#rosquez

--

Arguably, scarcity made things sweeter. Like the last taste of champagne that lingered in Marc's mouth when he finally started winning again, or a plain mug of black coffee handmade by someone he loved.

Marc considered the fact that the Vale got out the Bialetti to brew their morning coffee to be a sign that he was actually wanted there. Incredibly, Vale also poached eggs.

"It's a lot better than the Nespresso," Marc said, comparing between two cups.

"This takes so much more work, it must be," Vale said. He watched Marc as though he wanted to impress him. It was just as well that Marc always gave his smiles away easily, even when he was brittle and unhappy.

Vale took a sip from the cup he had put before Marc. There was a little elation at the prospect of an indirect kiss, before Marc came to the bewildering realisation that he could - was even supposed to - kiss Vale as much as he wanted. Just to register the fact more firmly in his psyche, he tilted his chin up and did so, the taste of black coffee mingling, barely sour.

Perhaps the most prominent sign that Vale was unwell was he was that they were having breakfast together at all. Following a brief and restless slumber, Marc had woken up still on Vale's side of the bed, and his brain kicked in by telling him to act normal before he could experience anything else. Valentino sent him to brush his teeth with the statement that he was still not too helpless to prepare a meal.

So they were having breakfast.

"Are we going to have sex today?" Marc asked, uncharacteristically tactless. He liked having this efficient response to crisis. If things were going wrong and he could do something, it was far better than the alternative.

He laughed when Vale's hand jerked the coffee mug in surprise. It would never be disappointing to pull a Vale on Vale himself.

"Yes," Vale said bullishly. "Did you miss my cock that much?"

Yes and no, but Marc didn't want to get into that.

"You're not actually that good at sex, you know?" Marc asked with a wicked grin. He'd had better over the years - bigger cocks, men who were more eager to please, and people who were just better at this. Vale was too self-centred to win any awards for sex. Marc loved him anyway.

Vale held a hand to his forehead dramatically. "You've discovered my secret. It is not normal to orgasm in two minutes. I am one of the lucky ones."

"It's not not normal," Marc mused. He didn't mind. It tickled his ego a little bit that Vale couldn't control himself. "Who decides what is normal? This is normal for you."

"And not you?" Vale sneered, sensing the dig.

Marc had quite the opposite problem where lots of people didn't do it for him at all, regardless of how attractive they were. "Sometimes mine is hard and dry," he said mournfully. "You know how sad it is to send people away and get yourself off?"

"No," Valentino said, seeming rather pleased with himself. "Often I come twice. You should remember."

"Then you complain about friction," Marc recalled with a delighted laugh.

He was tucked into Vale's side, body language parallel, elbows rested atop the countertop as they smiled at each other. Marc didn't think he had ever been comfortable being so close to him. He needed to live in the moment - he had always been wretchedly poor at it.

Vale draped an arm around Marc's shoulder, and lowered his posture to rest his chin next to his neck, hunched over and tucked in small. They were touching in too many places to count. He must have been desperate for companionship. Marc's skin burned.

"You don't have room to talk. What do you do during sex? Lie down?" Vale asked mockingly.

Marc kind of did, especially in his youth. "You never told me it was wrong," he said. He'd probably still not know better if he only ever had Vale. He also happened to enjoy being spoiled.

"It's normal for you," Vale said superciliously, and alright, Marc knew what he sounded like now.

Vale took one of Marc's hands between both of his own, and played with his fingers with unfamiliar tenderness. Marc only wanted to fuck him like an item off a checklist. Mostly, he'd rather be given the opportunity to spend the rest of his life with Vale.

His throat constricted. A sick, twisted feeling constricted the floor of his gut. If he spoke, he might throw up. He loved Vale so much that he might never be happy again.

--

If Marc were still capable of feeling shame where Vale was concerned, the moment for it would have been being seen by Uccio while he was dressed in his old briefs. Old was subjective a word - his briefs had been fresh that morning, but he had put them on twice since then.

A handful of minutes ago, Marc had been making a likely poor attempt at batting his eyelashes kittenishly to quicken Vale's efforts to make him come, all the while trying to scrub out the knowledge that chemo meant that Vale would never fuck him without a condom again. His bodily fluids here toxic from the drugs. It was...it was. There was no point in ruminating over lost time.

Uccio stomped through the house uninvited as though he owned the place, and it was just as well that he hadn't shown up ten minutes earlier. He would have been greeted with quite a show. His loud voice sounded through the house as he came up the stairs. "VALE, where are you? Your mother says you are not responding, and your girlfriend says you kicked her out."

Marc had been combing his dishevelled hair by the dressing table, and had elected to stay calm as it had quickly become clear that Uccio wasn't going to give him time to make himself dignified. He looked idly at the bulge of his flaccid cock through his briefs and thought it was the sort of thing Uccio would intentionally notice so that he could be offended by it. This situation was worse than any scene from a decade ago because Vale saw great humour in lounging performatively in bed as he laid in wait, and Marc couldn't be bothered to remove feet from where they were kicked up on the table.

