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[martianluvr]

[martianluvr]

Marco Bezzecchi - 72

[martianluvr]

sweetness, salt-washed : pecco/bez, surfer au (pt.1) / 1.7k words [playlist]

The water bubbles, and moments later Marco’s head breaks through the rippling surface. He coughs on a frothy, salt-filled laugh, heaving himself onto Pecco’s board and nearly unseating them both.

“How long was that?” Marco asks, leaning all the way into Pecco’s space till his hair is dripping onto the stopwatch clasped in Pecco’s pruney fingers. Pecco elbows him back, laughing.

“One minute ten. Mine was better.” Bez shakes his head like a dog, retaliatory. 

“That’s so not fair. You need a handicap, because you are taller so obviously your lungs are bigger.”

They each give it one more go. Pecco wins again, blinking up at Marco’s face from under the waves. His eyes sting, his lungs burn, and it’s getting cold. He almost chokes on his laughter when Marco sticks his head in, cheeks blown out like a goldfish. When he hauls himself back up onto the board, face aching from smiling, he doesn’t even care about the time on the stopwatch.

The beach looks just like how he remembers. The road across it had been a different story, all two-storey houses and pristine green lawns — not that he can complain, given he’d just parked his car out front of one of them. Bought sight unseen, furnished. He hadn’t even bothered to look inside when he got there. Just threw his car in park and made his way down to the shore as fast as he could.

The tide is out, flat like a plateau, all red and orange under the half-set sun. He kicks his shoes off, strips his shirt away and wades in up to his chest, till the baby waves break against his collarbones. There’s a surfer about a hundred metres out, straddling his board with no intention of catching anything. Pecco knows how he feels. Just you and the ocean, a private show of colour and cloud on the horizon. He lets his knees buckle till he’s disappearing beneath the surface, sinking to lay on his back on the sand. It’s like looking through a portal to another world, through the rippling glass surface, the sky just some far away tapestry of dappled light.

He counts to a hundred, blinks his eyes against the salt sting and pushes up to the surface. There’s something about the water here — something soft and warm. He loves Oahu, Hossegor, Noosa. But there’s something about San Amer — about home. The sun is well and truly dipping beyond the horizon now, everything going blue-dark around him. The surfer’s come closer, and Pecco squints to make out his face. He’s looking at him.

“No waves?” Pecco calls, pushing his hair off his forehead.

The surfer laughs, high and reedy.

“There was earlier,” he replies. The tide has brought him closer again, and if Pecco strains he can make out dark eyes and a head of wet curls. 

“What, six hours ago?”

“Maybe. I have been out here that long.” He slides off his board, and Pecco traces the lines of muscles disappearing into the water. “Bez,” he says, sticking a hand out once he’s close enough. Pecco takes it, feels the rough slide of calluses against his skin, the slip of several beaded bracelets further up his wrist. Bez is young — Pecco’s age, give or take a couple years.

“Pecco,” he returns, starting to wade back to shore. Bez follows, hoisting his board up over his head and showering Pecco in the process. He slants his eyes away from the flex of Bez’s arms under the weight.

“Like Bagnaia,” Bez says. There’s no surprise in his voice — which knocks Pecco a little. Of course a surfer in the beach town that Pecco is literally from knows him, but to not even really care is at least somewhat unusual.

“Yeah,” he says, kicking his shoes back on and plucking his shirt up off the sand. Bez shifts to roll the board under one arm.

“Are you visiting?” he asks. Pecco chews the inside of his lip. Bez is looking at him with genuine interest written across his face, and it’s not something Pecco’s used to. Everyone — all the people in his life over the past 18 years have been competition. To have someone looking at him without want in their face — want for a fight, for what he has, for what he’s done — it’s good. It feels good.

“Yeah,” he repeats, making the decision to just — talk. To say whatever he feels like to Bez, and to see what Bez does with it. “I retired. Maybe you heard. Bought a house.” They’re walking towards it, Bez slowly following Pecco up the sandhills and through the scrub. He allows it. Most people ask why. Why, because he’s 27, he’s still in his prime, still winning every competition he shows up for.

