silence him, just laughs into his wet hair, then catches his lips in another kiss. Marc whines under his mouth, not knowing how else to articulate the intensity of what he’s feeling. He can’t help it. It feels so good, the warm press of Valentino’s body, then his hand, slick with lube, wraps around their lengths as his coaxing tongue terrorizes Marc’s neck.
Somehow, Valentino is as scorching hot and hard as Marc is. Marc wouldn’t believe it, that he could have that effect on him, if he wasn’t watching it with own eyes, feeling it against his own skin, as Valentino’s hand slid quick and firm over them both.
Marc shouts out that he can’t hold back for long, without even knowing what language he uses, but Valentino understands, kisses his mouth, his temple, his neck, then cums first, spilling onto him with a snarl. The added wetness he creates in his fist has Marc seeing stars and he follows, body shuddering. His heels slip down Vale’s back before he drops his legs to the bed and lets his toes curl into the sheets. His mouth falls open in a wordless cry of delight, guttural and prolonged.
“Fuck,” he mumbles, after he’s caught his breath. “I hope your boys haven’t used up all the hot water this morning. We both need a shower.”
“Not sure I want to talk or think about my kids when we’re pretty much sticking to each other,” Vale mutters into his collarbone, though he does lift his head and appraise Marc with laughing eyes.
“I wouldn’t worry about that,” a voice calls through the door. “We heard everything, there’s no point in being coy now. I drew the short straw to come and ask you to keep it down!”
“Piss off, Bezz,” Valentino doesn’t seem all that concerned, and it’s only after the sound of Marco Bezzechi’s giggles have faded that he deigns to sit up. He helps Marc off the bed, kisses his cheek gently, and leads the way to the bathroom.
Marc doesn’t realize how dizzy he is until he stumbles into Vale’s back as he turns the shower on, and gets shot a pitying look.
“We’ll get clean, then get you some food.”
The getting clean part, in hindsight, would have taken less time if they’d kept their hands and mouths off each other. But Vale does let him go long enough, once they’re dry and Marc’s back to the conundrum of clothes, to find him some old things of his that mostly fit, though Marc has to roll the jeans up several times at the waist and ankles.
“I can grab you some VR46 merch to wear from our stock, if you like,” Valentino smirks at him, as he guides Marc out of his room and towards the dining area with an arm around his shoulders. “It won’t be staying on long, after all.”
Marc rolls his eyes at the suggestion as they round the corner, but is distracted from answering by the nerves that hit when he sees the Academy boys. He doesn’t know them very well, and they all seem at ease with each other, which makes him feel like even more of outsider. They’re joking around and peering at things on each other’s phones and the dining table they’re sitting at is laden with cereals and plates of toast and croissants with various condiments. The boys seem to have finished eating, if the dirty dishes being gathered up by Andrea Migno are any indication.
Marc had been out to the ranch once before, years and years ago now, so he hasn’t spent much time with these kids. He really only knows the guys he rides against from the Moto GP class; he doesn’t see Franky, but Pecco comes over and greets him with a hug. Luca, a little more reserved, waves from his seat.
“Coffee, Marc?”
“Please.”
Valentino squeezes him to his side briefly before he lets him go. Marc settles in the seat next to Luca, takes the mug of coffee offered by Celestino and that Bezz is holding out a milk jug for.
Marc’s halfway through a croissant when it occurs to him that none of them seem remotely surprised to see him. They must have all been present last night when he and Valentino... oh, God. And Bezz had said they’d all heard him just before...
He catches Valentino’s eye across the table, uncertain what to do about his realization, but Vale seems completely calm too. Maybe it was just a common enough occurrence... someone arriving at the door for Vale, a night of loud sex, awkward breakfast the next day (that only Marc is being awkward about, to be fair), that the Academy riders weren’t bothered by it?
Marc chews his food slowly. Vale drinks coffee, winks when Marc catches his eye, and blatantly doesn’t look away. Pecco and Luca keep exchanging smirks.
Bezz is the one who loses it, letting out a sudden and weirdly triumphant crow of, “YOU HAD SEX WITH MARQUEZ!” as he points a gleeful finger right into Valentino’s face.
