#diametrics

And he’s right, because Marc hadn’t won on Sunday in Qatar.

Álex had. 

So Valentino goes to Jerez, brings his motorhome, hunches inside a VR46 hoodie like that will stop people noticing him. He waves his hands at Uccio, tells him he’s still in charge, and wanders, hands-in-pockets, to the Ducati garage. 

“Ciao, ciao,” he says easily, too used to the way people stare, gape at him, like a supernatural phenomenon rather than a retired rider-driver-owner. Only Pecco nods, tilts his head to invite him closer. 

“Looking for team secrets?”

“We all share data, Pecco.” He reaches out to squeeze his shoulder, smiling. “Just here to say hello.”

Pecco raises his eyebrows. “Hello.” And then he glances past Valentino. His mouth pulls down at the corners: uncomfortable. 

Marc walks in, Jose at his shoulder, stops. His leathers are hitched around his waist, the arms hanging stiff, torso hugged in his black undershirt. Right arm covered by the long sleeve. 

For a suspended second, Valentino holds his breath; feels the eyes of the garage on his back; waits for it to land like a punch. Marc’s gaze dances over Valentino as if he’s just another one of Pecco’s mechanics, not even a nod.

Fine. Vale twists his lips and hopes the grimace hides his smirk. They’re playing it like that. 

——

“You were so rude to me,” Valentino murmurs into the spot behind Marc’s ear, letting his lips brush against hot skin. It gets him a shiver, then a petulant scoff. 

“I should be ruder.”

“Yes, maybe.” 

“Do you want them to suspect something, Vale?” 

Does he? 

“Whatever you want, Marc,” he says, careful that Marc doesn’t take it as a slight, because for a long time he’d baulked like every word of Valentino’s had a thorny second meaning. 

“Okay.” Marc has—something about him now, beneath the frantic victorious brightness, something quiet and resigned. Valentino hates it, really, hates that Marc stopped fighting back as hard in case he hit a stress fracture that ran too deep. Hates that he’s doing the same.

Still, he’d rather have this than nothing at all. 

As if Marc can sense what he’s thinking, he pushes his fingers into Valentino’s hair, tugs, demanding in a way that makes Vale laugh into the crook of his neck. Not completely stifled, then. 

——

“You are here again,” Pecco says, flat, neutral, a little too much like Luca. 

“Yes.”

“I thought—Austria, maybe. That is what you normally do.”

Vale just shrugs, because that is what he normally does, but the gap between Mugello and Spielberg felt too long this year, and it’s been ferociously hot in Tavullia, and it has been a long time since he was at the Sachsenring, and he has missed the noise and smell and energy of the paddock. 

And Marc. He’s missed Marc.

“I am spending more time in the paddock, Pecco, remember?”

It builds at the base of his skull, the sensation, crackling with the growing sound of Spanish voices approaching the front of the garage, and he has to stifle a smile. 

“Good morning,” Marc calls. “Hi, Pecco, Valentino.”

Pecco blinks, gaze flitting between Vale and Marc, before he lands on the television crew, the social media team with phones ready, and the confusion clears. Still, he stares until Carola hands him a cap.

——

“Pecco noticed something today,” Vale says, light as he can, in between paying careful attention to the way Marc is coming loose and pliant between his legs, eyes sparking in that way he likes. 

“Ah. Well,” Marc says absently—completely lost in him, and Valentino drinks it in, because that’s him, he’s doing that to Marc—and then smirks. “It will give him something to think about, no?” 

“Marc.” Valentino pinches skin between his fingers, a hard-muscled thigh. “No games. You said.”

Marc goes still. Then, “No. No, I wasn’t—that’s not what I meant,” and he’s shifting away, away, out of Valentino’s grasp. “Just—if you want to tell people, it is better for it to not be so much a surprise.”

“I said if you want to tell people. Up to you.” 

“Is it bad?” Marc says, plaintive. “If we are talking again?” 

“No.” And now Valentino is on the defensive, and he shouldn’t, but his pride is a lump he has never learned how to swallow. “But just—tell me. Yes? If you want me to do something different. I am not a fucking mind reader.” 

“Okay,” Marc says, “okay. Sorry.”

They apologise now. Important. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t rankle, doesn’t burn their throats on the way out. But they do it. 

Valentino pulls him back in, because they apologise and forgive with more than words now, and he is still relearning the lines that age and pain have carved into Marc’s face while he wasn’t looking. New marks on his skin to run his fingers over. 

Sometimes, it amazes him that Marc lets him. But Marc goes lax again, languid, an invitation for Valentino to sink into him. So he does. 

——

“Would you tell people?”

Marc tilts his head; he had been sprawled on the hard bench seat in his motorhome, king of the ring once again, satisfied in that catlike way of his, one foot tucked beneath him, but now he sits up, contemplative. “About us.”

Valentino waits, lets him sit in that. Us. 

“Do you want to?” Marc says eventually.

“I told you. Whatever you want.” They’re toothless now, both of them, defanged by the threat of losing each other. 