Bez doesn’t ask. When they hit the road, he stares at the side of Pecco’s face, like he’s gauging whether he’s allowed to keep following. Pecco doesn’t stop walking, so neither does Bez.

“Do you surf often?” Pecco asks, digging through his shirt pocket for the key to his gate. His house is about as beachfront as money can buy, and Bez stops abruptly, like he’d been too in his head and hadn’t noticed the two-story villa suddenly appearing in front of them. The gate slides open with the push of a button, and Pecco gives Bez a look that says, If you want.

“Every day,” Bez replies, eyes wide in wonder as he steps into Pecco’s yard. His mouth cracks in an awed smile at the house stretching up before them, at Pecco’s candy red Range Rover parked haphazardly in the driveway, the four surfboards anchored to its roof racks. Pecco doesn’t love overt displays of wealth, but he can’t help that his car’s good and his house is fucking massive, so.

“Are you any good?” He drags the sand off his feet in the grass before stepping up to the door and fidgeting for the right set of keys. It’s a new lock, so it takes a few tries before the mechanism releases under his fingers. Bez follows suit, taking care to shake his feet off before following Pecco inside. The pair of them stand in the entry-way, heads on a swivel as they take the place in. Pecco had seen photos, and it had earned Vale’s approval, so he knew it’d be nice, but —

“Fuck,” Bez breathes, reading Pecco’s mind. Sky high ceilings, windows taller than either of them stretching wall to wall, all white and gold and decorated like a millionaire’s beachy AirBNB. Pecco turns his nose up at the abstract art dotting the walls — he’s got beach prints he can put up instead, thank god. It’s furnished, like Vale said, and Pecco makes a checklist of everything as he strolls through the lounge.

The white L-shaped couch is bigger than his car, and there’s an obscene number of pillows thrown on top of it. He scuffs his feet on the rug, turning to peer at Bez over his shoulder, pivoting slowly on the spot to really get the full effect. There’s no controlling the laugh that fights against his lips at the look of absolute wonder on Bez’s face. Bez hears the noise, ears pricking like a dog, and he turns back to Pecco, cheeks red.

“Sorry, ha. Normally I just work in the gardens of places like this. It’s fucking crazy.”

“What, you are a gardener?”

Bez catches his bottom lip between his teeth and ducks his head. Pecco can see the reddening tips of his ears through the curls of his hair.

“Landscaper,” he answers, meeting Pecco’s eyes again, watching for something. Pecco isn’t sure what.

“Ah. That doesn’t tell me if you are a decent surfer, though.” Bez straightens at that, a little bit of confidence injected into his posture. His face splits in a lazy smile, and it warms the back of Pecco’s neck.

“I’m very good.”

“Very good,” Pecco echoes. “We’ll see.”

Bez laughs, and Pecco takes that as him accepting the unspoken invitation.

“Have you eaten? Or have you just been on the beach all day?”

Bez goes bashful again. Christ. Pecco tries to not find that endearing — but it’s difficult.

“To be fair, it was a very nice day.”

He orders takeout to be delivered to them, and when Bez gets very staunch about paying him back, Pecco waves his hand, says, “Help me carry my shit in and we can call it even, eh?”

It only takes them three trips, what with Bez endeavouring to carry as much as possible each time as if it’ll make them more square. Pecco can’t help the laugh that bubbles out of him at Bez with two surfboards under each arm, getting stuck at the doorway and having to bail.

They fall onto Pecco’s pristine white couch half an hour later, each with a massive foil-wrapped burrito in their grasp. Pecco’s mind wanders as they eat, drifting like the tide out to his first year away from San Amer. Legendary surfer Valentino Rossi had reached out to his parents — said he was starting an academy, had just built what he termed ‘The Ranch’ on a privately leased section of beach in Sabaudia. And in a matter of weeks he was gone. Nine years old and every friend he made from that point on was just someone who wanted to beat him — who wanted to surf better, faster, stronger, more. He’d probably lost more friends than he’d gained, each interaction riddled with competition. Kids who’d been on a board since before they could stand up, who thought they deserved this more than him.

