#polycule fic

x

I want you up there with me, Marc says.

Franci smooths her fingers over the faintest crease in his bowtie, pausing as the words register. I’m flattered, and I would, but isn’t it a bit odd if I’m up there, and Gemma is not?

Marc clearly hadn’t thought this through, blinking placidly at her.

She’ll understand, is what he says after thinking about it. Vale can keep her company down there.

Franci laughs, gently. I know she will, but everyone else’s tongue will be wagging. They are already making a furor about Vale being here, wondering if there’s going to be an official public reconciliation.

Marc knows.

Anyone in the MotoGP sphere who’s spent enough time online will know, will see the posts wondering if this is when the rift will finally heal.

No, Franci’s voice steadies, I can’t see how he’ll take it well if Marc shows up.

We’re not leaving you alone to face him, alright? Marc says, firmly. He knows, how alone it was to be up against Valentino Rossi who can turn the whole world against you in the blink of an eye, with an unbothered smile, relaxed shoulders. Heat flashes in his stomach, the nausea of the Sepang press conference is a rush of stomach acid.

And the kids? Marc asks, heart panging at the thought of the two girls waking to find their parents fracturing. He hopes Valentino had the good sense to pick a fight only after –

They’re fine. They – Vale took them to his mother’s house. They’re sleeping there now.

Wait, says Gemma, rolling out of bed, phone held in hand. It’s now her turn to get dressed. Marc shrugs on a sweater and takes the phone, while she hollers over her shoulder, where are you right now?

She’s too far away for the speaker to catch so Marc repeats the question down the line.

In my – well, his car, Franci says, and there’s a drop, a shrinking in her voice that makes Marc’s nerves coil even tighter. Of course, even if Valentino had gifted Franci the car, given her the keys and never once touched the car, had it written in her name, it was his the way MotoGP was his. A hot sense of urgency floods Marc’s veins, and he realizes it’s physically impossible to keep standing here waiting for Gemma to finish dressing. He starts for the door, wrenching it open.

Gem, hurry up, he calls over his shoulder before stepping out into the hallway, Valentino threw her out of the house.

He – WHAT? That fucking –

I’m going down to get the car started.

He didn’t kick me out, Franci sighs as Marc takes two down the stairs, practically clearing the last half with a leap, He ran off – to Uccio’s probably. But it didn’t feel right. Being in that house. Alone.

Is there anyone you can stay with? It’s going to be a six hour drive. Five if I speed.

He’s in the garage, and his Audi beeps as he unlocks it. He remembers belatedly go back inside for his wallet, finding it next to the bowl where he keeps his keys. Gemma comes running down the stairs, a bag over her shoulder, an army jacket thrown over her camisole, and a pair of jeans; her hair is unartfully tangled, but she barely notices. I’m here, I’m here.

She dashes ahead of him to get to the garage.

Please don’t, says Franci in his ear.

Franci, I’m not leaving you to face him alone, okay? Besides. This is kind of my fault.

They get into the car, Gemma strapping herself in hastily. The door slams shut. Marc starts the engine, palms the phone to Gemma, here, talk to her, as he reverses out of the garage. He will ask Gemma to text Alex to check if they’ve locked the house later. Tell her we’re on our way and – and for her to stay safe. Somewhere.

Gemma takes the phone, babbling into it with her elementary Italian, cara, can you go back to the house? Is he there? No? Okay, good, good –

The sound of Gemma’s voice inexplicably seems to trigger another waterfall of tears. Marc’s brows furrow as he listens, jaw tight. He’s very temped to take his phone back, call Valentino and yell at him, but Valentino has him blocked. Maybe he will still do that with Gemma’s phone.

Midnight, streets in Madrid are emptier than the day, but he still has to dodge a passing car when he merges lanes, impatiently waits out red lights at the traffic stops, too agitated to put on music when he’s trying to hear one-sided Gemma’s side of the conversation as she soothes Franci.

His nerves fizzle even as Franci seems to calm, as they hit the highway, Marc’s foot flat out on the gas pedal.

His heart, he realizes, is racing faster than the car is going, almost like he is hurtling at 300 km/h, trying to overtake the rider in front of him –

Neon-yellow, Yamaha-blue, Argentina. A flash of the field of so many years ago in his eyes, intercepting across the dark. His skin tightens.

Ugly premonition surges in him, realizing, oh, and there’s just enough left of him in him for him to yank the car off to the side of the road – Gemma yells in alarm, clutching onto the seatbelt, the edge of her seat, Marc, what the fuck – and slam his foot down on the brakes.

Then his entire being lurches, up and upwards, and the seatbelt seizes, but it’s only his body it manages to keep ahold off.

Marc is flung out.

—

Marc blinks back into awareness, his forehead slumped against the steering wheel, pressed hard and long enough against it for it to have started to hurt.

Franci’s heart thumps in him, and it is beating fast. An anxiety attack? Marc takes a deep breath, keenly aware of it, and tries to regulate his breathing.