"Vale," Uccio called once and busted into the bedroom. Marc wrinkled his nose. He didn't doubt that Uccio had caught Vale in the act more than once in his life. "Everybody's worried, Vale," he said, before his eyes absorbed the scene before him.

"I was a little busy," Vale drawled with a lazy wave in greeting. "Since you're here, perhaps you would like to buy the groceries? I wanted to send this one," he nodded at Marc, "but I changed my mind. He didn't come all the way here to be a nurse."

Uccio looked aghast. "What is he doing here? Where is she?" The trail of his gaze did eventually pass Marc's clothed cock with disapproval. Marc supposed he was grateful not to be the only person to be given the third-person treatment.

"Well it won't kill him," Vale said, with the world's most dramatic eye roll and an irreverent shrug. "He'll get along with his life when it's all over. Maybe he'll be sad."

"Sad about what?" Uccio demanded, audibly distraught.

Marc held his breath with his stare traced on Vale - the heroic tilt of his head, and the fear in his eyes. Vale had always been terrified of his own mortality, on track at 300km per hour or not.

"I'm dying, Uccio. There's not much I can do," he said.

To overuse a figure of speech, a pin drop could have been heard. The colour drained out of Uccio's face in horror, and Marc watched in awful, sympathetic transfixion. He hadn't cried yet. It didn't seem as though Uccio would either, as crying was sweet relief, and there was none to be had from this.

Vale crumbled first. As the playful shape of his mouth wavered, he hung his head down to hide it.

There was a distinct possibility that Marc wasn't strong after all. He didn't know how he could survive grief like this.

"No, Vale. No, no," Uccio said, hurrying to Vale's bed. Vale leaned into his touch, his face turned away from sight, and the waterworks began with hitching breaths and mumbled words between them, too hushed to be overheard. It was only Marc who held his breath as though he had forgotten how to stop. He didn't belong in Vale's world; this time he had his eyes open, but he had to stay. He had to, or there would be no time left.

--

Marc didn't really know what the feeling was, but it seemed that he was still a little bit pleased that Vale always treated him like a special guest while Uccio was made to do the chores.

They had a second breakfast, worse than the first, when Marc was really supposed to be doing cardio training and borrowing one of Vale's physio contacts. Vale and Uccio were red-eyed and stilted, and the situation was surreal in a way difficult to process.

In some way, Marc almost wasn't sad, because the enormity of the emotion was hard to grapple with and his head spun trying to make sense of it. He thought that one day he would be sad, and it would have to feel less like he was being slowed down by a tangle of soft wool, insulating him increasingly from all of his senses.

Uccio was far better at being devastated than he was, although he did put himself to work with aplomb. He stood over the stove while Marc and Vale were seated on the kitchen island, swinging their legs infectiously in mismatched times. Vale's barely toes grazed the surface of the floor while Marc's were in the air. Marc shifted subtly as he sat. His ass was sore, for its recent work in taking in a girth that it had grown unaccustomed to.

"He says he likes a cappuccino, but I don't know how to make them," Vale said to Uccio.

"You want me to steam his milk?" Uccio bit out disgustedly.

Marc smiled. He'd lived through similar conversations before.

"You made me a good one in two thousand fourteen. Or fifteen?" he guessed, knowing that his voice would grate on Uccio's ears. His memory had never been used to keeping track of specific points in time, but he remembered being around while Vale and Uccio played house in Vale's motorhome.

Uccio made the effort of turning back to cast him a withering look. "Fourteen," he said with complete certainty. "Vale, why is he here?"

"I read the news and came," Marc said, irritated that Uccio had to ask twice. As though it wasn't obvious. What kind of reason but foolish devotion could possess Marc to return to Vale solely to suffer?

Vale simply watched with his arms crossed, a corner of his mouth quirked upwards, and an aura of infuriating amusement. Marc elbowed him gently.

"Say something nice about me," he said in a pretend whisper.

"You have a tight asshole," Vale answered in a normal volume.

Uccio had been navigating the kitchen expertly to find a tiny battery-operated whisk, which he promptly dropped.

"Enough," he almost shouted, appearing more furious with Vale than Marc for once in his life. He was blotchy and red, especially under his nose which had ran from crying too much. Then he sniffed his blocked nose and anger drained out of him, leaving exhaustion. "No, make the jokes you want," he said.

After the fallout ten years prior, Marc had found Uccio mostly pathetic, but he was in touch with his emotions in an enviable way. Vale would be best off if insulated from his fears by his own mind, but Marc knew the dam would have to break for himself at some point. It was just a question if Vale would still be around to see it.

Vale loosened the fold of his arms over his chest, and it was only that contrast that made it apparent how stiffly he had initially been holding himself.

"I have always enjoyed his company, aside from the other things," Vale explained, turning towards Uccio, and a few careful degrees too far left to see Marc out of the corner of his eye. "Time is of the essence. And he's the bravest, isn't he? He will live."

They didn't need more words to talk. Uccio merely observed them from behind his thick glasses while he frothed Marc's milk with hands that trembled. Marc wondered what he saw.