“Not everyone. Not at once.” A pause. “My parents will not be happy.”

That stings, of course it does, and Valentino is still halfway through learning that Marc just says things sometimes, a little too blunt but with no intention to hurt. Of course they wouldn’t be happy. 

“Let me tell Álex first,” Marc says at length. “Warm him up, yes?” 

“Of course,” Valentino says. “Of course. Then—can I tell Luca?” 

“If he doesn’t already know.” Marc shoots him a loaded look. “Observant, Santi says.” 

Santi Hernández isn’t often wrong, not about riders. “Mm. Maybe.” 

——

Valentino does go to Austria, and wishes he hadn’t, because the rear comes around on Marc’s bike in the first practice of the weekend, as he tries to brake for the stupid fucking chicane, and it’s not bad but it—

His ribcage seizes for a moment. Then Marc gets to his feet.

Valentino goes to his motorhome, which turns out to be a bad move because Luca is already there, making himself a coffee after a cut-short practice. Engine, or something; Luca takes his duties as a factory rider far more seriously than Bez does, which means he doesn’t tell Vale shit.

“Hot,” Luca offers, then slides his own espresso to the side and starts on one for Vale, who quietly thinks he doesn’t need any help getting his heart rate up. “Your Ducatis are going well.”

“Of course.” 

“That chicane is tricky.” And Luca’s eyes watch him as he twitches. Observant. 

——

Valentino flicks a shred of onion skin off his finger, dry, papery, and concentrates on making slow, careful cuts. Precise. Marc hates large pieces of onion. 

There’s another sigh behind him, a pissed-off tap of a laptop key. Marc is watching it over and over.

“Stop,” Valentino tells him, not as gentle as he would like, and Marc’s finger taps the key again, belligerent. “You have a penalty. It is over.”

“A long lap, when he took himself down—”

“This is not the stewards’ office.” Valentino winces as he slices a little too close to the onion core. 

Pedro had muscled past Marc at the first corner, and Marc hadn’t waited even a full lap to exact revenge, pushing the KTM out wide onto the piss-wet Brno kerbs on his way past. Bike down. Easy penalty. 

“Look.” He tries again. “It was a—stupid move at that turn. You were faster, you could have—”

“It was a high-risk move.” Marc’s glare is searing; even though Valentino hasn’t turned around, it burns the back of his neck. “He could have backed out.”

“Acosta? Really?” Valentino huffs. He should reach for the olive oil, should drizzle the pan. Should make a joke that he’s too rich to be cooking for himself. “You have the best bike, Marc, you don’t have to race like that.”

“Like what?” Marc hisses. “Stupid? Aggressive? Dangerous?”

Vale finally turns to face him, leaning back against the worktop. “Don’t do that. You’re not really angry at me.”

Marc is—blazing, eyes dark and furious. “I should be.”

Fuck’s sake, Valentino thinks, and grasps his snarling ego by the scruff of its neck before it makes him say something he’ll regret in short order. “Marc—”

“That’s what Álex said. When I told him. He said I should hate you.”

Valentino inhales through his nose, thinks of Marc pulling away from him in the motorhome, thinks of how spooked Marc was when they first started this, how he was waiting for the final axe to fall, and clamps down on his retort. Except Marc shakes his head, face suddenly unreadable, doors slammed shut, defences up, and he’s stepping away, away from Valentino, towards the kitchen door, down the hallway. When the front door shuts—

Valentino scoops the onion-dice into a glass container, presses the lid down carefully, slides it into the fridge. He pulls a bottle of red out of the wine rack and uncorks it the old-fashioned way, squeezing the bottle between his thighs and pulling until the burn in his knuckle-joints seems like his only problem. The cork pops, and he sucks in a breath.

They haven’t—

They haven’t argued like this, have always downed weapons or waved white flags or acquiesced with a smile and a kiss. They don’t know how to fight without it becoming cataclysmic; that’s always been their fault. 

And Marc has gone. Is gone. 

But his laptop is still on the kitchen island, jumper still slung over the back of the sofa. He hasn’t left. Just gone. 

Valentino abandons dinner; he pulls one of Marc’s prepared meals out of the fridge and eats it cold, chicken and pasta sticking in his molars. He didn’t think it would be easy—even at the start, he’d been aware enough of everything that had passed between them, every tripwire he’d laid over the course of ten years, and Marc had been too good at dodging them, too good at pretending that he wasn’t still angry. 

He should have known. Marc lies. Hides his pain. Pretends it’s fine. 

The evening slides into night outside his windows, and he finds himself on the sofa, staring at nothing on the television, floor lamp lit against the creeping darkness, wine tacky in his mouth. 

Marc will—he has to come back. His toiletries are pressed into one corner of the bathroom, as if they themselves are conscious of taking up too much space. His clothes, too, shoved into one drawer with the compact precision of a packed suitcase. 