Only when he feels like the black spots have faded from his eyes do he straightens. The seatbelt is tight against his chest. He could never get used to it when he’s driving. Now, then.

Valentino was at Uccio’s, was it? He turns the key, about to start the engine. He’s angry enough to drive the car through the wall of Uccio’s house, but then – his gaze catches on the picture clasped to the dashboard. Their family. His heart twists at the familiarity of it, Valentino is sticking his tongue at the camera and Giuletta is mimicking him, and Franci is laughing with Gabriella in her arms. He stops himself, swallowing round the hardened lump in his throat, remembering driving the girls to the store, and he had been to Uccio’s place for the girls to play with Uccio’s kid. He’d made nice with Uccio’s wife, for fuck’s sake.

Even if he wants to bulldoze Uccio and Vale into the ground, he can’t scare the wife and kids like that.

Marc sniffles. He is an ugly crier, but Franci is probably not – he has never seen her cry – and he is only relieved that she is not alone now, that Gemma is with her. He twists around in his seat and reaches for the tissue box – always the car must be equipped with a tissue when there are toddlers around – to dab at his eyes, his face. Then he looks around, trying to recognize the roads.

Franci must’ve been trying to get to an hotel, or an Airbnb in town, but surely everyone there recognizes her as Valentino’s partner. Gossip will have spread like wildfire if she checks in alone, in that state, with no Valentino at her side. And then before the sun has even risen, it will be all over the Internet. And it would be carte blanche for them to tear into her the way they’d done to him.

No.

Marc has to go back and sit in that empty house where Vale had made home for Franci and the kids.

He checks the seatbelt, sees his – Franci’s - phone screen flashing. It is his number, though Franci has saved him – hilariously – as Marcia. An amalgamation of their names.

gem is driving us don’t do anything stupid

No, he texts back, I’m just going home.

He waits but there’s no reply, and he imagines her falling asleep, as Gemma drives on into the night. He quashes the irrational snap of anxiety at the thought of Gemma driving; it annoys him, as it worries him in equal measure, that she will text or fiddle with an app on her phone when she was behind the wheel. Once, her phone holder fell off, and she propped her phone on her lap, glancing down every few seconds to check Waze. Marc ended up holding it up for her with the arm that wasn’t in a sling – because she said he was too slow at giving her directions and made her miss every turn even though he told her, like, five hundred meters ago – and complained the whole time it took to get there.

He puts the phone down back into the coffee holder and starts the car’s engine.

Franci might not be able to stomach the emptiness of the house without Valentino or the kids there, but Marc can, it’s a reprieve even, waiting it out for tomorrow.

The ranch is quiet when he gets there, the route he knows by heart; the only sound cleaving through the night is the purr of the engine. He rolls it into the garage – a separate one from where the bikes are kept. Those are located closer to the track.

The lights are on in the main building. He swallows, wondering if Valentino has somehow come back, unprompted. Wanting to make amends.

Not with you, he reminds himself, a beat after the thought had crossed his mind, Never you.

Vale? He calls, voice drifting over the empty hallway. Light fills it, refracting over the framed photos hanging on the walls. The first time he’d swapped with Franci, he’d been too distracted to pay them much mind. The second time, then the third, he had lingered to observe. Nothing of Marc Marquez, of course, but plenty of the VR46 Academy riders, and riders before Marc’s time, before Dani’s even – riders from when Marc was a small child, looking up into the screen and seeing the colorful prints of ROSSIFUMI on neon yellow and feeling the swooping sensation of having jumped off a very, very tall tree, freefalling.

Vale’s house is a museum of his most precious memories; his racing heroes, departed friends, every rivalry that had irritated him in his youth, felt world-ending, yet had meant something, immortalized here, along with the pictures of Vale’s family, his parents, his brother, his Academy riders, and now Franci and the girls.

It had stung the first time to see Marc scrubbed from Valentino’s life like he meant nothing. Even Jorge Lorenzo and Casey Stoner and fucking Max Biaggi had made it out of the doghouse, but not him?

Pettily, he’d taken the picture of Max Biaggi down and let Leta loose with her crayons on it before putting it back up on the wall. Franci told him later that Vale had laughed and laughed when he saw it.

I miss his laugh, he’d texted back.

I miss when he used to laugh with me.

Isn’t that stupid?

Marc, Franci had said, even after everything?

If Uccio had cloned Franci’s phone, the one which is now in his back pocket, he wonders if Valentino had read as far back up as that. If he had pored over every word.

He didn’t have an answer for her then. He wonders if love is embedded in one’s cells, intwining with your DNA the longer it is there, taking up a permanent residence.

Vale? He tries again, Franci’s voice ringing out high and clear. Probably there is too much longing in his voice, and too much of it, entirely his and not hers at all.

He ventures into the living room, half-expecting to see Valentino there, the bowed curve of his back as he leaned over his laced fingers, deep in thought. He isn’t. His heart pangs. Of course, Franci loves him, too. She misses him, too, and the parts of her that stay in this body, encoded, ache in his absence like Marc aches all the time.

