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It took forever and not too long at all to get used to the lingering effects of the Drift. The psychosomatic hangover brought on by intertwining two selves into one and then tearing them apart, perfunctory, giving way to the ghost of a bond; the fingerprint-unique impressions left on one another like a claim. A promise. Vale’s eyes on Uccio’s, the brilliant blue sky above the liquid-dark Pacific.

Márquez’s eyes are darker. Deeper. All-consuming, of a creature of the depths. Where the hell did this kid come from, anyway. Crawled out from the Breach like an ungodly 168 cm alien kaiju, probably, come to shore to terrorize the Shatterdome and to shake apart Vale and Uccio’s carefully managed ecosystem. A nightmare unable to be awoken from.

Uccio shifts, sluggish, pulled halfway out of an afternoon nap. The air of their insulated room is tepid. Susceptible to heat. He flips the pillow under his head to get the cool side, ignores the faint suggestion of warmth trying to pool at the base of his spine, throbbing in time with Vale’s quickened heartbeat. He can feel his own flutter to catch up, stuttering in his bared-open chest. The bedsheets – their bedsheets – are twisted around his legs in an impossible arterial tangle. He kicks them off the bunk entirely, surgically imprecise. Presses his eyes shut and tries to sink back into unconsciousness.

The pool of warmth is giving rise to a simmering ocean.

Uccio heaves a sharp sigh of annoyance into the pillow, more awake than not. He exhales, breath hot like a curse, shoves his shorts and underwear down his thighs to wrap a dry hand around himself. He has better, more important things he could be doing right now, like sleeping, Márquez is so needy, and fucking inconsiderate of Vale and Uccio’s time. Bastard. 

He tugs his softish cock once, twice, harsh like Vale likes it. Rolls the reddening tip between the pads of his forefinger and thumb like Vale likes it, pinches and winces in the same breath.

It’s uncomfortable, is what it is. In the same way that stepping into someone else’s skin is uncomfortable, except Uccio steps into Vale’s skin all the time, and Vale into his. For every kaiju alarm that rings, and every Jaeger drop that follows. Comfortingly familiar, then, in its discomfort. Reliable. Valentino likes reliable.

Uccio is reliable. Marc Márquez is not. 

He takes himself fully in one hand, irritation swelling in his gut. Would Márquez even know, without having to be told in so many words, what Vale likes? How he likes his coffee in the morning and in the afternoon, what size cup to use? How he likes his shirts and pants folded after Uccio’s done the laundry, once he’s separated the whites from the colors, and picked out which items need to be air dried after going through a wash cycle in one of the Shatterdome’s communal machines? 

Uccio strips his dick faster with a yawn. He’s beginning to be bored. He looks up at the Valentino-yellow shirt on its hanger across the room, at the large, circular damp spot slowly shrinking at its center. He’d gotten up early to do the wash today – the machines are always full by midday on the weekends. Does Márquez know? About the full washing machines at weekend midday?

Yes, says the version of Valentino who has lived in Uccio’s head since before either of them had ever laid finger on a Pons headset, before the first kaiju had risen from the ocean and dragged Marc Márquez up with it like a brine-born curse, sickeningly salty and sharp on the tongue when you drink him in, irresistible to a drowning man or even a god.

Yes, of course Márquez knows. Marc Márquez knows everything that Valentino knows, and that Uccio knows, too. Márquez knows all of it now: how Valentino likes his cock sucked and his coffee made and his laundry folded. Because they Drifted, Vale and Márquez, they fucking Drifted, and then Valentino went and lost his damn mind. Their mind.

His hips give a sharp thrust without his permission, cock twitching in his tight grip. He’ll regret not using lotion, maybe, later on when Valentino appears back in their doorway from whatever shadowy corner Márquez had lured him into to leer at Uccio, loose-limbed and unchafed, unconcerned in his afterglow.

Vale is coming. A tidal wave of pleasure crests then crashes, flooding through the channel of the ghost Drift in a hot saline flush. Uccio swears and follows at once, a beat behind, spilling over his knuckles and onto the fitted sheet below, unsatisfying and short and not fully his own.

In the emptiness of their shared bunkroom, buried deep in the bowels of their Shatterdome – yes, theirs, because it has been a lifetime of this, Uccio has made sure of it – he wipes his hand with a tissue and slumps back onto the soiled bunk, alone. He yawns again. His solitary heart rate has slowed to a stationary dawdle, no more flutters. The air is a few degrees too warm now after all his moving about. A bead of sweat rolls down his temple.