#for luca

Luca steps out as they pull up in front of it. In back robes Pecco knows he inherited from the last priest, who was a size smaller and half a foot shorter than him, he looks. Pecco can never find a good way to think about how he looks, now. Like Vale's old black horse, but the way Pecco remembers her from when he was little, before he'd fed her carrots out of his palm; when she was this strange, scary animal that seemed like it was from another world, so untouchable and tall it made him queasy to look at.

It feels bad to think that about Luca, after all the ways they used to know each other. But Pecco wouldn't have thought Luca would quit racing and move off the ranch so he could take over the church when the last priest died, so obviously he didn't really know him, anyway.

This Luca, formal and older looking, waves at them with one hand and balances a tiny copper bowl of holy water in the other. He walks slowly up to Bez’s horse and smears a wet thumb up under its forelock, his mouth moving, prayer lost into the wind.

Bez leans down in his saddle, steadies himself with a hand on Luca’s shoulder, smiles down at him, normal and friendly.

Pecco runs his hand down Turbo’s neck, smoothes his mane.

He loses sight of part of Luca as he steps right in front of Turbo. Feels the moment Luca touches him, the little shiver under his skin. Even this close, the wind is too loud to make out whatever blessing Luca says.

And then he's next to Pecco, head at height with his hip. “Hi, Francesco,” he says, and Pecco can't tell if it's a joke or if he thinks that's how he's supposed to call him now. He bends down, awkward, arms folded between his chest and Turbo’s back, hands sweating the reigns slippery.

Luca reaches up, and thumbs thin, skin warm water between Pecco's eyebrows.

He does this to half the village every week, Pecco has been telling himself the whole ride here. No one else would think about Luca’s hands or fingers or how the water is a cool trail of his touch after he pulls away.

For the first time, they’re close enough Pecco can hear him, but what he asks isn't to God or Mary or whoever, it's to Pecco, quiet and scared a way Pecco hasn't ever heard him: “Please ride safe.”

-

Luca should be at the church. The old ladies in his congregation are terrified of the races; will be sitting in the pews right now holding their rosaries and praying none of the riders get hurt this year.

Luca could be comforting them; saying his own prayers; pretending this isn't happening.

Working on his end of the bargain to keep all the people he loves safe while they ride a race that wants to kill them.

At the very front this year is Pecco. It can go either way, being ahead at the start. If your horse gets off badly, you're at the mercy of every rider behind you to keep their horse from plowing into the back of yours. If you start fast, maybe you can get enough space that you can stay out of the worst of it, foaming mouths and tide, thighs and flanks clashing together.

Turbo, pale and speckled, looks calm and beautiful. Pecco, on his back, looks like he hopes no one’s watching him. Tense and blinking too fast and petting so frantically at Turbo's mane Luca is sure it must be winding the horse up.

If Vale was here, he would go up to him, pat him on the knee and have something to say that would make Pecco smile.

Last night, when Luca had reached up and shifted Pecco's curls up with the backs of his fingers, Pecco flinched.