#AGAIN im not trying to hate on anyone who likes it

[rei-does-stuff]

EXTREMELY LONG Cream unicorn cookie thoughts bc i have brainrot

—

-Okay so this whole brainrot started when I thought abt an evil version of Cream Unicorn A corrupted/distorted version of their ideals would be interesting ESP SINCE THEYRE ALREADY A LIL FUCKED UP LIKE AGAIN THEY WANTED TO KIDNAP CHILDREN

And it would be rlly easy too, just make it so they don’t change their mind the only reason they let them leave is because they didn’t want them to be upset, making it so they don’t care about that fact and it isn’t about their wants its about them, THEY WANT THEM STAY and it doesn’t matter how much they cry or how upset they are they’re staying with them no matter what

-I like to think that Cream Unicorn cookie in canon is still a little fucked, and has those moments of not wanting people to leave them, and has to just physically stop themselves from acting on those selfish feelings,

They just put on the front that everything is fine and normal and that they’re fine and normal because they don’t wanna scare anyone

“They love it here, they love me so ergo they don’t wanna leave YIPPIEEE EVERYONE IS HAPPY” meanwhile the kids are like “I wanna go home to my parents” You could also do the coraline route where cream unicorn is like “IM your real parent now :) im the one who should be taking care of you”

-(Also I need more cream unicorn interactions that ARENT with their extremely sanitized version, bc theyre so interesting and I hate that its never brought up how fucked they are

Bc others interactions with that version of them would be so interesting

Bc kingdom!cream has no real sense of loneliness, or much beyond happy dreamer because they don’t wanna acknowledge that they were kinda fucked up which I get WHY but still :/)

-Them and Shadow Milk cookie would get along I feel mainly bc Shadow would see right through Cream’s facade and see that aren’t as innocent as they seem

I say they still held people hostage but still left after in hopes of finding cookies who could inhabit the amusement park, maybe more than those just pure of heart bc theyre desperate Again a coraline other mother situation where they lead cookies in with the promise of fun and happiness, and try to convince them to stay with them willingly, though not exactly telling them the whole truth,

Because its okay if they WANNA be trapped <33

-imagine shadow calls cream out for lying just for fun

Shadow seeing right through creamuni and cream unicorn desperately trying to cover everything up with more lies is soooo!!

Shadow: Y’know cookieland is supposed to be for the pure of heart only but you don’t seem pure of heart yourself, or does that rule not apply to you? :)))

cream unicorn cookie: You can’t hurt him in front of the children you can’t hurt him in front of the children you can’t—

-Also hc that dozer was just in cookieland the entire time he was gone and cream finally let him out and thats why theyre finally back in the spin off games

He gets into those fuck ass scenarios in that puzzle game and each time hes like “I SHOULD HAVE STAYED WITH THE UNICORN I SHOULD HAVE STAYED WITH THE FUCKING UNICORN—“

-“It is unclear how long Cream Unicorn Cookie has been alive, but they are potentially one of the oldest in the game.”

Thought.

Cream unicorn cookie being a sort eldritch creature, more of a concept than a real person, representing the happiness and memories of being a child, its why they are so old, its bc theyre ageless and cant rlly die, additionally maybe they knew most of the cookies from when they were children but when they grew up they couldn’t see them again and forgot about them

They’ve been there since the beginning but no one remembers them because they’re only a memory of childhood and that pure heart you had when you were a child fades as you age

-I don’t remember if we ever see pure vanilla as a kid, but my brain immediately thought about the two meeting, Cream remembers him and is very happy, Pure doesn’t remember them and is very confused and uncomfortable and cream isnt very happy that pure and everyone else don’t remember them

Cream is very insistent that theyve met

Cream: You DO remember me! I know you do! Remember the carousel! You loved it! We were best friends! You have to remember!

Pure: No, I would have remembered that! We never met…!

I think after a while, cream starts to get angry when no one remembers them, they feel like they’re owed SOMETHING, they helped all of them so much and not a single one of them remembers them, it frustrates them

They get a bit desperate on convincing and proving to pure that they’ve met, that they’re friends

Being alone for that long messes with your senses, they probably don’t even realize how long it’s really been

They probably get rlly easily and overly attached to others, unhealthily of course

-[Shadow milk and Cream Unicorn toxic yaoi]

-I imagine cream looks at the kids who’ve grown up with a sort of sadness, they aren’t “pure” anymore, they don’t have that innocence and are jaded by the harshness of the world, they wish they kept them by their side so they wouldn’t have to grow up, they cling to the past and don’t understand that you NEED to grow and move on eventually

And what happens when cream unicorn ‘grows up’ will they cease to exist, because something greater entirely? They don’t know, and that’s what scares them, they’re the embodiment of childhood, if they have to move on from that, what even are they?

And if they’re not around who will be there to help the kids when they come to cookieland, when they need them one day, sure no one has shown up in so long but they might! They can’t grow up, they have to sit there and wait, wait for someone to eventually show up

Cream unicorn is basically a child in a grown up’s body, terrified and unwilling to grow up and move on

-Cream unicorn sees shadow and thinks “is that me? Is that who I am going to be?” And it scares them, is that how the kids see them? Because shadow milk is the result of what happens when you don’t move on

Cream unicorn doesn’t want kids to be afraid of them, is why they let apple cookie and co leave in the first place, they want to be that comfort, that blanket you hold when it’s thundering at night, but the more desperate they become for love and any sort of companionship they realizes that they aren’t the blanket anyone, they are the thunder, they’re the one who is driving everyone way, it’s all them

Imagine the kid their trying to get stay with them screams at them, they look terrified and scream at them like bloody murder desperately just trying to get away from them and it finally hits them a bit, they’re stunned, not even knowing how to react

-this song and mikages arc in general are heavy cream unicore

“Freezing cold in the dark, puppets become human, is in the way of everyone”

“Ah just tell to me when and where is it that I am?”