“Twice,” Vale tells him, and Bezz and Celestino dissolve into giggling fits.
Marc doesn’t know whether to blush, or laugh too, or just die of embarrassment right there at the table, but luckily Luca is a bastion of calm.
Valentino’s little brother doesn’t react at all, just shoots a long, unimpressed scowl at Cele as the kid howls, “THAT’S SO WEIRD, BOSS! YOU AND MARQUEZ!!”
“It’s not that weird,” Pecco shrugs as he stands and goes through to the kitchen.
“It is!”
“Why?” Luca asks, tone cold. “Because they’re both guys?”
“No!” Cele waves a dismissive hand, clearly not having considered that aspect of the situation. “Not that! It’s weird that it’s them!”
Franky, who appears to have been doing some of the washing up in the kitchen, wanders through in time to clap Marc on the shoulders with still-wet hands.
“I saw it coming years ago,” he pronounces, looking smug.
“Years,” Pecco nods, following after him with another carafe of fresh coffee.
“It was only a matter of time,” Luca agrees, eyeing Marc. “He doesn’t shut up about you.”
“Hey,” Vale finally decides to intercede, leaning over to Luca with a frown. “Shush, Maro.”
“It’s true,” Franky insists from above Marc, hands still clamped on his shoulders. “He’s really quite obsessed with you.”
“Frank!”
Bezz takes up the attack on their boss, “Obsessed! Yeah, for sure, that’s putting it lightly!”
As Cele continues to giggle, Bezz affects something that’s apparently meant to be a mimic of Valentino’s voice, “Marc walked right past me today and didn’t even look at me! Everyone leave me alone, I’m going to go cry in my motor home!”
“We were side by side for the press conference and he didn’t smile at me once, he must hate me, my life is ruined!” Pecco’s is actually quite a good imitation.
“Marc doesn’t like me any more! Do you think the fact that I keep whining and bitching about him to the media has anything to do with it?!”
“Frank!!”
Marc slaps a hand over his mouth, but can’t stop his laughter. He’s rather enjoying how the tables have turned, and it’s Valentino who’s now blushing. Marc grins at him, unable to help himself. Valentino blushes even harder, and it makes his eyes look even more blue.
“There was some girl in a bikini in Marc’s latest Insta post, so she must be his girlfriend! I’m going to throw myself off the nearest campanile in my grief!”
“Celestino! Enough!” Vale scolds, and the boys stop everything but their giggling.
“Obsessed,” Pecco repeats, catching Marc’s eye.
“Well,” Marc offers, trying not to look too pleased at the thought that Valentino has been suffering just as much as he has. “He was never alone in that.”
“Hence the sex,” Luca mutters drily, looking a little nauseas.
“Hence the sex,” Marc agrees.
“Twice. That means two times, Cele,” Valentino gloats to his youngest rider, who groans and clamps his hands over his ears.
“I don’t want to think about that, boss! Ugh!”
“There’s no need to think; we heard plenty,” Luca grumbles.
“Sorry,” Marc tells him in undertone.
“This will make going back after summer break interesting. The media will be very happy!” Franky grins at Valentino, and the buoyant mood drops, as does Vale’s indulgent expression.
Marc and Valentino haven’t discussed it yet – haven’t discussed anything really – about what this means, where it leaves them, what happens next. It’s certainly not a conversation for the Academy kids to have any input in, but Celestino gives his opinion anyway.
“If anyone gives you any trouble, they’ll answer to me,” the kid cries, in a way that’s probably meant to be intimidating but is mostly just adorable.
“Thanks,” Marc offers Cele a tight smile, but can’t take his eyes from Valentino’s pinched mouth.
“As long as we don’t have to keep hearing you having sex,” Bezz concedes.
“You’d all probably better head out to the track then,” Marc murmurs without thinking, eyes still on Valentino's lips. He’s always been very stupid, and very brave.
Valentino’s concerned gaze turns heated, and next to Marc, poor Luca splutters on the last of his coffee and is subsequently the first out the door and into the yard. Bezz and Pecco follow, laughing, and calling for Migno to come from the kitchen.