Valentino finishes his wine. He makes a coffee, even though it’s a shit idea because he won’t sleep and Marc wakes up early, but he needs something between his hands that won’t lull him to sleep. Won’t stop him getting behind the wheel of a car, if he needs to.

Even as he’s contemplating that, as he’s about to heave himself up and search for his car keys, the door opens, and he sighs, closes his eyes, sets his coffee on the side table just as Marc slinks, tail down, into the room.

It’s an exhale when he lets out, “Hi.”

Marc blinks, as if he hadn’t expected to find him there. “Thought it would be better if I didn’t keep going.”

“Mm,” Valentino says. “Where did you go?”

“I went to ride,” Marc says. Even across the room, he smells of earth, of engine oil, of sweat. “You—did you wait?”

“Didn’t know where you were.”

“Sorry,” Marc whispers, and he’s sliding onto the sofa, hand behind Valentino’s head. “You’re right, it wasn’t you—I wasn’t angry at you.”

“But you are.”

Marc’s throat clicks as he swallows, looks away. “It’s—I should be. I know I should be, and that pisses me off.” But he’s still there, still warm against Valentino’s skin. Still trying. “But I don’t want—”

“I know,” Vale says. He knows. 

Marc nods, and he doesn’t leave. Shifts, if anything, closer. 

“Do you know what Luca said?” Valentino murmurs. “When I told him?” Other than the look. It was the Tuesday after Austria, and Pecco had been flaring a tail-plume of dust out on the track, and Luca had just looked at him. 

“What?”

“Don’t fuck it up.”

Marc laughs, hot against Valentino’s shoulder. “I like him. He should come for dinner.” Then he reaches for Valentino’s half-finished coffee, long past tepid, and takes a sip.

——

It comes to him on the Wednesday after Misano, legs flung up on his sofa, Marc curled against the opposite arm, languid; Tuesday had been spent in the sun at the ranch, laughing with Bez, Franky and Cele, and it felt—not incomplete, that’s not fair, but Marc had stayed back in the house, excluded, and the warm sun and laughter hadn’t been enough to stop Vale missing him. 

Valentino doesn’t like having serious conversations in bed, if only because Marc doesn’t like it, doesn’t like feeling trapped. So he takes a sip of his wine, laid out as he is on the sofa, and nudges Marc with his bare foot, gets a look of disgust for his trouble. 

“What?”

“Would you come to the ranch?”

Marc’s expression slides into open confusion. “I do go to the ranch.”

Valentino takes another sip so Marc doesn’t see his wince at the reminder of their last argument. “I mean—when everyone is there. The boys.”

There’s a long pause, nothing but Marc’s fingers tapping on his glass of water. He doesn’t like to drink during the season—unless it’s podium champagne, of course, which Valentino finds amusing to no end, given it’s in ready supply. 

“Not yet,” Marc says, which is not a no, but his mouth is pinched: thinking. “Not—give me some time. If this isn’t—”

Another blow landed without intent, but there’s weight behind it all the same. Trust is a fragile thing, Valentino’s realising, particularly when even its foundations have been obliterated. 

“I do—I know you mean this,” Marc says, quick, as if he can feel the swoop in Valentino’s stomach. “But—if they all—and something happens—”

There is nothing Marc hates more than being embarrassed by someone who is not him. If Valentino pushes now, pushes to prove that Marc can trust him, it will crumble beneath his feet. 

“Okay,” he says quietly. “It was not—no pressure, yes?” 

A nod. They don’t have time to fall apart now; the paddock flies for Japan in three days—Luca has already gone—and Marc seems acutely aware of it, like a pinprick. “I know.” 

——

Pecco is in his kitchen, and all Valentino can think is shit, because Marc is glaring venomous at him and Pecco has no idea what he’s walked into. When Marc puts his coffee down and flees, Valentino follows. 

“Did you ask him to come here?” Marc snarls. “Is this why you were asking last night?”

Valentino can’t help but hiss through his teeth. “You always think there is something.” 

“Can you fucking blame me?” Marc snaps, and then he’s gone, front door slamming in his wake, and no, Valentino cannot blame him, because trust is a fragile thing.

Pecco is still in his kitchen, halfway horrified, and Valentino tells him not to worry as he makes him a coffee, because Marc will come back. 

——

“I am—I’m sorry,” Marc says again, and Valentino stops scrolling through Netflix, one hand looped lazily over the sofa arm with the remote, the other on Marc’s warm thigh. 

“Was shit timing.”

A snort. “Yes. Pretty shit.”

“I forgot they had the gate code,” Vale says, tries to let honesty wrap each word until there’s no way Marc can doubt him. “I can change it, tell them they all have to call ahead now.” 

“No.” Marc taps his fingers on his leg. “No, I don’t want to—change anything. Between you and them.”

“It will change for Pecco,” Valentino says. “I have a favourite in that garage now, yes?” 

That gets a half-smile, and that’s almost enough. 

“I will change the code,” he says, firm. “This should be—a home for you. They still have the ranch.”

“If you are sure—”