“Destiny! Formless! Illusive! *Stagnating!* I am an imaginary living body waiting for the end”

“I need more time in this world, I will never be resting, clinging to existence as a hallowed out form”

Stagnating is really the word to describe Cream Unicorn honestly, theyre clinging to something that isn’t there anymore, they aren’t needed anymore, theyve served their purpose but they dont want to rest, they need needs more time, they needs to be there for some imaginary child that might need them one day, they can’t grow up, they can’t leave, not yet

-I think Shadow Milk will make Cream worse, and Pure Vanilla could possibly fix them,

-Apple cookie is the only person cream unicorn really trusts so imagine she sees cream unicorn cookie becoming worse and tries to help them not realizing how much danger she’s putting herself in by doing that

And imagine if Shadow Milk messes with Cream Unicorns memories to make him believe that Apple cookie hates their guts, they couldn’t handle it…At all.

[rooooooossssssse]

so I wrote 6,000ish words of this incredibly dramatic / overwrought rosquez 2025 szn au, but i honestly don’t think i’m ever going to finish or post it on ao3 bc…like a lot of reasons tbh. but! if anyone is interested in the bones of it, i’m posting it here <3

it was going to be called EUDAIMONIA bc im also very annoying

excerpt:

“He’s just figured out something it would seem a lot of them haven’t: it’s easier to just get back on the bike.

It’s much harder when you can’t get up after. When you have to just lie there, in the dirt, and reckon with what’s been done to you.

What you’ve done to yourself.”

**this is set in the upcoming season, in a universe where valentino + marc (who had hooked up a few times pre-sepang) start hooking up again but very healthily refuse to ever talk about it <3

i included notes for like. what my ultimate plan was with certain sections so the different parts kinda make more sense...emphasis on kinda

(warning for brief mention of sexual assault in this also. it’s brought up in the section that starts w “At Austria”, so just skip that if you want)

The thing he’s always found interesting about pain is that it’s not something you ever really get used to.

When he was fifteen, he broke his arm. He doesn’t really remember much about the aftermath, of being swarmed by the medics, loaded onto the ambulance, shuttled over to the closest hospital. He knows that all happened, but the specifics of it are missing from his memory. Cleanly excised, a blur of hazy colors and ambient noise, all details falling by the wayside, as his world instead narrowed down a constant thrum of this really fucking hurts.

But what he does remember very clearly is the split second before that blinding flash, where he’d felt his arm buckle, and in a moment of sheer panic had thought 

No wait —

Like it was something he could stop.

He thinks about sensation often, after every crash. Trying to barter your way out of the inevitable. A rush of adrenaline — a lightning bolt of pure energy driven by desperation.

He doesn’t know how to explain it to the journalists who ask, do you think you just have a higher pain tolerance than everyone else?

He supposes there’s no way for him to know. But he suspects he feels pain the same way most people do. He’s just figured out something it would seem a lot of them haven’t: it’s easier to just get back on the bike.

It’s much harder when you can’t get up after. When you have to just lie there, in the dirt, and reckon with what’s been done to you.

What you’ve done to yourself.

———————

**gp25 found dead in a ditch, my bad :|

“Of course, we were not expecting to come out and be immediately at the front of the pack,” he lies to the press after the race. “We always knew it would be an adjustment to the GP25 going right from the 23. Even Pecco says the 25 was an adjustment from the 24.”

But Pecco beat you, the smiling reporter in the crowd is too polite to say outright. But the fact that she has no follow up for him and directs her next two questions to the man in question on his left says enough.

He can feel that he’s gritting his teeth, doing that thing with his jaw that his mother always clucks her teeth at when she catches him at it, squeezes his cheek like she’s trying to soothe away whatever’s bothering him. It used to bug him, when he was too young to be appreciative of small kindnesses, of people who want nothing more from you than to leech away a bit of your pain. Back when he thought he could handle it all himself.

“Marc will, ah, continue to adjust and to gain speed,” Pecco says in that halting, careful way of his. Right now, Marc wants to put his head through a fucking wall.

It’s not Pecco’s fault, he tries to reason with himself. And he knows that in about three hours he’ll be able to accept that and focus on what he needs to do for the next race, and when he sees Pecco next he’ll shake his hand and actually mean it. He’s always been like that. He hates losing, but he hasn’t made a habit of blaming anyone for it but himself, in the end. Once he gets it out of his system. Not like —

His eyes drift to the exit before he can stop them, and lock immediately onto one of the men standing there, chattering away in spite of the press conference happening in front of him. Like he can’t be bothered to pay attention, even though it was his choice to come watch this.

He’s not looking at him. Thank god, he thinks. But the feeling that rushes through him isn’t relief. It’s more like —

“He is someone who we know learns fast, Marquez,” Pecco is chattering on, but the words are barely registering. 

Does it bother you, he wonders, to have to stand there and listen to Pecco say sweet things about me to the press? To know that he’s going to have to do this again and again and again this year? Especially once I start beating him? 

“Already he is p6 in the sprint and p3 in the race —”

Is that why you’re here now, already at the first race? You don’t have faith that he can win without you?

“Is only the first weekend, so of course he will be competition for the next —”

But he doesn’t hear the rest of whatever bullshit answer Pecco gives. Because at that moment Valentino Rossi looks at him like he can hear exactly what Marc’s thinking.