He takes a long sip of his coke. Bez’s eyes are on his face. There’s no hostility. No desire to win in the dark pool of his gaze. It’s unfamiliar. His stomach twists, guard pulling itself back up, because he’d let it down so fast, so easily. The silence starts to grate on him.

“Are you working tomorrow?”

Bez crumples his foil into a ball.

“Yes. But I surf before and after, 5am and 3:30pm.” His head pounds at the thought of waking up that early after the day of travel he’s had.

“I can meet you after work. You can show me how good you are.”

Bez’s face crinkles up in a smile, and Pecco’s heart squeezes like a fist.

[martianluvr]

THE INCIDENT

HEATED DISCUSSIONS

IN THE BOX

THE NEXT DAY

THE UPS AND DOWNS OF RACING AGAINST YOUR OWN BROTHER

During a practice session at the 2021 British GP, Pol Espargaró blocks older brother Aleix Espargaró on track, who is very displeased and makes his feelings known to Pol and anyone in his garage within earshot. Known for having a bit of a temper, his team calls this a normal occurance. Pol goes on to take pole in Qualifying, but can't hold on to the position on Sunday. Meanwhile Aleix finishes the race in P3, securing Aprilias first ever Podium in the MotoGP world championship. Unterstandably emotional, Aleix clings his brother on the cooldown lap. source: MotoGP Unlimited s01 e06

for the lovely @captainbradmarchand

[martianluvr]

marco bezzecchi + pecco bagnaia word weaving

marco bezzecchi: i would like to share the garage with bagnaia / gpone.

at the touch of you / witter bynnerr

pecco bagnaia: me and bezzecchi are superheroes / gpone

max lerner

marco bezzecchi / dutch gp 2023

marco bezzecchi: with pecco bagnaia we are close friends / paddockgp

the atheist / megan falley

looking deeper at bagnaia and bezzecchi's closeness / voi

private peaceful / michael morpurgo

[martianluvr]

expand on your marc/bezz thoughts please callie i want to hear everythinggggg

what a fucking. a/b/o ass podium. truly insane dynamics on display on all fronts UMMMM. so. the only. scenario where i can see anything like this happening in marc’s crazy little hot girl mind. is if he is triangulating his desire for vale through his little protege. like the thesis of this is. alpha bezz juuuuuuust understanding his sexuality here confronted with. the wettest happiest neediest omega the world has ever seen. anyways under the cut she got. LONG ♥️

so. BASICALLY. in my mind palace marc was on heat suppressants off the shits for yearrrrrs until his arm kind of made him go cold turkey because they interfered with his pain meds (giving up control over his heats ANOTHER thing marc hates so bad about it all) and vale shows up in the paddock for the first time since marc left the murderbike to a place where marc is FINALLYYYY catching a whiff of happiness after four miserable years (portimao alsooooo compelling, but marc is now like, EYE think a lot less anxious on the bike) and marc’s biological clock decides he’s safe, realizes his alpha is in proximity (wind changes and his knees feel like jelly), and goes off like five alarm claxon sirens like YOUR DICK APPOINTMENT HAS ARRIVEDDDD. truly marc smells insane he LOOKS insane the wet patches on the racetrack on saturday where allegedly from rain but NEVER rule out that they were actually a result of marc marquez’s wap

but despite every alpha in the paddock being like IS THAT ALLOWED?? marc is like. he is stillllll learning to respect his body still yearning to put everything on the line for another taste of that top step JUST got to a place where he feels like hes adapting to the bike and gaining confidence. he literally got POLE in the SPANISHHH GRAND PRIX, thats an insane carrot on a stick for our little guy who is so wrong in the head <3 and marc has always been a guy who needs to contextualize his suffering as a narrative arc to cope with it all so hes veryyyyyy aware of the sway a weekend like this can have in terms of his confidence! AND his career! and when he crashes in the sprint he looks at his hands and SERIOUSLY considers not going for it (allllll of the injury stuff. again it’s JEREZ. and the body keeps the SCORE !!) but it’s marc and its spainnnnnn, so he spends the night before the race going through his first heat since he was 15 ALONE and feeling absolutely out of his fucking MIND. (valentino rossi inside the same square mile or so as him and he wants to pick up the phone and call him so bad he wants 2 CRY. three fingers deep in himself one of vale's hoodies from 2014 spread out on the bed and it’s not enoughhhh). but the night passes. and its sunday and he's not 100% out of it but! hes insane in the pussy and he actually feels a bit clearer. still smells crazy but less shaky and ALWAYS determined. so he races!!!

