#leaving marc to have god's weirdest espresso with marco bezzecchi i guess

[astronicht]

52 for rosquez please <33

-daisy (@lastlatebraker)

hello!! i love this one lmao: 52. gripping thigh (from this prompt meme)

the swift answer is lol this was vale at home gripping his own thigh angrily while pecco gripped marc's thigh to get the marc marquez taxi service recently. Long answer, vaguely post-reunion:

Marc wakes up softly in the sliding dark, and with a seat-belt biting gently into his neck. For a moment he is too young to be real; a memory rather than a person, expecting Alex small and napping across the backseat of an ancient red Opel Kadett. Expecting, too, daylight, or at least -- as he ages swiftly in his own mind, his life curling back around him -- the bright halogens of an airport arrivals lane. Today, Marc sleeps in cars, but not restfully; he catnaps being ferried from one place to another, maybe. He doesn’t doze off because there is nothing else to do; that’s for planes, now.

Sleeping in this car feels transgressive, and he doesn't recall why until Valentino's hand shifts on Marc's thigh.

He ignores Valentino for now and rolls his head towards the window. The glass is cold; it's December in Italy. Marc wore shorts after he sloughed off his leathers to make Valentino roll his eyes and then watch, and watch, and watch. Sure it's December, but it's nine degrees; he won’t freeze.

There is no sky out the window. Just a wide black gulf and the hum of tyres on the road and the watery whisper of the radio. It’s not a digital radio, so Valentino has managed to set it to slightly between stations. The music is flickering between something Marc doesn’t recognize and a jingle for the neighboring station. He wasn’t even sure this was actually Valentino’s own car until he saw the mess in the backseat. Maybe it could still be someone’s from the ranch, on a long-term, informal loan. People like to give Valentino things.

The wide black gulf out the window isn’t just dark; that’s the sea, Marc realizes. They’ve driven to the coast from Tavullia, which is not so easy to do where Marc is from, but is possible here. He works his mouth. It doesn’t feel like he has to speak. Valentino’s hand shifts just a little on Marc’s thigh; he’s noticed Marc moving, and is holding himself tense. No, alert. Waiting for Marc to do something, or go back to sleep.

It’s very late. Valentino had said, an hour or two ago when it was already late, Let’s go for a drive. Marc had jokingly grabbed a throw pillow off one of the sofas at the ranch and said sure, but he was going to sleep in that car. Someone brave — one of Valentino’s young ranch guys, eating leftovers in the kitchen — had laughed.

Valentino, for his part, had looked delighted, or maybe relieved. He had shuffled Marc quickly into this car, and put his hand on Marc’s thigh, where the shorts were riding up and Marc was still damp from showering off his block of track time. He kept having to remove it to gear shift. Now, Marc saw, Valentino had solved this problem by calmly coasting through roundabouts in fifth.

Out the window, in the wide black, there were a few small lights, far out.

“What’s that, out there?” Marc asked. “An island, or…?” Valentino’s hand twitched again. His thumb stroked Marc once, so high on the thigh it was inexcusable, really. Marc shivered. Felt himself starting to sink into it.

“Ah, no, that’s a cruise ship,” Valentino said.

Marc nodded. “Oh,” he said. His breath fogged on the window.

“You can go back to sleep,” Valentino said.