He remembers standing in Parc Ferme last year in Jerez, just ten feet away from him, glancing over, sure that at the very least he’d get a tight nod. Maybe a handshake. Maybe a dismissive ciaooooo.

But instead Valentino hadn’t even glanced in his direction. Had kept to the middle of the crowds celebrating Pecco and Bezzecchi, sunglasses on and hat pulled low.

Even later, when Marc had passed him on his way back to the motorhomes after press, Valentino had angled his entire body away, pretended to be deeply enraptured by whatever the man on his left was saying, as though even catching a glimpse of Marc in his peripherary would taint him somehow.

But now he looks straight at him. No sunglasses. Eyes wide and alight. Brows raised. Lip curled.

Valentino is smirking at him. Like maybe he thinks he won something.

One race, he tells himself. One sprint. And one race. That’s all he gets, so. Fucking enjoy it now.

It’s an impossiblity, the idea that Pecco won’t win another race (or in fact — though he barely even lets himself even finish this thought — maybe even the majority of them this season) but he needs to let himself believe it. Needs it to sink into his marrow, lock into his bones like a metal plate. If he believes he can win the championship, really, truly deeply believes, he will. He doesn’t know how to explain it, but that’s how it’s always been for him. Ever since he was seventeen years old and stupid and so fucking hungry for it.

He tears his eyes away from Valentino’s. Instead locks his gaze onto Pecco’s with an intensity he knows other people find unsettling. Sometimes he does it without realizing. But sometimes he does it when he really, really means it.

He can tell Pecco notices his stare by the way he sits up a tiny bit straighter. The way he stumbles over whatever answer he was trying to give.

Marc’s jaw aches. He doesn’t bother trying to unclench it.

———————

Argentina is another misery. Jorge wins the sprint, celebrating on the podium like it’s his second world championship, and not a lucky fluke. Pecco wins the Sunday race with a seven second gap on the field.

Marc comes P3 in both. Dances on the podium again like it’s the best thing in the world. Smiles for the cameras. Answers all the questions asked of him.

The rest of the week he feels like he wants to light something on fire.

He is being greedy and he knows it. He is being greedy but he wants it.

You need to give yourself time to adjust, everyone has told him. Gigi, his brother, his father, Gemma, even Pecco himself. It would take anyone at least a few races to get a feel for a new bike.

But he’s not anyone. That’s the whole point.

The GP25 is a tough ride, tougher than he was expecting. It’s not like the Honda was at the end, prone to slipping and sliding and bucking without any clear reason, so he’ll take it. But it’s big and unwieldy, yet sensitive to the slightest adjustments. He has to throw his whole body into a corner, then balance very precariously so it doesn’t fold. It’s an interesting dance, one that were he younger and a bit less ragged, he probably would have enjoyed learning.

Part of him wants to do something ridiculous like text Casey Stoner for advice. The current Ducati is miles and miles away from anything Stoner ever road or helped develop, but maybe just hearing someone else’s perspective on it could unlock something. Could help him figure out what he’s missing.

Though he imagines a response from Stoner (on the already slim off chance he even gets a response) could run anywhere from a succinct good luck :) to a response so detailed and specific it’s sort of useless, depending on the day.

COTA is up next. He refuses to let himself lose there.

What he needs is a plan. Pecco has been unshakeable out in front, but there are things he can do to rattle him.

The funniest and most deeply annoying thing about Pecco is that he wants everyone else to see him as a sportsman. He’s so concerned with keeping up this front that he’s fair and nice and gracious.

Marc has never cared if people see him as fair or cunning or evil or a bastard. 

As long as they see him as a winner.

When you’re fifteen and too small to ride your bike without extra weight attached, you know you’re going to have to bring something extra to the fight. That you’re going to have to ride meaner and tougher and more on the limit as men twice your size and a decade older than you, just so they don’t think they can go elbowing you off the track.

A different race, a different rider getting elbowed off track pops unbidden into his mind, though he immediately tries to shake it off.

He remembers being a kid and watching Valentino turn to flip off Biaggi after finally passing him and laughing, delighted, even as his dad shook his head and Alex asked what does that mean?

**i had this whole thing planned where marc was going to start watching valentino’s Greatest Hits and randomly text him screenshots because he thinks valentino still has his number blocked. but!! valentino has actually recently unblocked him! but marc is committed to the bit now & keeps sending pictures of like laguna 08 or Jerez 05 with zero context. and then when marc gets his first win of the season, valentino shows up at his motorhome being like “what kind of fucking mindgame is this?!” and instead of talking about it, they just fuck instead <3

————————

At Austria, Valentino doesn’t leave immediately after they fuck. It’s not technically a new thing for them, but it’s new now, and Marc can’t quite work out what it means.

Probably nothing. Probably just that they’re both a little tired, and it’s warmer in Marc’s bed than it is outside in the rainy night. But they’ve been laying there for at least ten minutes now, and he’s starting to feel a bit…restless? Not quite. But —

Valentino is laying on his side, facing him, but not looking at him. Looking at his phone as he scrolls idly through it. The screen is turned away, so Marc can’t see what he’s doing, and this too makes him feel…restless isn’t the word for it, but the only other one that comes to mind is itchy and that also isn’t what he’s looking for. Too big for his skin, maybe. What’s the word for when you —

“What are you doing?” He asks, his voice coming out too-loud and sharper than he means it to.

Valentino glances at him for a second, briefly startled. But then immediately annoyed, like Marc has broken some previous agreement they’d made by saying anything at all. His eyes flick back down to his phone.