AND BEZZ. oh boy. synthesizing the thoughts of many scholars on this topic. bezz is somewhat newly single VERY newly aware of his sexuality AND the kind of alpha that sees a hot omega who is CLEARLY in heat without a partner and feels crazy. dogboy 9000%. what do you MEAN no one is taking care of him?? jennifer lawrence voice. what do you mean. what do you meannnnnn. a service top realizing no one is SERVICING marc and as such becoming wildly horny AND itchy under the collar without being able to name exactly why. base instincts are going CRAZY while pecco is politely ignoring it all.

so bez is out of his head but just barelyyyy realizing it. mostly just kind of knows that he wants marc 2 pay attention to him so bad. soso bad. clumsy a little embarrassing. truly WATCH the cooldown room video bezz is constantly asking marc little questions and touching him and trying to get him into the conversation (staring at marc waiting for him to talk and marc does not!) like bezz is going right through pecco (his homoerotic bestie of OUR fiance and straddling in parc ferme fame) to BLAST marc in the face on the podium. he is specifically going to HIM to clink champagne bottles. he is staring at marc in the press conference giving him the up and down like a horny psycho. he is complimenting his riding and licking his lips and touching marc's waist and tracing his lil finger over the part of marc that USED TO BE HURT with the careful tenderness of someone MUCH more familiar with marc than he is lmao. truly. cunt struck. scenting him off IMPOLITELY. friendship ENDED with heterosexuality marc marquez's ass is now my hypothetical best friend. if no one will top him then EYE WILL. behavior!!!

but marc is ATTEMPTING to nobly IGNORE this... aware he's in heat (its burned off a bit, for the time being, after the adrenaline of the race... mellowed out to edgy horniness...) and aware bezz is an alpha and he can SMELL how interested he is and. well the attention is interesting and feels good and the base part of his stomach that likes feeling hot enjoys the way bezz smell is tugging at him BUTTT he's taken!! like not really but he ISSSSS!! so hes ignoring bezz keeping his eyes determinedly on that screen watching the overtake he tried on pecco... but the paddock is tiny and after the race marc decides to go out and celebrate and. hes horny and happy and a lil bit keyed up from vale being there and. as fate would have it. he lands at the same bar that the academy crew is rolling at. and bezz is there and. he comes up to marc. and sort of. clumsily tries to talk to him. buy him a drink. and hes young and hes charming and marc is going to cut him loose as gracefully as he can and fuck off to ride out the rest of his heat in peace but. bezz cracks a joke in his lilting italian accent (marc has a FETISHHH) and marc barks out a jajajaja cackle before he can help it (everyone. says one of the ways bezz is most like vale is his HUMORRR)... and marc is DRUNK and bezz is SWEET and TOUCHING HIM and he smells GOOD and also. when marc closes his eyes he can catch a whiff of VALE on bezz's SKIN... and it curls into his chest and makes something in his heat addled brain settle in a way he's been craving all weekend... lighting him up and holding him down in a way that clutching onto that hoody that doesnt smell like vale anymore three fingers deep in himself didnt... and its justtttt enough to let bezz take him home....

[martianluvr]

soo about dovquez…

just some random lore, some facts to begin with

dovquez dovquez dovquez….. god. what a ship. where do i even start…… actually, there’s so much good stuff so i’m just doing it bullet point style !

so here’s a brief intro to dovquez (things very much not in any logical order):

in 2011 when marc was in moto2 and sponsored by repsol he used to do some sponsor duties with the repsol honda riders which at the time were dani, casey and DOVI (yes. they were three factory riders. it was a whole thing a contractual mess but. yes.) which is from where we got this insane gifset of dovi feeding marc…… forever thinking about that moment and how marc looks at dovi !

