The couch shifts next to him. A body squeezes between him and the arm and rolls over to rest herself on his thigh. It’s a girl Pecco had spoken to earlier, at the start of the night. He’d bought her a drink. She’s messier now, pink smeared out past the sharp corners of her mouth, glitter spattered over her cheeks. Pretty in that fairy sort of way that some girls are, short blonde hair and massive brown eyes, lashes like bird wings.

Pecco meets her open-mouthed grin with a smile and she slides into his lap with a little more confidence than coordination.

“I have a friend who,” she starts, breaking off to hiccup, giggling as she drags Pecco’s hands to the heated slip of her waist, “used to be a dancer. She lived in Cancún, and it’s actually, like, really easy.” The skin above her skirt band is butter soft. Pecco swallows. All he can smell is sugar and sweet liqueur. Over her shoulder, Valentino catches his eye. Chin cradled in the palm of his hand while he just watches, gaze dark, lips thinned. When he realises Pecco’s looking back at him, the corners of his mouth pull up into something indulgent. 

“You just have to, like this,” she’s saying again, and then she’s grinding down into Pecco’s lap, hips rolling, yanking the breath from his lungs. His fingers spasm, squeeze. She makes a high noise and shifts her weight, pulls back like she’s riding Western — the same sort of posture as those rodeo guys Cele likes. Pecco gets only a second to steady her and then she’s tightening her thighs and swaying into his space. He wants to ask her name; parts his lips to do so and then she’s licking into his mouth, kissing like a leading dance partner, hands on his face. 

Pecco slides his hands higher just for something else to do with them. Catches his nails on the edge of her shirt and then dips them in and under, till he finds the stiff ridge of her bra. It hits him, when she pulls away long enough oxygen to reach his brain again, that Valentino is still watching. Probably. She’s too close now for him to see, still rocking in his lap, smearing lipstick over his chin. He tilts his head to catch the line of her jaw, to mouth gently up to her ear, and then he can see Valentino, through the curtain of her hair.

His legs are open, reclined all the way back in his seat. Sweating crystal tumbler balanced on his knee. And he’s still watching, eyes lidded. Heat lances Pecco like a spear, through his chest, gut, his filling cock. He turns to catch her mouth again, and then she squeals, pulled up and out of his lap. The point of her heel scuffs over his Jordans.

She catches her balance in the arms of another girl who’s yelling something about vomit and taxis and getting thrown out. He leans forward to catch her eye, to say something fucking stupid like thank you, probably, but then she’s gone, wobbly on her feet and running for the exit.

The breath hitches in his chest. There’s not enough blood in his head. He finds Valentino’s eyes again.

“Any good?” Valentino asks, voice dripping with something Pecco can’t place. He shakes his head, goes to deny it, to avoid being obscene, but then Valentino’s lifting out of his seat to loom over him. “You enjoyed it, though. No need to lie, Pecco.”

His martini knocks on the back of his teeth, threatens to make him nod, to take the look on Valentino’s face as an invitation, as if it could — as if they would ever —

“Bez is being sick, guys.”

He blinks back into focus, swallows the spit pooling in his mouth. Franky looks hassled, hands on his hips as he peers between the two of them. Valentino ‘ah’s.

“End of the night. Come on, Francesco.”

Pecco counts to ten and then stands. Valentino just — follows Franky to the exit like he hadn’t — like whatever he’d just said hadn’t meant what Pecco thinks it could’ve meant. He tries to push the thought of that to the cob-webbed, off-limits corner of his mind, and prays that it’s too dark outside for anyone to see how fucking hard he is.

Bez is no longer being sick when they push out of the crush of the club and onto the street. He’s hunched over on the side of the road, face tipped up to the sky, looking pale and miserable. Cele’s got a hand in his hair, smoothing it back from his sweating forehead.

“Too hard, eh Marco?” Vale ribs, knocking him on the shoulder as he passes. Luca steps out onto the path beside Pecco, face flushed. He’s got a line of waxy red kisses up the column of his throat. Happy birthday.

They pull Bez up off the ground and make the trek back to Valentino’s van. Luca gives him a look as he buckles in behind the wheel, which Valentino waves off, says, “I had like a whiskey and a half, is nothing.”

Pecco sits directly behind him. All the windows come down, and there’s the click of a lighter over some Red Hot Chili Peppers song, and then Valentino’s arm extends out the driver’s side with a cigarette in hand. The smell of it, acrid, the night air and twelve different types of alcohol and Mig’s shitty cologne — the heat in his stomach goes caustic. He swallows a wave of nausea and glues his attention to the back of Valentino’s seat.