Celestino doesn’t get it, and has to be dragged out by the elbow. As he hustles him out the door, Franky gives Marc a very pointed salute.
“Franky,” Valentino calls to his team-mate. Franky pauses in trying back his hair to look back at them.
“If Uccio wants to come looking for me, don’t let him?”
“Si. See you later,” Franky grins as he pulls the door shut.
The unbridled tension settles over Marc like a weight as he’s left alone with Valentino. The older man smirks, drinks more coffee, and idly sweeps up a few crumbs Bezz left on the table, looking completely nonchalant.
Marc eats a bit more, figuring he’ll need all the strength he can get. Their gazes don’t break from each other.
Valentino finishes his coffee, pointedly pushes his empty mug away, and settles back in his seat to lounge with his legs stretched out before him, the picture of indifference. He smirks.
The tension starts to cloy in the air, turning Marc’s blood thick, causing his breathing to come short, shaky, more rapid.
Valentino notices; his eyebrows raise and his eyes dance, but he continues to simply wait.
Marc eyes him, lets the intensity stretch out until it’s unbearably, impossibly thin, a mere thread. Then he bites at his lip and lets it break, lets it snap, lets it catch fire and burn to ash, to nothing.
He launches himself straight up onto the table, scrambling over it in order to take the quickest route to Valentino, and gets his mouth on him just before he’s hauled straight down onto his lap. Valentino kisses him back with equal ferocity, and Marc winds his arms around his neck as he settles his weight on Vale’s abdomen, shifting to get the angle right so that arching his back just a little presses his ass down against the older rider’s groin.
Valentino hands come up to slide through Marc’s hair, skid down his back, then one slips around to squeeze him as best he can through the denim of his jeans.
Marc pulls back from his mouth when the need to gasp in oxygen and hiss out a few swear words becomes too pressing. Valentino capitalizes on the opportunity to roll up the waistband of his jeans enough to get the button undone, the fly wrenched down.
“Vale, please!” Marc cries out into his neck, body starting to tremble with feelings he doesn’t fully know how to cope with.
“Please what?” Vale mumbles against his temple, hand finally slipping inside his parted jeans.
“Take me to bed, please!”
“But I’m perfectly comfortable right here,” Valentino insists, before he gathers Marc in his arms and stands, sitting him up on the table so he can loom over him.
Marc gets too lost in the feel of Vale’s mouth roving his neck, the gentle rocking of their bodies back and forth, the slide of warm palms over his shoulders as his borrowed shirt is pulled up and off. Then he cottons on to what Vale must mean.
“Wait, we can’t do this here!”
“Why not? The bed is so far away! Besides, the boys are at the track, we’re alone. And, in case you forgot, I’m Valentino Rossi. That means I can do whatever I want.”
“As if I hadn’t noticed,” Marc grits out sarcastically.
Valentino just laughs, but after Marc whines at him a bit more he concedes to leading him back to the bedroom.
Later, after he’s blown Marc with something akin to relish and been entirely too complimentary of Marc’s inexperienced and clumsy attempt to reciprocate, Valentino breaks the sleepy silence that has settled over their prone bodies in his bed.
“I think we should probably talk. About what Franky said. About what we said to each other, too, when we were texting before you drove out here.”
Marc pauses his idle stroking of Vale’s chest. “Whenever we talk, it doesn’t exactly go well. In fact, it usually goes very bad. I was hoping for a little more of the good before it all shatters to pieces.”
“What if we try to make all of it good? Even the talking?”
“You’re the one who said there was nothing for us off the track,” Marc reminds him quietly, anger making his blood run cold. He sits up from underneath Vale’s arm. “Or were you lying about that too?”
Valentino’s gaze hardens. “So you think that? Yet you still drove 14 hours to get here?”
“You told me you didn’t want me.”
“But you still showed up in the dead of the night! You wanted my cock that bad, but you don’t want to talk? You just want more sex until you’re satisfied, then what? You’ll drive 14 fucking hours back to fucking Andorra, and when we fucking see each other in fucking Austria... what? We go back to how it was?”