“Instagram.”

Marc feels his face contort into a look of disbelief before he can stop it. Valentino glances at him again, and scoffs. Turns his phone around so Marc can see — he really is just scrolling through his feed.

“You do your own?” Marc asks, genuinely a little surprised by that. His access to his instagram is fairly limited. He has his social media manager change his password every month in an attempt to keep himself off it. Lately, he’s developed the bad habit of caving nearly every month without fail, and demanding she tell him what it is. But in years past it was a good method of keeping him offline. Healthily distant from everyone’s opinions of him.

“Yes,” Valentino says flatly, in a way that doesn’t exactly invite any follow-up questions. Then he glances down at Marc’s hand.

He’s been tapping at the mattress without even realizing it, his fingers fluttering like he’s playing piano or something. He immediately stops. Feels his face go a bit red.

Valentino’s lips are starting to curve up in a smirk, like he’s figured something out, like he thinks maybe he’s winning somehow. But Marc isn’t going to let that happen. So he blurts:

“Who was the first man you let fuck you?”

Now Valentino looks up at him immediately, mouth falling open a bit like the question’s caught him genuinely off guard.

Good.

He’s always known without being told that Valentino has been fucked before. Even if it’s not because he’s ever been the one to do it.

Back then, it wouldn’t have occurred to Marc to suggest otherwise, or even ask if Valentino had wanted to go about it differently. And so far, this little arrangement is new and sporadic enough that they’ve just fallen into old patterns. But maybe he doesn’t want to fall into old patterns. Maybe he wants to shake Valentino up a bit. Remind him that things have changed.

“Why do you ask me?” Valentino asks, the look on his face suddenly very hard to read.

“Is fair,” he shrugs. “You know the answer for me.”

“I don’t know the answer for you,” Valentino frowns at him, and Marc feels his eyes bug out of his head.

“I don’t…” Valentino repeats, but now Marc can see the gears turning, can see the shocked look already taking form on Valentino’s face as he works it out, and he can’t help himself — he bursts out laughing.

“That was your first time?” Valentino sounds so serious and urgent about it that it just makes Marc laugh harder. “When we — you hadn’t —?”

“No!” Marc says. “You could not tell?”

Valentino shrugs broadly, and Marc cackles.

“Wow. I must’ve been good then, huh,” he smirks. It’s funny — back then, it would have been humiliating for Valentino to know it, but now it seems stupid to have ever cared.

Valentino still looks slightly aghast. “But — was it difficult?” The question seems to burst from his mouth before he can stop it.

Marc pauses, thrown by that word. Difficult? Valentino looks away very suddenly, like maybe he thinks he’s given something up. Marc considers his answer. Difficult. It had been…well, it had been a bit awkward. Had definitely hurt a bit, is the truth of it, but — in all honesty, that had been part of why he’d enjoyed it so much.

He used to think that maybe part of him liked being in pain, but that was before he became well and thoroughly acquainted with it. Spent nights awake with it, staring at the ceiling and gritting his teeth, knowing there was no end to this in sight but trying desperately to convince himself otherwise.

When your whole world starts to revolve around one singular thing, it becomes hard not to grow resentful of it to the same degree you may have once revered it.

Now, he thinks that maybe it was never the pain itself that he enjoyed. But more the thrill that comes from anticipating it. A bit like riding in the wet. Knowing that at any moment the bike could slide out from under you. Knowing that when it happens, you’re not going to see it coming.

“No,” he says carefully, considering his answer. “You were…it was nice.”

Valentino clearly doesn’t quite believe him, but doesn’t press it.

“So come on. Who was yours?” He presses.

“What makes you so sure I’ve let anyone fuck me?” Valentino asks, but Marc just looks at him until he shrugs.

“Don’t remember,” he says.

“What do you mean?” Marc asks, confused.

“I mean I don’t remember,” he says. “Was very drunk. And very high. And then very sore.”

He looks back at Marc, smirking, like he thinks Marc will laugh with him about this. But Marc feels immediately — restless, too big for his skin again.

“What do you mean?” He repeats, a bit stupidly. “You were…at a party?”

“Out at a club. Went home with him, I think. Woke up there next morning. Caught a cab back to mine,” he shrugs again. “Probably good thing I don’t remember much.”

Now he rolls to lay on his back, staring up at the ceiling. Massaging his right upper arm idly, in the way Marc remembers him doing years and years ago. It means he’s too distracted to keep himself from doing it.

Marc feels — he doesn’t know, honestly. He isn’t sure what kind of answer he was expecting, but it definitely wasn’t this.

“How old were you?” He asks, more because the silence immediately gets to him than because he actually wants to know.

“Seventeen,” Valentino says, and smiles up at the ceiling. The lights above reflect off his teeth. Marc feels suddenly very cold. He stretches his hands out, shakes them to try and get some warmth back in them.

Valentino abruptly pushes himself off the bed. Apparently not interested in going back to instagram. Or spending any more time with him.

He pulls on his shirt facing away from Marc. So Marc can’t see how his face looks when he says:

“So I guess that’s one record you won’t be taking from me.”

———————

“Have you told Bezzecchi something?” He asks as Valentino tries to take off his shirt.

“Bezzecchi?” Valentino smiles in a pointed way as he repeats the surname, like there’s some private joke there that Marc can’t quite figure out. Other than the fact that Italian surnames are entirely too long and stupid. “No. I haven’t told anyone anything. Would be a bit difficult of a conversation, no?”