Valentino pulls into a crooked park and they pile out onto the driveway. Before Pecco can trail inside after Luca, Valentino calls his name. His fingers ball at his sides. It’s freezing. When he turns, Vale is leaning against the steaming hood of the van. The cigarette glows weakly between his fingers.

“Are you still —?”

The words wash over him. Hard. Wanting. Something like that, maybe, if Valentino had noticed. He is, barely. Can’t say yes or no, jaw stuck shut. Valentino squints at him. His eyes flick up and down, appraising — Pecco feels like a racehorse.

“Come on, if you want.”

Valentino turns and disappears around the corner without waiting for an answer, towards the track and the bike shed. Pecco shifts his weight on the spot, follows.

The alcohol sloshes in his stomach.

Valentino beats him to the shed. The overhead lights are off, but he’s turned on a lamp on the work bench and is stood with his back to the door, fingers curled loosely around the handlebar of an MX bike. He peers at Pecco over his shoulder, mouth curved in a smile.

“Thought so. Shame, about the girl. She was, ah, cute.”

Pecco feels the bottom drop out of his stomach — feels a thick glob of molten glass replace it. She was. Fun, froth and fizz and bubbles like champagne.

Valentino’s darker. Rye and rum and all sorts of things Pecco can’t usually hold. His eyes in this light are flinty and smart, creased like he knows something.

“Close the door, Pecco,” he says, ripping Pecco out of the scene he’d almost fallen into. Pecco closes the door, lingering with his fingers on the handle, and then, because he’s already here, turns back around and takes the steps needed to put him beside the workbench, within reach of Valentino.

Valentino stretches his arm out and slips two fingers through one of Pecco’s belt loops. He doesn’t pull. Just rests his grip there, like he could — like he knows Pecco would fall against him at even the suggestion of force.

“Would you have taken her to the bathroom? Or just let her ride you into the couch like that until you came?”

Heat rips up Pecco’s neck and into his face.

“Jesus, Vale,” he says, tossing his head to the side, eyes rippling over the far wall. Valentino’s high laugh echoes through the shed and bounces between his ears.

“Sorry, crude,” Valentino mutters through a smile, tracking Pecco’s flushed cheeks. “Come here, then,” he says softer, and then his fingers do curl and pull Pecco closer. Just barely, but enough to start Pecco on the trajectory till he’s pressed into Valentino’s side. Valentino’s hand leaves his jeans and slinks up over his shoulders, and then his mouth is a firebrand on Pecco’s cheek.

Pecco’s knees buckle, and his weight lands on the bench at his back. Following Valentino here, closing the door — it must have been enough. Must have given him away. Years of fever dreams, posters, stifling his voice with a bitten fist in the room beside Vale’s. All that pulsing want unspooled in a lapdance, the filthy lights of a packed-full club.

Valentino’s fingers split his fly open in the next breath. He tugs Pecco’s jeans down quickly, and then his underwear. Pecco’s cock bobs free, heavy and weeping. A pleased noise slips from Vale’s mouth, hot on his cheek. Smug.

“Vale,” he protests, like if you’re going to touch me, do it now, don’t just fucking revel.

Valentino shushes him. Then he spits into his hand and wraps it around Pecco’s cock and the flickering irritation on Pecco’s tongue smolders into absolutely nothing. It’s not — it’s a handjob. Not the end of the world, not a star collapsing. But it’s Valentino Rossi, and Pecco’s staring at rows upon rows of 46 labelled grand prix bikes, beetle shiny and glowing, neon in the halflight, gorgeous. Pecco chokes on a moan.

Valentino’s hand is rough, fast. Wet but not slick and just this side of too tight. Not a religious experience, but a god muttering filth into his ear anyway, mouthing at the angle of his jaw.

Pecco’s tongue hits the back of his teeth, not good for anything but Vale, fuck, I’m — ah and swallowing the spit that’s threatening to wash over his bottom lip. Vale tilts his head then, the hand on his shoulder coming up to squeeze at his chin. Pecco lets his mouth fall open. Valentino’s tongue slips past his teeth and then they’re kissing, hot and fast and whiskey-flavoured.

He manages an ah-ah-ah that Valentino swallows, but it’s warning enough — that he’s close, hips hitching up into Vale’s twisting fist, brows wrenching together. Valentino nips at his lip, whispers, “Come on, Francesco,” and Pecco comes into Valentino’s hand with a guttural, cut-off noise. The lamplight and his headrush blurs everything watercolour amber, bikes slipping into the figures of deers; fawny, branded with sun yellow 46s.

Valentino laughs, quiet. His breath whispers over the shell of Pecco’s ear, pulls goosebumps from goosebumps.

“More fun than a lapdance, yes?”