“You didn’t want me! What do you want now?!” Marc spits, fuming. “You can’t even keep your lies straight, can you?! Stop acting like you don’t know I’m in love with you! Stop acting like you think I came here just for sex! Stop playing the victim, and stop pretending you want the same as me!”
“You know I do,” Valentino’s voice is cold.
“I don’t know shit!”
“Got that right,” Vale hisses, before he’s hauling Marc back into his arms.
Marc sinks onto his lithe, warm body, too weak to resist his perfect, tempting mouth, but not giving up without a fight as he kisses back with all the anger he has. He’s flipped off and pinned down in a few seconds, but he gets his hands everywhere he can, strokes as much skin as he can reach, ferocious with his mouth, doing whatever he can to make Valentino moan.
The frenzy only increases, Valentino’s anger not abating in the slightest, and he easily turns Marc over to press his mouth almost violently down his back, hungrily over his ass. Marc rears back, shoves up onto his knees to give him better access and glances back over his shoulder, not knowing what the fuck to feel.
He’s never been rimmed before, so the new and overwhelming sensation has him crying out, uncertain, even as he thrusts helplessly into the hand Valentino has wrapped around his cock.
“You want to stop?” Vale mumbles the question into his neck as he kneels up behind him, cradling Marc’s body with his longer frame.
Speech lost to him, too gone on how good it feels, Marc shakes his head no.
“If you want to stop, say ‘Argentina.’”
“Bastard,” Marc gasps out, and would have tried to say more if his own cry hadn’t cut him off – Valentino had just landed a bare-handed blow to his ass.
“Oh, fuck you!”
Vale just grunts as he pushes between Marc’s shoulder-blades to make him move properly onto his hands and knees, so he can do it again.
“I keep my promises.”
“You don’t!”
Marc sucks in shuddered breaths, half in pain and half in delight, as Valentino keeps spanking him, holding him still with his free arm wrapped under his waist.
He takes it for as long as he can, remembering he promised as such, even once he’s reduced to clutching his own hair as the pleasure gets overridden by agony. Once it gets too much all at once, he muffles a scream into the pillow as he collapses on his belly against the bedsheets. It hurts, so why the fuck does he like it?
“Almost there. Almost looks the way I want it to, the way I've imagined for so long. Are you learning your lesson, though? I don’t expect so,” Valentino tells him airily, and finally, after a few more slaps, he stops.
Marc pants in relief, the sting and heat deep and reverberating through him. He revels in the sensation for a moment, then pushes himself back up onto trembling limbs.
“If you don’t finally fuck me, I’ll walk right out that door and never come back!”
Valentino doesn’t answer with words, just rims him again, his mouth not even remotely gentle as his warm hands knead at his earlier handiwork.
“Ah, come on, fuck you! Stop!” Marc yells, tries to reach back to shove him away, but then the pleasure comes slinking back, and he instead finds himself gripping Valentino’s hair and pressing his face closer.
Valentino’s tongue works him until he’s panting and begging, then he reaches past Marc for the lube that’s still lying on one of the pillows.
“Virgin?”
“Like this, yeah,” Marc mutters, and Valentino hums in acknowledgement, then eases a surprisingly gentle, slick finger into him. He’s still angry, Marc can see it in his eyes, in the tension on his face and the rigidity of his shoulders, in his short, sharp, quick movements. But he goes slow and soft enough that the preparation doesn’t hurt – if anything, he drags it out too long, waiting until Marc is gasping and writhing before finally adding a second finger.
Marc whines and ruts back against it, mindless with how good the pressing fingers feel, the scrape of Valentino’s shirt against his tender flesh as he kneels behind him, the warm hand lightly teasing his cock. He opens his mouth to communicate that it’s too much, not enough, but the whimper dies in his throat when there’s clattering in the next room, and the sound of voices.
“Oh for fuck’s sake, are they still going?!”
“Cover your ears, Luca!”
“How many fucking hours are they going to keep this up for!”
“I don’t know, and I don’t want to know. Grab the water bottles and let’s get the fuck out of here.”