dovi coming back to the garage after getting p2 and losing to marc, half smiling and saying ‘fuck, he wore me out’ 🫠

the fact that marc called dovi and said he wanted to come to his track and ride….. this year……

dovi saying that to race marc and win against him you *can’t* race like marc, you have to use other tactics, having studied marc’s riding and learning this with time and then actually winning and outsmarting him (at a time when honda was a very dominant bike in marc’s hands)

this picture. they loved racing each other SO MUCH.

dovi’s half exasperated fondness for marc when they debriefed after a race, marc over the moon excited about the close racing <3 ‘when you’re behind it’s not a relaxing situation’ said with a smileeee

THEIR FIGHTS WERE BASED ON MUTUAL RESPECT !!!!! both laughing after a last lap decider, enjoying the close racing and managing to be rivals without disliking each other, pushing each other to improve and becoming better riders bc of it !

marc looking at dovi. many different occasions. lots to go insane over.

push that twink around he loves it!!!!!

this is not comprehensive in any way shape or form but the bottom line is that there was so much JOY whenever they raced together and it. was beautiful. and they’re both still fond of each other to this day!

recommend checking out @agnst-crrnt @marquezian @lastlatebraker @martianluvr @its-always-silly-season and their respective dovquez tags to dive deeper bc all of it is a treasure trove :)

[martianluvr]

JEREZ 2024 | Marc Marquez + people wanting to check on the rubber left on his leathers by Pecco's tyre.

[martianluvr]

Marc + Bezz on the podium in Jerez, 2024

[martianluvr]

(MotoGP via Instagram Story | 18.11.2019)

[martianluvr]

if i saw it correctly the back of bezz's shirt (WHICH HE WORE ON INTERNATIONAL BROADCAST) said 'ama chi te pare' which (according to google translate) means 'love whoever you want'. OKAY!

You did see correctly and certified Italian @dobbiamo-capire told me the same thing for the translation 🤗

[martianluvr]

how long a ruined thing will burn pt.8 : vr46 rider!marc au / 2.3k words (pt.7 here)

Marc is fraught like an exposed nerve before Q2. Valentino isn’t here, not yet — isn’t meant to arrive at the track until right before the sprint. He feels like a sacrificial lamb on the bike, having blazed through exposing his underbelly, rolling over and letting the soft, weak parts of him show. He’d given Valentino the knife that night at the ranch. And then he’d laid down on the altar, all of his own accord.

So his stomach churns through each left-hand corner, usual confidence and control shaky under threat. There’s no grip, which he knows — which he’s used to. But today the rear is threatening to slide out from underneath him, and it feels too much like saying things he shouldn’t have said. He rolls back into the box in P9. Every set of eyes is a needle in his spine. It’s a small mercy that Valentino’s not around.

He takes his helmet off, eyes drifting to the TV, to Bez’s P4 qualifying. To Bez clawing his hair into something neat, talking animatedly with —

Valentino.

Marc’s eyes snap to the floor. It’s like a gun going off, the sudden surge of anxiety, the burning need to be anywhere else. He stands, making brief eye contact with his engineer to confirm he’s no longer needed. Valentino’s seen the movement, though, pushing away from where he’d been speaking to Bez and slouching over, hands in his pockets. Marc scrambles for an escape route.

There’s a gap, if he can just get by these people, if he can squeeze and be closer to the door than to Valentino — except someone steps back into him and he stumbles and then Valentino’s got a hand on his shoulder, planting him firmly back on two feet. Marc yanks himself away, feeling branded even through his leathers. There’s a charge between them, dark and rippling, and Marc wills it to lie flat, wills his face to settle into something without the anticipation of hurt.

Valentino says nothing for a moment. Drops his hand and stares down his nose at Marc. When Marc shifts his weight, itching to leave, Valentino takes a step back. It’s too careful. It’s making him nervous.

“What is happening with the bike?”

Marc blinks, eyes darting around the box to gauge who’s listening in on their conversation.

“Nothing,” he answers, hesitant, unsure of where this is going. But Valentino doesn’t say anything. He’s just watching Marc, searching, calculating. Trying to read between all the lines that Marc has thrown up. When it looks like Vale is preparing to open his mouth again, Marc pivots, nimble like a prey animal and gone before he can hear Vale’s teeth click together.

