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The last time Monaco had felt liminal to Mark, his fate going forward at single-seaters was touch-and-go. The stitch of the Cavallino on his chest was coming undone from the emergence of a legacy at the academy. Sauber had been peering but only just. He had flayed himself ingratiating to sponsors and wondered how the blood never stained through his Prema kit. His F2 championship campaign was alive, yes, but around that time it was all but mathematical mercy.
Then came Monaco. On Saturday, a red flag curtailed his lap and constrained him to P5. On Sunday, he had won by a tenth.
It had taken no time at all for Mark to be habituated in Monaco. The seed was sewn with Haas beating Sauber for the contract, then an apartment complex in Monte Carlo, then points finishes, then a wheedling phone call from Toto Wolff about an irresistible tenure. Then came the pole, the win, the girlfriend he had met in Singapore and kissed at parc fermé in Australia, then ultimately his second shot at a title fight. It was no more an uproot than it was homecoming.
”And Canada?”
Canada. Montreal. Toronto. Before Mark, Canada had been underrepresented — misrepresented — since the Villeneuves. Presently, Mark is their pride and glory. Mark drapes the flag over his shoulders and animatedly mouths the anthem over the instrumental, but Canada hasn’t been home since karting had him jetsetting for European categories. It’s even harder to feel at home when he somehow can’t get a grip of the track.
Mark humors, “When I win it.”
“When you win it?” Renjun, ensconced on the bed opposite Mark, is theatrically appalled. Mark’s best ever result in Montreal is a P4. Not even an inherited podium; everyone’s plank just had to be worn at the limit, everyone just couldn’t incur themselves a time penalty. “Just relinquish your citizenship at this point.”
The linen underneath them is disturbed to no recognition when Mark springs to tackle Renjun. Renjun giggles airily like wind against a sail and is seized with no fight.
Mark can’t admit it aloud otherwise it’d be an optics nightmare, but Canada can never be half the home Monaco is, not anymore, not if whenever Mark is in Monaco, the world is at his feet — whether he’s running along the sun-suffused Sentier Littoral, or brushing the wall through Tabac in a whizzing lap, or simply simmering in his apartment on days off before he’s eventually cajoled for a round of padel at Monte-Carlo beach. The swank and decadence, though often feels like praying on a gilded pew to a Swarovski-spangled God, aren’t anything he eschews either. He’d even improved his French; Doyeon flies back to Monaco every fortnight from her fashion course in Paris and furnishes Mark with vernacular she’s picked up. She had gloriously saved him from eking out his choppy French by cranking up his charm, and she’s even noticed an upswing in his being romantic.
Renjun hadn’t missed the transition either, but he had revealed to Mark that he was nearly thrown off by it that night in Fribourg, when Mark had murmured to him in straight French: the moon reflects your light, mon amour.
“Oui,” Tonight, Mark whispers lewdly into Renjun’s ear, “When I win it.”
He had accumulated another P4 in Canada this season. He’d stuttered through chicanes that by the second stint, he had punched a fifteen-second gap between him and Jeno Lee’s self-cannibalizing Ferrari ahead. Mark doesn’t come into Montreal resigned to a mediocre performance, but there’s a dwindled confidence almost unique to it.
Mark feels even more embittered by the result when it hurt his chances of equalizing Donghyuck Lee in points, whose Red Bull was cruising comfortably at the lead. The Congratulations Donghyuck LED board was a stain on the backdrop of his devoted grandstand. Like some form of consolation, Donghyuck had been pipped at another grand slam with a fastest lap set by Mark’s teammate Sungchan; they hadn’t colluded it, but Mark is positively indebted to him.
“Whatever. Go to bed,” Renjun liberates himself from Mark’s arms and clambers out of bed to slip into the bathroom. Mark hears a tinny creak, then water pattering on the floor. Light fog wafts into the room just as Renjun’s voice breaks through the symphony. “And don’t say you’re planning to catch up on sleep in the plane instead. If I’m resting, you’re resting.”
Mark’s smile goes over his ears. He takes this as a beckon and follows Renjun into the bathroom, overrunning his shower; all throughout, they don’t kiss. These are the moments Mark basks in. The pasture of their relationship are sex and tacit signals at the paddock, at home when they unavoidably run into one another at sandy promenades, sometimes with Doyeon in Mark’s arm, purporting a relationship tethered by degrees, waiting until the taunt of Renjun’s scent has become bearable for Mark. Mark’s window of time together with Renjun is cut from the window of time cut from his life — with the meagre they have, Mark has become economical with periods of proactive non-intimacy.
“I’m flying early to Miami,” Mark informs as soon as Renjun recesses the Dyson. There’s a vignette of fog on the mirror that Renjun hadn’t polished off, and it has started to bleed from the heat of the dryer. “Doyeon’s been invited to a product launch later in the week, but before that we’re thinking of catching some downtime together.”