Valentino’s unconcerned by the sounds of Pecco and his little brother in the hallway, is already rubbing himself against Marc’s aching, begging hole before the sound of a door shutting reaches their ears. Once they’re definitely gone, Marc shoves everything else from his mind, spreads his legs and whimpers at Valentino to give it to him.
He shoots a glance over his shoulder and wishes he hadn’t – it almost makes him cum just looking at Valentino’s hazy eyes, his bitten bottom lip, and when he glances down at the hard cock that’s about to press into him...
Marc shouts out in delight when Valentino finally pushes in, and Vale mutters something in Italian in his ear that Marc doesn’t have a hope in Hell of understanding. It all feels amazing, the rock hard, hot length sliding into him, the warm hands roving his skin, the lips pressed to his neck.
“Oh fuuuuck,” Marc wails, the sensations so good that his eyes roll back in his head.
“I know, sei incredibile, così dolce, so good for me,” Valentino mumbles, before he grips Marc’s shoulder with his teeth and starts to move properly.
The cries that tear from Marc’s throat with every thrust get echoed by Vale in the form of snarled grunts. More lube gets rubbed over Marc’s cock, and he yells out even louder as he fucks himself back onto Valentino’s rigid length, and forward into his wet palm. He just wants more, so much more, once the sting and the burn of the unfamiliar fade and there’s nothing but pure, stark pleasure.
They settle into a rhythm that’s too fast and hard to be called anything other than fucking. Marc doesn’t last long, too exhausted to do anything but let it build until there’s no room left, nowhere else for the pleasure to go but out. He lets himself convulse and shout as he cums, lets Valentino press him down onto the bed so he can fuck him with absolutely no abandon, hissing words in Italian before he fills him up with thick, wet warmth.
It hurts when Valentino pulls out, a little, and Marc whines into the pillow, his body far too sore and tender. There’s movement around him he’s only dimly aware of, the sound of Vale cleaning his hands off in the bathroom, then a wash-cloth run gently over Marc’s ass and thighs. He’s barely breathing evenly before Valentino kisses between his shoulder blades and lays gentle fingers on the small of his back.
“Does it hurt? Do you want ice?”
Marc groans but doesn’t offer any other answer, just revels in the warm, long fingers rubbing over his skin, enjoying the feeling while he still can, before they inevitable start arguing again.
“Marc, answer me. Did I hurt you?”
“Good hurt,” he offers, only because Vale sounds genuinely worried.
“I did promise it would.”
“About the only promise you know how to keep, huh?” Marc can’t help it, he just can't.
Valentino sighs, and when Marc opens his eyes he finds him lying next to him, staring at the ceiling.
“Are we really going to start fighting again so soon?”
“Apparently,” Marc mutters. “I just don’t see the point in lying.”
“Who’s lying?”
“You. You don’t want me, you said. Liar. I want you. I want this, all the time. I want to be with you. And you’re a liar if you say you feel the same, and you’re a liar if you say you don’t.”
Valentino rubs at his face, a pained expression in place once he takes his hands away.
“What is it, exactly, that I want, then? Since you think you know so much about it?”
“I have no fucking idea,” Marc replies, sitting up slowly and stretching out his aching back, his sore limbs. He starts to climb off the bed but Valentino pulls him gently back, murmurs his name, kisses him in a way that says everything.
It’s not enough.
Most people keep away from the things that hurt them. Pull back. Learn the lesson. Get burnt once and vow to never let it happen again. Not Marc. He ran head-first towards the biggest source of his pain – drove 14 hours to get here, to this man.
“You lie with every breath, every action,” Marc whispers against his lips. “You say one thing, do the opposite, then sit back and smirk while I just fucking die because I don’t know which way is up with you. You hate me, but you fuck me. You say you want to talk, but you refuse to hear the words I say. I can’t do this, not if you keep tormenting me this way.”
Valentino looks wounded, his face crumpling, but Marc’s not done.
“I love you,” he tells him. “I love you. There. That’s it. That’s how I feel. That’s what I drove 14 hours to say. But how do you feel? Do you even know?”
“Marc,” Valentino pleads, before he kisses him again, the desperation clear. “You know how I feel. You know.”
“I don’t. I really don’t.”