He goes back to pulling at Marc’s shirt, but Marc grabs his hands. Makes him stop for a second so he can try and figure out if he’s being lied to.

“He was very strange with me in Jerez,” he says.

“Strange? How you mean, strange?”

“Strange like…” he searches for the words to describe it. Can’t land on anything better than: “nice.”

“Oh,” Valentino says. “That is just because he likes you.”

Valentino’s lips go to his neck, and his hand sneaks back to palm Marc’s ass, but —

“Bezzecchi does not like me,” he interrupts, determined to get to the bottom of this.

**bezz DOES like him!!!! also sorry for the shot @ italian surnames, but as the possessor of a very long and dumb Italian surname myself I thought it was fair game

———————

**ok so here i had this whole idea that pecco and marc kept getting into these terrible on-track spats & taking each other out & ducati was getting pissedddd so they decided to make them both see a therapist (they should genuinely do this those boys are insane)

The sports psychologist that Ducati is making him see is very concerned by the fact that he isn’t great at putting words to how he’s feeling. She makes many, many notes about it in her little notebook while he sits and stares at her.

“But how does it actually feel — in your body?” She asks in her limited Spanish, though he supposes he’s grateful to her for trying, even if he’s utterly fucking annoyed by everything else about her.

“I don’t know,” he says, and gives her the kind of smile that usually makes people fondly agree with whatever the hell he wants. He’s noticed it works less now than it did when he was younger.

“Try!” She urges. “Just describe the different sensations you notice — how is your breathing? Your heartbeat? The feeling in your hands?”

He fights not to roll his eyes. “My breathing is fine. My hearbeat is normal. My hands are —”

Well. Actually, his right hand is a bit stiff. It tenses up more easily than the left, after the break and following surgery a few year’s prior. He can’t figure out what causes it. He explains all of this to the psychologist, who scribbles more things in her notebook as he goes.

“Maybe you should pay attention to when it feels tight,” she says. “Stored tension can sometimes be an indicator of other emotions we’re trying to avoid processing.”

He forces himself to nod, like it isn’t one of the dumbest things he’s ever heard.

It bothers him how angry he gets these days.

———————

**this luca section was WAYYYY longer initially, but i decided i hated a lot of it and deleted it. sorry to luca’s dad, im sure you’re actually a very nice person. but this is something my friends psychologist dad used to actually do to her so I stole it. (fuck that guy, definitely was not a nice person.) it was meant to be part of a much longer conversation where Marc is kind of annoyed about having to do two different christmases w his mom and dad respectively, and long-time-child-of-divorce (or never even married?) luca tries to bond. luca also lowkey knows something is up with vale and marc, but marc doesn’t pick up on it lol

“My father used to have me choose which one I spent Christmas with when I was young,” Marini says, his voice so light that it takes Marc a few seconds to work out the mildly horrifying implications of what he’s saying. His face must give away exactly how he feels, because Marini hurries to add: “He is a psychologist, so I think he was testing me in some way.” 

He shrugs as he says it, and in that moment he looks and sounds so very like Valentino when he tries to be nonchalant that it makes Marc want to recoil a bit.

Can you and your older brother just stop telling me these terrible stories about yourselves, he wants to say. But of course, he can’t. So he settles for “mmm.” Like that explains absolutely anything.

It does explain a fair bit about Marini though, now that he considers it. A psychologist for a father. How strange, how deeply unlike motorcycle racing. Marc can’t imagine it himself — his family has always been so thoroughly enmeshed with this world that the two things are practically synonymous in his mind. He wonders what it would have been like to know another kind of world, any other kind of world, existed. If that would have affected his choices at all.

…probably not. No. But he wonders if maybe it would have affected the choices of, say, Alex.

“My brother, ehh. He is not like me,” he remembers Valentino telling him once, a long, long time ago. He’d said it matter-of-factly, but winced a bit as the words left his mouth. Like it was painful to put them out there, in the open. 

“He is…” but Valentino hadn’t quite been able to find the words he was looking for. So the sentence had just hung there between them.

“I know what you mean,” Marc had said back. “My brother is not like me either.”

He had felt so guilty after saying that he hadn’t been able to look Alex in the eye for weeks.

But at the time, he’d also felt a bit thrilled in saying it. Our brothers are not like us. Only we are like us.

Watching Marini sitting in front of him, fidgeting as he clearly tries to think of something neutral to say to fill the silence, he wonders if that’s necessarilly a good thing.

“This is your daughter’s second Christmas?” He asks, taking pity.

“Yes!” Marini’s whole face lights up. “We got her, uh, fake snow? For the living room. But she kept trying to eat it, so I had to spend all of Tuesday getting rid of it.”

———————

**ok then of course they were going to get into a big fight <3 comes after a marc crash that i also deleted because i am sooooo baddddd at writing the technical aspects of motorcycle racing bc i flat out do not understand a lot of it :) im dumb!!! but could his fear of something bad happening to marc in that crash have contributed to how angry valentino gets? hmmm…who’s to say….

“You did race me harder,” Valentino says, eyes hard. “You can lie to yourself and your team and your family and your fans all you want, but you know it and I know it — you did —”

“So fucking WHAT,” he finally snaps. “So what if I did? It’s not against the rules for someone to race you! You are not actually God!”

“You are not a God!” Valentino yells, and digs a hand into Marc’s bruised ribs. The pain is searing and instant, racheting up from the dull ache to a sudden burn, so vicious it makes his eyes water. He swings his left hand up on instinct, the flat of his palm driving into Valentino’s chest, shoving him back hard so he hits the wall with a loud thump.

