it’s gonna be so beautiful when ducati tries to get into an omega auction bidding war with honda over who gets marc as a brand ambassador post-retirement and then daddy deep pockets honda pulls out a blank check
Santa is on strike due to global warming. All presents this year will be delivered by Sasha the Christmas Tiger. Milk and cookies may not be sufficient.
its so awesome that you can straight up write fanfiction in your head to help yourself fall asleep and it doesnt even have to be good or something anyone would ever want to read. even yourself
There are approximately 243 kilometres between Fuji Speedway and the Twin Ring Motegi.
Four, five hours, Valentino’s phone tells him, perhaps five and a half with traffic. Shorter than the race that he has tomorrow. The chequered flag will wave at five o’clock, two hours and change after Marc has been—potentially, possibly, and yet inevitably—crowned champion. Nine times and counting.
Last year, Vale drove himself to a podium, here in the shadow of the mountain. That is what he fights for now, and Marc, meanwhile, is something brilliant and beautiful—relentless, too, because he is Marc, in a way that sometimes unnerves people. Valentino had allowed it to frighten him for too long. He had forgotten—he had forgotten.
He will be tired, sore, dehydrated, on Sunday night. It will take him five hours, on top of two hours, maybe more, that he has raced through.
He cannot see the top of Mount Fuji through the clouds.
It will not be an easy race, but nor was last year, twelfth to third, the car clouding from the inside by the time his stint was done. He thinks it had rained; it often does here.
The jetlag has always been bad for him in Japan, even when they shifted the race towards the end of the season; he remembers most of those weekends as if through a haze. A long time ago, some of them, he supposes.
He will be tired. The race will be long. But he could—
He could. And if he did—
If he did, it would be a long drive, in a rented car that he really needs to return to the airport in Tokyo. Instead, he would drive past—he might skirt the edges of the city, avoid the worst of the traffic, simmering in his own disappointment and something else he will not want to put a name to. They close the road into the circuit sometimes, send everyone around, add a few minutes to the journey. There would be questions, sideways glances, but the circuit would be quiet, the weekend over, and it would be dark. The paddock would be packing down, ready to haul the circus to Mandalika in a matter of days. His team would have a pass for him; they always do.
He would not know his way: new teams; a new layout, new colours. Familiar landmarks gone or changed. The sound, though, he could follow the sound of the one team that would not be ready to leave yet. Warm light to drift towards, golden and oozing champagne like ichor through flesh-red structures, gods and mortals in one. Undistilled delight, so potent it would singe his nose, but he would go anyway.
He would slip his way through the crowd—they would let him. He has grown used to the manner in which this sport parts for him, even still, even this team. He would find himself in the centre of it, always, always. The music would be loud, but the other man would know—he would know. They may pretend, stare ahead, stare at the ground, but they always know. He will be in pieces, shredded by the weight of his own expectations, buoyant on relief most of all, but he would turn, and Vale—Vale might say his name.
“Valentino?” It sounds like Kelvin; he is late for the debrief, perhaps, a post-mortem of a qualifying he had no part in. Back to the present: a hard landing.
When he glances up from his phone, its screen long faded to darkness, the cloud has cleared; he can see the summit. The snow has not yet fallen.
"hunger" by florence and the machine | Graziano Rossi: “Per me Valentino è un sole che illumina e scalda” | Florence and the Machine Preview New LP With Soulful ‘Hunger’
germansingergirl
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
ellievsbear
gummygunk
origamiaround