Marc’s risked too much of his heart and absolutely all of his pride, on this gamble, this risk, 14 hours driving through three countries, 14 years of daydreams and nightmares, for a night and a day spent in Valentino’s bed.
But they’re still no closer to what he wants. So why continue the farce?
He’s been hurt by this man too many times, trodden into the mud, kicked while down, over and over and over again. No more.
Gathering his willpower, Marc pulls away and shifts to sit on the edge of the bed, deliberately out of reach. He’s still sore, doesn’t know how much time has passed since breakfast, but he doesn’t want Valentino to distract him with his hands and his mouth and his body right now.
“I wanted to talk and you didn’t,” Valentino grouses. “Now I don’t and you do.”
Marc just shrugs. “Perhaps we’re just wired to want the opposite to each other?”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“We don’t make much sense, either.”
“You don’t,” Valentino grumbles, and looks as though he would have said more, if the door didn’t fly open then to reveal Uccio.
Marc and Valentino’s doggedly loyal life-long best friend eye each other – Marc’s supremely grateful he still has a sheet over his bottom half.
“Franky was supposed to keep you away,” Valentino doesn’t look bothered, just continues to recline against his pillows completely naked.
“He’s busy with training. Like you should be.” Uccio doesn’t take his mistrustful gaze from Marc, who glowers back at him, refusing to be intimidated.
“I’ve got more important things to do.”
“No you don’t,” Marc bites out. “Go train. If I hit the road now, I might still make the TV appearance I’m supposed to do tomorrow, and not get my head ripped off by Puig.”
He tows the sheet from the bed to keep himself covered as he heads to the shower for the third time today, and tries to pretend he doesn’t hear the arguing in Italian going on out in the bedroom. Eventually, as he shuts off the water, there’s the sound of heavy footsteps storming from the room.
When Marc comes back out into the bedroom, dressed in his own clothes once more, Uccio is still lingering by the door. Valentino has disappeared.
Marc tries to pretend he doesn’t care, just collects his phone, checks he has his wallet and keys in his pockets, and sidles past Uccio.
He gets followed out of the room, however, and can’t pretend he doesn’t know of Uccio’s presence as he grabs his shoes from the hallway where they’d been dropped last night.
Uccio doesn’t speak until Marc is standing at his car.
“He doesn’t want you to go.”
“I don’t actually care all that much about what he wants,” Marc says idly, finally turning his phone on. “I’m not you.”
Uccio’s lips quirk up in a wry smile.
“Well, you know I’m no fan of yours. But for what it’s worth, I agree with what the boys were saying earlier.”
“And what’s that? That we were being far too noisy?”
“That you two fit. He’s had very strong feelings for you, for a very long time. I won’t pretend to understand it. It doesn’t matter if I understand it or not.”
“I don’t understand it all that much,” Marc points out, and Uccio actually laughs.
Marc eyes him, still suspicious. He and Uccio have blatantly never thought all that much of each other.
“You don’t like me,” it’s a statement, not a question. “And I don’t like you. There’s no way you want me with him, with the press and attention and comments that will entail. The Moto GP world isn’t exactly a paragon of the LGBT community. Not to mention the controversy he and I have already caused each other over the years.”
“I don’t care about you,” Uccio corrects. “Couldn’t give a flying fuck. As far as I’m concerned, you’re a dangerous, stupid, arrogant, idiotic little piece of...”
He cuts himself off as Marc starts to bristle, and holds up both hands in surrender.
“No, I don’t like you. But that doesn’t matter. He’s my brother. My best friend. More. If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t have met my wife. I don’t remember a time before him, we’ve been side by side for 40 years. So I don’t understand it, and I don’t like you. But I won’t let myself lose my friendship with him because of that, not for anything.”
“What are you saying?” Marc shakes his head, confused by all these Italians with their cryptic bullshit.
“In private, he talks about you. What the Academy kids were saying at breakfast, imitating him, I heard them and that’s all true. Even when he drops the mask, stops hamming it up for the cameras and performing for the fans and putting on a brave face about how poorly he’s doing on the Petronas... when he’s just his true self, around the people he trusts and loves, he still talks about you. The crap stops, the acting stops, the playing stops. You, and his wanting you... that's one of the few things that remains.”