Valentino breathes out through his nose, seething. Eyes wide and wild.

People deal with pain in different ways, Marc has learned. 

“You are not a God,” Valentino repeats. Vicious. “I was hoping you had learned that by now.”

———————

**then they have bad makeup sex a few races later after marc pulls a manuever that makes pecco crash out and it instead turns into another fight. as you do, yk <3

They fuck hard and fast in a way that’s not particularly enjoyable for either of them. It’s rote, mechanical. Verging on painful. But Marc isn’t going to be the one to give in first. 

He’s facing away from Valentino, in his lap, both positioned at the edge of the bed, so that they won’t have to look each other in the face. He remembers fucking like this before, Valentino’s arms wrapped tightly around his chest and waist while he kissed the side of Marc’s neck, buried his face in his hair, pulled him so close that it felt like he wasn’t actually trying to fuck him at all, like maybe he was trying to go throughhim somehow. Or meld them into one. 

Now, Valentino’s hands stay fixed at his hips. More just because there’s nowhere else to put them than to guide him. He lets Marc set a punishing pace. 

There’s something old, long-dormant, reawakened inside him. A familiar kind of ache that he hasn’t felt in — well. Probably ten years.

If he looks at Valentino now, he’s not sure what he’ll say to him. 

Valentino doesn’t finish, but he gives in first. Knocks his forehead against the nape of Marc’s neck and sighs harshly. Tightens his hands at Marc’s hips, stopping him.

“I can’t…” he murmurs, sounding frustrated as he maneuvers Marc off of him, pulls out all the way. And for a second Marc almost asks ‘you can’t what?’ Almost insists on making him say it aloud.

But the fleeting urge towards cruelty ebbs. He stands up. He’s not sure what he was expecting to get here.

His clothes are at the foot of the bed still. He looks down at them, contemplates just putting them back on and leaving without saying anything.

“He’s cleared to race next weekend,” Valentino speaks up from the bed. “But I guess. You already know that. Don’t you?”

Marc stays looking at the floor. He stoops over to snatch his clothes up. He doesn’t want to have this conversation while they’re both undressed.

“I didn’t know that,” he says, shrugging on his shirt. “How would I have known already about that?”

“Why else would you be here,” Valentino says, and now finally Marc looks over at him. Valentino is still naked, but has pulled the sheet around him already.

“I’m here because I wanted to see you,” Marc says. Because he doesn’t want to lie to Valentino right now, and that’s the only thing he knows for sure is true.

**there was another section in here i took out bc i didn’t like it, but let’s skip to the blow up:

“You ARE difficult,” Valentino snaps. “You make everything more difficult for me.”

Marc’s eyes widen. He clenches his jaw shut.

There was a moment in Jerez, five years ago, after he’d hit the ground, where for one blissful second — he didn’t feel anything in his body. It was like he was floating, almost. Like the pain he knew he should be feeling was being held at bay somehow, like his body had been hollowed out.

He’s never felt like that since. Even on the strongest painkillers money can buy, there’s always an awareness he has of his body now, of the myriad ways it both works as it’s meant to and doesn’t, that was never really there before. When the pain was really bad those first few years, sometimes he would dream of that moment before the crash. It always made him feel even more miserable once he finally woke up.

Hearing Valentino say that now, “you are difficult”. It makes everything inside him go quiet in a way that seems similar.

Not quiet in a way that’s peaceful. Quiet in a way that you know something bad is going to follow it.

He closed his eyes, just so he won’t have to look at Valentino for a moment. His face so coldly furious. It’s the best and worst thing about him, a reporter told him once — he’s so expressive, you can always tell what he’s thinking.

Marc doesn’t think that’s true at all. He’s never once been able to tell what Valentino’s thinking.

He opens his eyes again. Valentino’s still looking at him, jaw set. Eyes narrowed. And for the first time in ten years Marc decides to not think about what he wants to say to him, and instead just lets himself say the first thing that bubbles up. 

“Why didn’t you just talk to me about it first?” He asks. Valentino’s eyebrows shoot up, but he’s not sure that it’s due to confusion. Maybe he’s just surprised to finally be asked. “You could have — back then. I would have told you —“

He doesn’t know quite how to finish that sentence. What would he have told Valentino, back then? If Valentino had come up to him and said “is this true? Are you racing me differently?”

Because he’s not so sure he even knows the answer himself.

But Valentino seems to think he does. 

“Would have told me what? More lies? Oh the front tire was overheating, what was I supposed to do?” Valentino says, his voice pitched childishly high and mocking.

“I was not lying!” He snaps. Shouts, really. His voice loud in this too-large hotel room. “I was not playing with you and I wasn’t — why would I have wanted Lorenzo to win?”

They’ve never talked about it as frankly as this. Always dancing around it in public, ignoring it in private. But he’s rehearsed this argument enough times in his head that now that he’s started, he doesn’t think he’ll be able to stop.

“I didn’t collect Lorenzo’s bikes. I didn’t wake up early before school to watch Lorenzo beat Max Biaggi. I didn’t beg a reporter to introduce me to Jorge Fucking Lorenzo so I could take a picture and give him —“

“No. Okay, maybe this is true,” now Valentino is the one shouting over him. “Maybe this is true that you were a fan, but so what? What fucking good is that? Another fucking fan. That’s great, that’s perfect. You know who else was my fan once? Jorge Lorenzo. So I ask again: what fucking good is that?”

He thinks maybe he’s never seen Valentino this genuinely angry. It bleeds off of him, raw and pulsing. Marc feels hot. His jaw is clenched again. He forces himself to let it go. 

