#mmmgh

Twelve minutes in, Valentino stumbles through the door looking harried, Salucci and Bez in tow. He doesn’t notice Marc. Talking as he walks, gesturing at one of the Dorna producers when he catches her eye. A vibrant conversation sparks up between them, but Valentino’s shoulders don’t unfurl.

Marc sags a little deeper against the wall. He looks back to the bikes. The sheets are thick. White, but not at all transparent. He can’t even make a guess at the livery.

All the noise in the room has jumped up an octave, the way it tends to when Valentino arrives anywhere. He cranes his neck to find them again. Bez is gone, Salucci has sunken into a fold-out chair, phone in hand, and Valentino is — looking at him.

The instinct to smile when he and Valentino lock eyes had died years ago, but Marc rouses it, forces his teeth to show in something he hopes comes across as a grin and not a snarl. He sees Valentino’s throat bob on a swallow, his cheeks pull in a little more gaunt. The producer follows his gaze and waves Marc over when she spots him. He pushes off the wall towards them, nerves humming under his skin.

He must’ve done hundreds of shoot days across his career. This should be one just like any other. Nothing he can’t handle.

Valentino aborts a step away when Marc comes to stand beside him. Shifts onto his back foot and then thinks better of it, clears his throat, says, “Marc, hello.” The smile he aims at him is well-rehearsed. “Have you seen — no one has seen the bikes yet, have they?”

Marc shakes his head.

The producer — Sofia, her name tag reads, hums.

“Not the bikes. Bez is changing into his leathers now, and we’ve — there’s actually a second change room, Marc, if you wanna head down that hallway. They’ve put your name on the door.”

Valentino watches for his reaction. Marc lets his smile flicker on. Automatic, practiced.

“Yes, great. I’ll go change.”

Valentino’s eyes follow him the entire way down, till he finds the marked door and pushes through it. Déjà vu hits him like a freight train. The leathers bag is black and hanging on an empty clothes rack in the middle of the room. Imposing, like the first time. But Valentino can’t sneak up on him here.

He turns the lock behind him with a blind hand. Part convinced he can’t look away from the bag — that it’ll blip out like a shadow and he’ll break through the surface of a too-long dream.

The zip is cool to the touch. Slides easy. He shucks the whole bag off, fingers skittering over the leather once the suit appears.

They’re — dark. Black. Not even all that different to what he’s been wearing all year. Except for the suns. Bright, neon yellow. He turns them around on the hook. There’s a crescent moon across the thigh. They’re nice. They’re nothing spectacular. A held breath eases from his lungs. He’d half convinced himself he’d end up in Yamaha blue with a big 46 across his chest.

The irony. That would serve him right.

Valentino’s waiting with his index finger pressed to his mouth when Marc slips from the dressing room. He lets his eyes roam without bothering to hide it; pulls his gaze from Marc’s face to each individual sponsor, to the suns and moons, to the toes of his boots and right back up. Heat threatens to paint his cheeks Pertamina Enduro red.

 Bez is there again, identically dressed with his arms crossed.

“They’re cool, right?”

Marc allows a tense smile.

“Fine. Better than what I was expecting. I was almost worried that —” and then he catches his tongue. Valentino’s eyes have gone round, glued to the side of Marc’s face. “They’re good,” he amends.

Valentino is a wasp nest that doesn’t need poking; not when they’ve fallen into something tersely amicable. Deeply, deeply strange, but not stinging. Someone claps, slicing through the hum of chatter and snapping Bez’s mouth shut. Stopping him from asking what were you worried about?

He and Marc get corralled to the centre of the room and posed alongside their bikes, each with a hand fisted in the fabric and ready to pull. Valentino parks himself between Sofia and the camera, silent and stiff.

“We’re just going to roll on your reactions, yes? So we’ll go, and then on the count of three you can reveal. Pull the sheets towards yourselves and out to the edge of the wall, and then just let them drop once they’re clear of the bike.”