Marc can’t think of a damn thing to say to that, and when he simply gapes at Uccio, the older man just shrugs a shoulder at him.
“So go, if you still want to. He’ll chase, if that’s what you’re hoping for. He’ll probably even finally confess to you.”
“Why are you telling me all this?” Marc shakes his head, confused and tired and sore and ready to leave Tavullia and never come back.
“Oh, I’m just stalling you until he has time to see sense and gets his ass out here to stop you,” Uccio admits with a smile.
Marc doesn’t have time to even form a coherent response, because Valentino comes barreling out of the house then, looking agitated and upset. Uccio nods to Marc, and walks off in the direction of the dirt track.
Then Valentino is before him, scrabbling to grip his hands.
“Don’t go. Please.”
“Why should I stay?”
“Because I want you to. I want you.”
“You wanted to fuck me, and now you have. You hate the way I race, and if you hate me as a rider, you hate 99.9% of what I am.”
“I won’t pretend, and I’m not a liar,” Valentino scowls. “I don’t like how you race, no. It’s dangerous. You take lines that don’t exist, you deliberately cause direct contact; you force tows you don’t need and waste everyone’s time playing stupid mind-games that you should have grown out of during Moto 3. It’s practically cheating!”
Marc grits his teeth – it’s nothing he hasn’t heard a billion times before, from the press, from the paddock, from the fans, from Valentino himself.
“I do nothing illegal, nothing against the rules. It’s a race, a competitive race! I compete!”
“Yeah, stupidly! Dangerously!”
“As if you’re so innocent! You do the same shit, sometimes worse! How come it’s OK for you?!”
“I’ve never once in my career-”
“Are they arguing again? Or are they just about to start fucking on the bonnet of Marquez’s car?” A voice stage-whispers in interruption. Marc looks around, annoyed, to see Cele and Bezz peering around the side of the farmhouse.
“I’m not sure yet, it’s kinda hard to tell,” Bezz is literally watching them through a pair of binoculars.
“I need to get my spare helmet from the storage shed... should I just close my eyes and run for it?” Cele wonders, before an arm so long that it can only belong to Luca hauls them both away.
The sight of his brother, or at least one of his limbs, seems to calm Valentino a little. He re-grips Marc’s hands, fingers firm and strong.
“This isn’t something we’ll see eye to eye on, clearly.”
“Then how the Hell can we be in a relationship?! You think I’m dangerous and foolish and a poor sportsman. I think you’re a hypocritical, arrogant liar. How is love going to be enough to get us past that?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it won’t be. But I don’t want you to go. I don’t want to let you go. I love you, Marc, God damn it! We can take it day by day. We can try. Don’t we owe each other that, after everything?”
Marc’s heart slinks up to beat rapidly behind the lump in his throat as he struggles to speak. “I can only be who I am. I’ll race as I always do. I won’t change, not even for you.”
“I can’t ask you to, don’t expect you to. Just please don’t leave? Let us talk this over, get to a point that feels healthy, for once. Please?”
“I have to go,” Marc insists, tears springing into his eyes. “I have a commitment, an appearance. I can’t let people down.”
“Then I’ll come with you,” Valentino decides.
“What? I’m driving back to Andorra, then on to Barcelona... I...”
“I’ll come. If you’ll have me? We can talk in the car.”
“Meaning we’ll argue in the car. And probably fuck in the car.”
“Perhaps,” Valentino peers through the driver’s door. “There’s just enough room, I think.”
Marc laughs so hard that he starts to cry, then steps up on his toes to kiss him.
“Is that yes?” Valentino murmurs, between the slow brushes of their mouths.
“Yes,” Marc nods. They’ve been circling this for too long. It was time to take the leap. “Only, go and get a bag, and some changes of clothes. There’s no way my stuff in Andorra will fit you, and if the Internet see any sign of you in my merch, the fangirl’s brains might explode.”
Valentino smirks and kisses him again, squeezes his ass firmly with both hands because he's a jerk, and hurries back into the house.