He manages to avoid Vale entirely right up until the start of the sprint. He’s just swung his leg over, relinquished his weight to the bike and ducked his chin. Valentino draws himself away from Bagnaia seconds later. Marc doesn’t mean to notice — really, he tries not to, but it’s like Valentino’s got a magnet tucked between his teeth. That and Marc could pick the slope of his shoulders from a crowd of millions, years spent tracing the lines.

He bows his head before Valentino reaches him. Praying he takes it for the door closure it’s meant to be. Valentino’s sneakers appear in his vision and stay there, and his self-preservation instincts aren’t strong enough to keep him from looking up.

Valentino’s face is pulled tight — frustration in the scrunch of his brow and contempt in the curl of his mouth. Marc doesn’t need this. Doesn’t need whatever Valentino is about to say, doesn’t need the sick scrape of cut glass against his stomach lining. Marc won’t glare. He won’t even meet Valentino’s eyes. Keeps his focus somewhere beneath the other man’s chin, on his pulse point, his Adam's apple. Anywhere else. Valentino hisses through his teeth, and it startles Marc’s attention up to his mouth.

Valentino whispers, “what is your problem,” and it’s not even that Marc hears it — he watches it, Valentino’s lips forming each word, tight in the corners. Valentino walks away and the moment hardens like cement in Marc’s stomach.

He manages to climb a couple places in the sprint, the asymmetric tyre enough use over the short distance that he can push each corner without nursing it like a baby. It’s a feat that he races clean with the ball of mess rattling between his ears. He passes Fabio and tries not to look at the blue of the Yamaha any more than he has to.

P5 feels like a monstrous achievement, and he climbs off the bike foal-like, legs not yet ready to support him. Valentino’s looking at him again in the box, rolling his lips like he wants to say something. Accommodating this — accommodating all the extra shit in his head, the singe-spot of Valentino’s inevitable pull back like a cigarette burn on his brain — it makes the hours longer, tucks weight into the legs of his leathers and draws him down like an anchor. He ducks away when Valentino makes towards him, putting a desk and a mechanic between them and then beelining for his motorhome.

There’s a splinter of pride wedged between all the nausea. That’s he’s committing to it, finally, after years of bleeding. That it took one good knock, granted, a lightning bolt of vulnerability that he shouldn’t have allowed, but he’s getting out of it. And he’s doing it for self-preservation, a concept so foreign to him that it’s laughable as a driving force. The world isn’t ending, his heart isn’t stopping. It just feels like it is, and he can deal with feeling, because he’s been doing it for years — feeling written into the very core of him. Always pain, of course, as much a part of him as his heart, lungs, his teeth and tongue.

Álex finds him not long after. Knocks on the door to Marc’s motorhome — and for a second Marc seizes up, neural pathways firing glitter between each other because it could be Valentino — but he opens the door to his brother and pushes down the disappointment, sick with himself. All that perceived work, the heavy bricks of ego crumbling at the first glint of light. Álex catches the look in his eyes, mouth turning down at the corners at whatever he recognises it to be.

Marc lets him in wordlessly, offering a tired smile and closing the door to bustle around getting changed into sweats and packing things away. Álex falls into his couch, watching Marc cut laps across the room with all the composure of a caged animal.

“Are you doing okay?” he asks, finally, when Marc stills long enough to catch his gaze. Marc cracks a grin that doesn’t reach his eyes. The last thing he wants is for Álex to be preoccupied with his bullshit. They’d had — well. Marc had spoken to him after the ranch. Briefly, on Thursday. He’d given nothing away in words, but in body language and posture he’s sure Alex had been able to read the bible of him.

“Yes, ha. Is just the grip, you know. I need to be careful with the rear tomorrow — nearly lost it a couple times today.”

“Not on the track, Marc,” Álex intones, eyes too knowing for Marc’s liking.

“Ah, so?” Marc waves his hands, unfolding and refolding a shirt that had been perfectly fine the way it was. He grits his teeth.

“Did something happen at the ranch?”