He nods, fingers flexing in the material. Bez is practically vibrating with excitement on the other side, lips clamped down on a threatening-to-spill grin.

“Okay… rolling. Eyes on the bikes. One, two, three.”

Marc slings his arm out to the side and the sheet flies with it.

The bike is blue. Deep blue, and there’s a sun on the side and — 46. Valentino’s number, massive and yellow along the flank. He reaches out. Doesn’t even mean to, fingers reaching out to touch without permission, drifting over the smooth finish.

“Come around the front,” Sofia says, “look at them from another angle.”

Marc can feel Valentino watching him. He can’t bring himself to tip his head and meet his stare, even as his feet carry him closer, towards the front tyre.

His own number, 93 in red and then — God. 46 behind it. Looming. Bright like the ring of an eclipse, that brief, blinding flash before everything’s swallowed into darkness. Marc drops his hand. He looks at Valentino. Sofia is saying something else, Bez is taking another step to the side. Valentino’s staring back at him. Mouth covered by the curl of his knuckles, chin tipped to his chest. His eyes are lidded, heavy and bruised.

He hears Bez laugh, mutter something that ends in beautiful.

“Marc?” Sofia presses. He rips his attention from Valentino and blinks her into focus. “The bike. What do you think?”

He swallows back an ocean. Turns to find his number cradled within Valentino’s, the expanse of night blue behind it. The tattoo throbs on his chest like it’s fucking connected to the bike, like these are runes and not numbers, like something’s woken up at the core of him. Magic. Feels like fucking magic.

“Yes — yeah. It’s — they’re beautiful.” The words come out strangled. Choked on his struggling tongue.

It’s not even a lie. The bikes are gorgeous. Smooth and sleek and just — Valentino. Something coils tight around his heart. He feels like a kid again, clumsy hands placing figurines on a shelf with a level of care reserved for fine china, for things that shatter when they fall. Taking one between his fingers to draw it through the air on an imaginary track. Picturing himself on the back of it, fit to the seat like it’s what he was made for.

He blinks at Valentino again, at the sagging line of his shoulders, and then back at the bike. The moment feels consuming.

They shoot a typical amount of B-roll over the next half hour. On the bikes, off the bikes, down on one knee before them with a hand caressing the face plate. Valentino’s number behind his own is like a fucking planet, the way it seems to have its own gravitational pull. Turns his eyes to it again and again, till the meeting lines of yellow and red have been branded across the inside of his skull.

He thinks about it the whole time. Thinks about it when he retreats to his changeroom to peel his leathers off. Thinks about it when the doorknob turns without warning, when the air changes with the weight of someone stepping into his space. He'd been distracted. Hadn't flicked the lock.

Valentino presses himself back against the door, fingers still curled around the handle.

The zip of Marc’s leathers hangs down around his navel. The tattoo is red where he’d been pressing on it, digging his nails in. Valentino looks. There’s something to be said about timing.

Instead, Marc raises an eyebrow. Valentino forces his attention up, up until they’re staring at each other, until Marc has no choice but to read the expression bleeding across Valentino’s face.

“Do you actually like the bikes?” Valentino asks, as if that’s what matters here. As if the livery doesn’t stand for something else. As if this isn’t closer to some type of grand gesture than Valentino has ever been.

Marc nods. If they’re talking about the bikes, then yes. He likes the bikes.

Valentino presses on. Marc’s silence must unnerve him. 

“No, eh, ‘The Doctor’, on your leathers, yes?”

He’s grinning. Unconvincingly.

“You would not have been able to pay me,” Marc says. “I respect myself too much.”

The look on Valentino’s face tips into something dangerously unfamiliar. Something Marc hasn’t seen in years.

“You should,” he murmurs. His eyes drop back to the tattoo. Outside, someone calls his name. The moment fractures. Valentino sways back, clutching for the door again and wrenching it open. His lips part as if to say something else, but Marc turns. Ends it. His heart is racing.