Marc chuckles to himself and swipes his tears away, then finally has the presence of mind to check his phone. He’s missed calls from his Mama, his Dad, Alex, Puig... and his inbox is crammed with messages.
He dials Alex.
“All good?” his brother asks, in lieu of a greeting.
“All good,” Marc confirms, distracted by three curly heads of brown hair now poking around the side of the farmhouse. “I have to go, but I’m on my way back now. And I’m bringing a guest, only don’t worry, you won’t be turfed out of your room at my place. Not that you’ll likely want to be there...”
He hangs up to the noise of Alex’s resigned sigh, as Cele and Bezz bound over to him, followed by Franky, who seems to be their current babysitter.
“Is it safe to get my helmet?” Cele asks Marc as he approaches.
“For now,” Marc tells him. “Can’t promise what will or won’t happen when Valentino comes back, though.”
Cele lets out a cry of fear at the threat and runs to the storage shed, Bezz racing at his heels.
“Valentino’s off on a bit of a mountain holiday, I hear,” Franky smiles at Marc.
“Something like that. I’ll send him back in good condition, don’t worry.”
“Please don’t,” Valentino interrupts, as he comes out of the house with a bag over his shoulder and Luca by his side. Both of the brothers are beaming, Valentino with his usual grin compared to Luca’s calmer, quieter smile.
Clattering from the shed summons Franky to fulfil his duty of watching over the pair of literal kindergarteners, and he waves to Marc and Vale in farewell before he jogs over to play the parent.
“Put that down Bezz! Cele, no! Do not stand on that!”
With a grimace in their direction, Luca shakes Marc’s hand, as polite as ever, but with eyes that are very bright.
“See you in Austria,” Marc tells him, and Luca nods, nudges his brother’s arm with his shoulder. They exchange a long, silent look, then Luca calls for the younger boys to head back to the track.
“Guys, come on! If you don’t hurry, Pecco won’t teach you that corner slide.”
There’s more scrambling and shoving to get out of the shed, Cele emerging with his helmet already on, Franky wrestling something back from Bezz and shooing him off ahead.
Once the rabble have departed, Marc catches Valentino’s eye. He looks so good in the sunlight, all gold highlights in his brown curls, olive skin stark against his white shirt, smiling eyes calm and confident.
“You know, I’m not sure I can sit to drive, come to think of it.”
“I’ll drive,” Vale insists, not looking around as Uccio appears to push a phone charger and a toilet bag into his hands; he just takes the items without breaking his gaze from Marc’s.
His best friend eyes Marc too, offers him a handshake as Valentino dumps his gear in the boot.
“Ready?” Marc asks Vale, as Uccio hugs his friend then turns back to the house.
“Ready when you are,” Valentino grins, taking the keys.
As it turns out, Vale’s a fucking madman behind the wheel. He takes the chicanes of his driveway too fast, and Marc hisses and swears as he’s jolted on his seat, clinging to the handle above his passenger door.
“How long did you say it took you to drive here?” Valentino asks.
“14 hours.”
“I bet I can do it in 10,” Vale boasts, and perhaps he might have if Marc hadn’t pointedly settled his hand on the inside of his thigh.
“You know, you didn’t do it right.”
“Do what?” Valentino mumbles as he peels out of his driveway.
“You said over your lap. You didn’t do it with me over your lap, you did it from behind. So you didn’t do it right. And I thought you were going to start delivering on your promises...”
They only get a few hundred meters down the road before Valentino’s pulling into a motel.
Marc doesn’t make it to Barcelona in time for the TV appearance.
They haven’t even crossed the border into France at the time the next day he’s supposed to have been at the TV studio. On the plus side, he develops a pretty good knowledge of all the different types of accommodation available between Tavullia and Andorra.
“Useful knowledge to have,” Vale insists, as they speed through Monaco way too fast, but probably won’t even get pulled over for it because Valentino Rossi is Valentino Rossi.
Marc rolls his eyes, but turns his head to admire how God-like Valentino looks with the backdrop of blinding sun and sparkling sea behind him.
Valentino meets his gaze with a grin and Marc shakes his head again, smiles back, wraps his fingers around his hand and holds on tight.