Cold shoots up his spine. He shakes his head minutely, but it’s too late. He already knows he’s going to tell Álex. He’ll let him push one more time.

“You can tell me, Marc. I don’t want to see you like this.”

He gives up on folding the shirt, balls it in his hands and holds it close to his chest like a shield.

“I think everything is finally ending, is all.”

Álex waits for more.

“I drank — too much, and said some things, apparently. And Bezzecchi said Valentino reacted weird, and now I think — I can tell he is acting different; mean, you know how he started to get after the first time around, yes? But I do not — I don’t think I can hold all that again.”

He swallows, trying to organise his thoughts. He hadn’t even really put a plan together, nothing more substantial than a desire to shut down, to close the blast doors before the missile hits.

“So, I am just going to stop reaching for him.” That’s open — that’s vulnerable. Álex doesn’t — he’d never exactly gone over all the twists and ties in his head about Valentino with Álex. But there’s enough there, enough in the rough, worn choke of his voice for Álex to fill in the gaps. Even if Marc doesn’t explicitly know them himself. The admission drips down the back of his throat like syrup. Sweet and bitter.

He pastes the trembling smile back on. Álex winces.

“It would be nice to win tomorrow, huh? Give him a hit.”

“Well, do it for yourself, though,” Álex replies, standing. He’s good at knowing when Marc has nothing left to say. Even better at knocking him off-balance with a simple comment, wise beyond his years. Álex presses a kiss to his cheek before he leaves, and Marc diligently keeps the fear out of his voice when he says goodnight.

He half expects something to have dislodged in his chest the next morning. Nothing’s moved, though, still packed to the brim with red memories and bone. A slow process, his therapist would call it. Like drops of tar, something that burns all the way down till it settles at the bottom. He shakes the empty rattle of his bones, knocks all the loose bits back into place as he makes his way out on track for the warmup. He takes it easy. Counts the corners, breathes with the bike. It feels like a meditation more than anything, even with the pre-race buzz simmering beneath his skin.

Soon after, he’s the last one to haul himself up onto the float for the parade. Álex is deep in a head-down conversation with Di Giannantonio, and Marc doesn’t want to be clingy, so when Bez catches his eye, he moves that way with little hesitation. They clap hands, and Marc leans back against the railing, playing at casualness. He still thinks Bez knows more than he’s letting on, and being on the outside is starting to grate on him.

“Feeling good?” Bez asks, looking at Marc through his sunglasses. Marc doesn’t like not being able to see his eyes. It reminds him of Valentino.

Cut that out.

“So-so,” he replies, releasing his bottom lip from the sharp capture of his teeth. “Yesterday was not good. Better today, I hope.”

“Yeah, hard when you get caught up in all the middle.”

They drift into race talk that Marc doesn’t need to use his brain power on. Bez doesn’t ask any suspicious questions, and Marc manages to keep all the sick feelings to himself. The hours left before the race blink by in minutes, and then he’s opening the throttle to a roaring crowd.

The start is rough — someone goes into his flank and he bounces through it, shoulders straining to keep the bike on the track, already down five places. From there things become monotonous fairly quickly. Gain a place, lose it to no grip, find himself faster than the others through the lefthanders — enough to be productive only half the time. Rinse and repeat. Viñales goes down right ahead of him on lap twenty, and he veers to avoid the bike and rider skittering across the asphalt. It takes a chunk out of his pace, but then Miller and Rins take each other wide and he manages to cut ahead of them.

The sun streams down on him through the clouds, and his mind flashes back to desperation, to lightning, cooling heat, hunting and seeking and it never being enough. He shakes his head. 

Are you choosing to be fast today?

Does he want the fight? Does he honest to God prefer the snap of teeth at his neck over icy nothing? He leans down into a corner, shoulder scraping the ground. The bike twitches beneath him, nervy. He can’t think about that.

In the last eight laps, he drags himself up to seventh. Something dark whispers that he should’ve binned it, summoned Valentino to his motorhome in the dark, all set with nothing nice to say. He could open the door with his leathers around his waist.

But P7 is a non-event after the race he’s had. And he can see Bez shaking his head up behind the podium finishers.