He takes his phone out and leaves it on the coffee table.

He is, abruptly, keenly aware of his own exhaustion, and Franci’s. Anger is tiring. He wants to collapse into his bed. Vale’s arms. Curl up there, the safest place. Home. Tears prickle at Franci’s eyes. Or perhaps they are Marc’s tears.

When it comes to Vale, it is difficult to differentiate the remnants of Franci or it’s just him.

Come back. He’d left Franci’s phone downstairs so that the urge to call Valentino does not overpower him. He thinks Valentino might have come back, if Franci asked. For her, if not for Marc.

Marc goes to his – Franci’s bedroom, the one she shares with Valentino, and crawls gratefully into the bed. His mind buzzes with restless thoughts.

He hates himself more than a little for rolling over onto Vale’s side of the bed and taking Vale’s pillow, holding it close to his chest, hates even more the way inhaling the traces of him calms, eventually, his thrashing heart.

Closes his eyes and let sleep cart him through memories of kinder times.

—

Anger rouses Marc at dawn.

He’d fallen off in Sepang in his dream. Kicked, he amends the thought as he opens his eyes, I was kicked off my bike. And the Yamaha blue of the offender is gleaming at him just a handful of steps away. Marc has moved in his sleep, rolling until he’s somehow parallel to the headboard, and the first sight that greets him is Valentino’s precious M1.

Marc sits up, and glares through sleep-crusted eyelashes at the bike.

Don’t do anything stupid, Franci said. Well. He isn’t Marc Marquez if he does not does stupid things. He is very tempted to wreck Valentino’s stupid Yamaha. He and Franci joke often that this lady of blue is Valentino’s one true love, never mind either of them. There are also cruder jokes made in wake of that which Valentino has probably seen.

Marc can’t find it in himself to feel bad for any of those jokes he’d made at Valentino’s expense. It was good to vent. To have someone understand what being with Valentino is like. Even though his experience was in the past, and aggravated very much by competition.

Trust me, he takes it off-track, too. Franci had said. And Marc had been, so far, luckless enough to bear witness to it in person. Just once. But it was never as bad as it when it was just with Marc.

Marc takes a deep breath, decides that today is not the day he’s going to burn Valentino’s stupid Yamaha, and sweeps his hair out of his eyes, getting out of bed.

Riding has always cleared his mind, and there are plenty of bikes waiting in the garage.

He washes his face and brushes his teeth before he goes, because he knows Franci is particular about morning routines.

Marc knows his way around very well by now, but a place Franci has very little reason to venture to is the garage out close by the dirt track, where routinely events and races are held for external guests. There is also a lodge here. Marc stayed here in 2014. That’s why he still remembers the way there by heart. Remembers, too, the excited tick of his heart every mile closer to the ranch, as he sat in the van, thrilled that finally Vale had invited him here, to his home, and he was so-o-o going to blow everyone out of the water.  

Vindication displaces nostalgia when he affirms, within his own memory, how he wouldn’t have raced differently. He’d had fun, the way he and Valentino left everyone else in the dust, racing one another like it was the last race of their lives, the one that decides championships.

His only mistake that day was thinking Valentino had fun, too.

Marc ventures into the garage. He has ridden before, with Franci’s body, but only when he is absolutely sure Valentino is not going to be on-site. He hadn’t had a suit custom-made for her size, but there equivalent-sized leathers. He suits up, picks the bike he used the last time, and wheels it out.

The world narrows to the width of his visor, all sound contained, as he puts the helmet on.

Then he kicks off, guns the throttle and goes racing against the old ghosts.

—

Here, he remembers, is where he’d overtaken Valentino, shunted the gap shut, but Valentino knew this track like the back of his hand and there was another racing line he took because Marc didn’t predict that, and Vale had won – here, this sweeping turn as he leans into it, careful, careful, slowly, because it’s not his body and he knows the limits of this one, going less than half the speed he is used to going, and –

The sun has ascended, its rays piercing through the clouds that hovered thick and suffocating at dawn, a clearing blue sky. A generous spill of light over the dirt.

Marc is not alone.

He becomes aware of it in the distant, muffled way he would be aware of the crowd of fans in the grandstands, cheering, hooting, or booing as he zipped past.

The piercing totality of attention.

Marc turns to look, slowing.

There is a person standing off to the side of the track, slender, a misty figure in the dappled, watery light. The roar of the bike under him had masked the sound of Valentino driving back up, of him getting out, astounded to see an uninvited rider on his track.

It can be no other than Valentino.

Marc completes the turn, the full circle of the track, then wheels to a stop before him. Valentino hasn’t climbed over the fence, not until Marc has stopped entirely, and then he does clamber over, long limbs folding twitchily like a grasshopper’s as he comes over this side of the track.

There’s – Marc tenses, because he can see, even in the half-light of the dawn – disbelief in Valentino’s eyes, and recognition.

Marc? says Valentino, his voice a croak.