“I thought I was more than that, I thought — we were…”

What? Rivals? Enemies? Friends? Coworkers who really shouldn’t have started fucking?

“I thought so too,” Valentino says. He’s not shouting anymore. Marc kind of wishes he still was. Instead, Valentino is silent for a moment, really thinking about whatever he wants to say next. “I thought you could know me beyond that.”

“Beyond what?” he asks, suddenly confused.

“Beyond…” but Valentino looks like he doesn’t quite know what he’s trying to say either. “It felt like you sometimes were trying to prove to me that you were not still. My fan.”

“I—,” Marc frowns. “I was twenty-one when we started — I wanted you to take me seriously.”

“But that’s not how you treat someone regular,” Valentino says. “You don’t go out of your way to show them that it doesn’t matter to you if they get hurt.”

“You think it didn’t matter to me…if you were hurt?” Marc asks, now entirely lost. “You really think I was trying to crash you out? Because if you remember, you are not the one who ended up crashing out when we fought that season. More than once.”

“That’s not what I mean,” Valentino says. His voice dripping with annoyance. The look in his eyes suddenly very far away — a look that Marc recognizes as a sign that Valentino has already started to end the conversation in his head.

A flash of desperation rolls through him. He doesn’t want to stop discussing this, yet. He feels like he’s on the verge of �� of settling something. Of finally getting some sort of answer to all of this. He’s clenching his jaw again. He takes a deep breath to make it relax as much as he can.

“You know what’s funny?” He asks, without knowing fully how he’s going to follow it up.

Valentino stares at him, but his eyes have gone cold. Remote. Like he’s not really looking at Marc anymore.

Like he’s looking at him the same way he has these past ten years. 

“I think I would have done whatever you asked,” he says, and almost laughs. He has a problem with that — laughing when he really shouldn’t. A nervous thing, a holdover from adolesence, when suddenly there was always a camera in his face and he didn’t know entirely how to address it yet.

But it’s actually funny this time because deep down, he really wants it to be true. He really thinks that if Valentino had come to him back then and asked him to stop, there would have been at least a slight chance he would have just said okay. 

“But you didn’t,” Valentino says. And suddenly he doesn’t sound angry or bitter or cruel about it. He just sounds very tired. “You didn’t.”

He thinks it might be the first truly honest thing Valentino’s said to him all night.

“You can go now, Marc” Valentino says, dismissing him entirely.

———————

**ducati makes marc and pecco do a joint therapy session after the pecco crash…love this alternate universe i’ve created where ducati cares about their rider’s mental wellbeing

Pecco nods at him. Just once. Perfunctory acknowledgement. Marc remembers the launch at the start of the season at Madonna, when they’d drank mulled wine together with Gemma and Domizia, showed each other videos of their dogs, chatted idly about testing and vacations and spending the holidays with their families in between the endless slog of PR events Ducati had signed the two of them up for.

“Have you two talked since the crash?” Sara asks immediately, because she enjoys making people uncomfortable for a living.

Pecco shakes his head quickly. Sara glances at Marc.

“No,” Marc says. “But — I did try to talk to you, at medical after. Before they took you to the hospital.”

Pecco turns to look at him, plainly surprised at that.

“Valentino told me to go,” he says. Shrugs.

“And what did you want to say to Pecco, when you went to find him at the medical center?” Sara asks.

“Just — to see if he was okay, of course,” Marg shrugs.

“Why?” Sara asks.

“Because — was a big crash. I wanted to check.”

—————————

**teammate bonding after forced therapy <3

“She hates me,” Pecco says so seriously that Marc has to laugh.

“What, you? Nooo,” he says. “I am sure she loves you. I bet that you do all of her little homework assignments.”

“I do. But she thinks something is seriously wrong with me,” Pecco says. “She reccommended I speak to another psychologist as well.”

Marc hesitates, considers admitting that Sara had asked him to do the exact same thing. 

“She thinks I am too hard on myself, mentally, but…I don’t know how to…do this…without being that way,” Pecco says.

—————————

**and here valentino and marc make up for reaaaaal

“Things that happened to me never felt like they were actually happening to me,” Valentino says, then frowns. “I don’t know how to say it.”

But Marc thinks he gets it. Thinks of trying to explain to Sara about not noticing about his hand getting stiff.

“Just seems like not a great first time,” he says finally. And looks Vale in the eye, so he knows there’s no game or deeper meaning there. That really is all he means by it.

Vale rubs at his upper right arm, distracted by something. Marc usually doesn’t comment on it, but figures fair’s fair:

“Does your shoulder bother you?”

Funny, to be the one who gets to ask that question for once instead of the one it’s being asked of. Valentino opens his mouth to answer, but then laughs instead. Immediately understanding exactly why and how that’s such a funny question for Marc to ask. Of him in particular.

Marc feels a surge of fondness rush through him, so sudden and violent he feels —

His throat is tight. His vision blurs.

“Don’t look like that,” Valentino says softly.

Marc isn’t sure what he looks like. But he doesn’t ask.

—————————

In front of him, the lights are red. The roar of the crowd disappears, melding with the roar of his bike. He takes in a slow, deep breath. Lets himself feel every inch of his body, from the tension in his jaw to the curling of his toes.

The lights go out. The wind whips past him. He feels alive.

“Eudaimonia (/juːdɪˈmoʊniə/; Ancient Greek: εὐδαιμονία [eu̯dai̯moníaː]) is a Greek word literally translating to the state or condition of good spirit, and which is commonly translated as happiness.