A slow process, he thinks, climbing off the bike so the mechanics can roll it back into the box. He meets Valentino’s eyes on his way in. Not to say anything, not to project any message. Just to get used to the emptiness. Valentino takes it as a fish hook, meeting Marc halfway across the garage with an unkind hand on his shoulder, one that doesn’t leave room for Marc to pull away. He can see the tilt of Valentino’s head, searching the side of Marc’s face, vying for attention and eye contact. There’s something Marc doesn’t like in the planes of his face — something too open. It doesn’t suit him. Marc keeps his gaze on the floor.

“If you are going to be this way, at least do what I hired you for,” Valentino says, watching, waiting for the cut, for Marc to flinch or protest or argue. Marc doesn’t do anything. When he finally lifts his eyes to Valentino’s face, the other man’s lips have drawn tight with irritation.

So, there, Marc thinks.

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February 2014 (text from Mat Oxley's The Valentino Rossi Files: Everything I've ever written about VR: From 2008 to now):

During the winter the nine-time champ spent more time than usual thrashing round his dirt track ranch, keeping himself mentally and physically sharp and getting used to a motorcycle moving around beneath him. He knows that Marc Marquez’s ability to ride on the ragged edge with a more muscular, more sideways style is changing MotoGP, so he needs to change with it. Rossi may never look as spectacular as Marquez on a dirt bike or a MotoGP bike, but both his former and current crew chiefs believe he can do better than he did last year, when Marquez made him look rather second rate.

Rossi on inviting Marquez to the ranch:

"Yeah, for sure, a lot of time. But I think that Emilio [Alzamora, Marquez's manager] is not very happy that Marc come because he said that after we make a race and maybe it's dangerous." (x)

A Sideways Glance at Misano 2014, including pre-event karting on Wednesday night where Marquez reportedly struggled:

Misano 2014 (text from Mat Oxley's Valentino Rossi: All His Races):

^ Márquez won the first ten races of 2014 and this was the first time all year he was beaten in a straight duel. He couldn't handle Rossi's pace at Misano, so he ended up losing the front and falling.

Valentino was fast throughout practice and secured his first front-row start of 2014. [Rossi was asked after qualifying about the threat posed by Marquez and Lorenzo, identifying Lorenzo as the favourite before adding, "But you never know with Marc. He's a bastard."] In the race he rode better than in years, hanging his upper body inside the motorcycle more than ever before to increase turning. He snatched the lead from Lorenzo and then fended off Márquez, who struggled to find enough grip to match Vale. At one-third distance the world champion pushed it too far and slid off, so Vale cruised home 1.6 second ahead of Lorenzo. His crew had done a great job of creating maximum grip via adjustment to chassis balance and electronics set-up. His 107th GP victory showed he was once again as fast as anyone, because when he won at Assen 2013 he didn't have to beat Márquez, Lorenzo or Pedrosa, who were all injured. "It's fantastic to come back to victory again," he beamed after his first win with [new crew chief Silvano] Galbusera. "I knew we could fight and I pushed from the start. I always work hard and never give up and trust that days like this can happen."

^ The breakthrough win at Misano. For the first time since his return to Yamaha he had gone head-to-head with Jorge Lorenzo and Marc Márquez and beaten them both. From this moment another world title was a possibility.

(x for more details)

Aragon 2014 press conference:

Rossi: Revenge at the ranch! No, first of all, we enjoy a lot, because have a lot of riders and also from superbike and a lot of bike on the track and was a good day, yeah. Marc was very fast, already fast like me at the first time, as always, and I think he did the best lap time but I won the race so is 1-1, so is... come si dice, pareggio pareggio [tied]. Marquez: Yeah, yeah, was really nice, you know, I was really [impressed] to see his circuit, his home, because in the future I would like to have, because was impressive and riding there was all the riders was really nice and... like Valentino says, we were there fighting together like in Misano race more or less, but yeah... the important thing is that we enjoy it and was really nice to ride there with him and also with the other riders.

Valentino Rossi, Marc Marquez and the Ranch

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somewhere in argentina...

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🫢

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Pre-press conference chatter.

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CELIN P10 I CALL THIS A WIN