For Aristotle, eudaimonia is the highest human good, the only human good that is desirable for its own sake (as an end in itself) rather than for the sake of something else (as a means to some other end).”

**there was supposed to be this running undercurrent of marc not really being able to connect how he feels physically with his current emotional state…who among us, amiright? but when he makes up with valentino, he was going to finally make a breakthrough on this, idk. 

also he was def going to win the championship!!! it was gonna be close between him and bags and come down to this final round, but like…cmon

[ganondoodle]

not meant as a direct call out to anyone but sicne it happened a few times in a row now

i dont ... like ... my work being tagged as 'zelink', i do not draw this ship, i have no problem with others shipping it but i personally cannot stand it (i love them as a brotp) and just because i put them both in a drawing when im doing some totk rewritten concepts it doesnt mean its meant as the ship :/

[aka-indulgence]

Why do they do this

[bunnyboy-juice]

i may not be into fauxcest but i am absolutely a friend of the family

[godsfavoritescientist]

you ever think about how bill is who the pines could have been if they didn't have any kind of support from anyone in their lives

[fischiee]

someone tell me why every yorkalina fic explains away the lighter thing as york being a smoker and carolina tries to convince him to stop by taking/being given his lighter...

you're really going to tell me the girl thats hardened by war at 24, has the world's most damaging relationship with her father, and has an addictive obsessive personality ISN'T a smoker like come on...

[sukibenders]

The way people are becoming anti-children nowadays is really sad. And I'm not talking about people not wanting to have kids of their own, that's fine and something that shouldn't be shamed nor up to someone else to debate. No, I'm talking about the people who adamantly hate these little humans for simply existing, wanting to ban them from spaces due to them having emotional reactions that they are still learning to understand (you know, the kind of lessons that everyone had to learn and figure out at one point). It's gotten to the point where I've even seen these types of people genuinely support children being harmed and deny their hurt under the consensus of "Well then maybe they shouldn't be there," in your average public space. Like, imagine thinking hating on children, people who need assistance and guidance, is something to be proud of.

[skys-archive]

I can never take the one that got away (Katy Perry) seriously ever again. Every time I hear it or see an edit of it all I can think of is spending four hours in my room when I was like 13 reading the in another life bokuaka hospital au while it was raining and listening to the music the author provided (? I read it republished on wattpad for some reason so I don't know if the actual author provided it) on my shitty little tablet that I wasn't technically supposed to have real internet access on but I had gotten into my mom's account because she had made the password 1234.

That fanfic fundamentally changed my brain chemistry I don't think i can ever go back

[girlivealwaysbean]

i think growing up is just life repeatedly sucker punching you and saying bitch you thought things were gonna better lmao no you're so naive and stupid for having hope in 20 years the world will be flaming bag of garbage and no matter how hard you work you'll get eliminated at some point

[phagodyke]

the masculine urge to take a saucepan off thr draining board and bash myself repeatedly over the head with it until I pass out and no longer have to experience feeling Bad 😍

[loveguts]

i’m not a transandrophobia truther in the slightest don’t get me wrong, but i think some people on here really need to realize and comprehend the fact that cis women, way WAY more often than not, hold extremely significant social and political power over trans men the vast majority of the time in our day to day lives

[mephoj]

water post bc i do not want the op to see this but good lort. where am i

[orcelito]

Yet again hindered by the "this reply is hidden because you have the user blocked" message. It has me Almost wondering whether I'd be better off not blocking so many people. So that I can freely be a nosy bitch.

Almost, but not quite. My block list is for my sanity, after all.

[ame-to-ame]

.

[dhmis-autism]

i feel like the original series was red guy centered, the first season was for yellow guy, and i am BEGGING AND PRAYING that season 2 will be more about duck!! i will probably cry if anything happens to him though lol 💀 everytime writers break a comic relief character i just OUGSHGS.. it gets me.

h well I don't think you're wrong about that! Webseries being Red Guys time to shine, S1 of the TV show being for Yellow (esp the last two episodes I think? Even thought outside of that, he does get a lot of focus/he IS the one who talks to the audience the most directly). From what I remember hearing, the pilot was pretty Duck-centered.

But I think even if he GETS his big moment in the sun, so to speak, it's NOT going to be as emotional as the other twos. On top of him just not being a very um… let's say sentimental character, he's just not the make-you-cry type! It's just not him imo!

IDK, I operate under the opinion that… in his weird little head, the most important thing that he values over everything is keeping the three of them together. Both because he thinks of them as a weird little family AND because he really doesn't have anyone else outside of the trio. We also know from the interview, and you could maybe argue from the Family episode ( Who do you love?/Anyone who loves me back., I asked every member of my family who they loved the most, and they all said me ) that being loved is something that he actually values QUITE a bit! More than you would assume on first glance! He's weirdly upfront about it haha!

In that way, I imagine that if they were to TRY to pull something to put him in the spotlight in the way you're imagining (i.e. something emotional and focusing on his issues like they did with Yellow & Red) it would either focus on his desire to be loved OR his dedication to keeping the three of them together. But I would argue they both already did that in the Family episode AND put him through the worst case-scenario in regards to those more emotional aspects of his character ( here I think the worst case scenario to him is the other two rejecting him, harshly, unambiguously and to his face, multiple times and the three of them separating ). AND THE THING IS… THAT ALREADY HAPPENED! THAT DIDN'T BREAK HIM!

He had his little pout over it in his dress and was like FINE! I DON'T NEED THEM ANYWAYS! So, I really don't think that big "character-breaking" moment is coming. If the Family ep didn't get him I honest to God don't think there's anything else the house could throw at him that could get under his skin.