A sequestered farmhouse in Arezzo with mortared terracotta brick walls and verdant landscape that blows out into hectares of oak woods has insulated them for the past two days. Mark had made an effort of cooking; Renjun had put in the work of regulating and remedying it, and helming the meals for the rest of the sojourn. The surface tension of the pool had been broken only once by the dainty dip of Renjun’s toes upon arrival. Chenle, Mark’s best friend and self-appointed assistant, had arranged this for them — so were Fribourg, Serpa, the presidential suite in Vegas two seasons back.
In a couple of hours, Mark will be furtively dropping Renjun off in Nice before setting off to Brackley to jack up hours in the sim. Miami is succeeded by Monaco, and after his performance in Canada, he has his work cut out for him.
Mark is reunited with the mattress quick enough to shirk thoughts of packing. Through a slanted angle that accesses two-thirds of the bathroom, Mark instead watches Renjun tidy the vanity into a pouch; he recognizes it as a Rhode makeup bag, the same one he’d seen flopped atop various surfaces in his apartment, most recently Doyeon’s agape carry-on. “You’ve decided if you’re coming to Miami yet?”
Renjun feigns exhaustion, lolling his neck sideward like his skull is too laden to hold up, “Wednesday. That’s the most I could compromise.”
Over the winter break — both of them diverged and off at their respective expeditions — Renjun had told Mark he’d probably miss out on the races preceding the European stint, but he had materialized in Melbourne anyway. He had shown up in China too, then Bahrain, then Jeddah, then most recently Canada — irrespective if Mark puts stock in it as a home race. Mark isn’t a bit surprised that Miami is ultimately in the cards.
Renjun finally emerges into the main chamber of the bedroom and ambles towards Mark’s side of the bed to collect his stray belongings from the nightstand: Bird on a Rock and Tank Louis and phone planked beneath Mark’s. His skin smells of lilies abound — purity of which surface tension is most resilient.
“Donghyuck’s flying in first, though. He’d been stubborn about it but in the end I’ve managed to keep his nose out of bouquet arrangements.”
Mark sincerely sympathizes, “At least indulge him with the cake tasting.”
Renjun laughs; the measured type of laugh as if he’s been sweet-talked, mashed on the tongue and trisyllabic. His attention is halved by the Tank Louis he’s looping one-handedly around his wrist. “I’m already indulging him with the wedding.”
Renjun jokes, a little sage in the tapered delivery of the punchline.
Mark leaves out the fact that he’s flying straight from England to Miami. He’s previously taken to a habit diametrically opposite to this — in every other circumstance, he would’ve turned his jet around and burned gratuitous hours looking over the Mediterranean, grinding the sole of his shoes on redstone pavements. A racing season is a whirl of being moored and unmoored on command; helmet on, helmet off; degrees of performance you have to acquiesce, turning over a new leaf for the next year anyway. Experience reinforces confidence, skills, knowing a track by heart; it doesn’t inculcate a precise method of steadying yourself, to long for home any less.
Despite having lived in Monaco for five years now, Mark borrows a tourist’s voracity. Těte de Chien is an entrenched jogging itinerary; skin wizens, soil dries up, cashmere shrinks, but the beauty of Monaco from this vantage point is one that does not whittle. It leaves him breathless each time, even when his lungs have regained themselves from the run. In Monaco, the sun rises in the east and sets on the lapsed belief that the world is not Mark’s to overcome. He’s steady and he’s glorious.
But then Donghyuck had gone down on one knee and Renjun postured fealty, and all of a sudden the principality had been thrown into limbo. The harbour creaks under their footsteps; La Mome once a homogenous crowd destabilized by the view in his periphery, laughing too hard at a joke that couldn’t be all too funny; the walls of the residential building they share caves in on him every passing second he’s stationed, Mark is terrified he’d wake up one day cocooned. He’s built a life here, planned a life here, but ever since the world of motorsport was taken by storm by the proposal that dropped Monday evening the week of Austin — a coy It’s for life now, I guess bedecked with a yellow heart and holding back tears emoji — for the first time, as if Mark is asked to brave the unthinkable, he’s second-guessing.
Mark had commented Congrats guyssss!! on the Instagram post and gleefully dapped up Donghyuck to congratulate him in the flesh, purposefully expelling himself from his own swarm to inject in Donghyuck’s. The cameras, America, and the broad public loved it; Renjun, a little ungrateful.
“You two should really consider flying together sometimes,” Renjun suggests. He’s moved on from the watch to the winged bangle. It’s an effortless slip, which is what Mark is attributing the cavalier disposition to, “Think about the carbon emissions.”
(Renjun enjoys playing proponent of ethics all the while he’s stuffing his belongings in top of the line Chanels and is regularly decked out in head-to-toe Alo. He had once dressed Mark down for being a no-show in one of Doyeon’s showcases — one which Doyeon had undersold the importance of as it was on the week after Mark had suffered a major mare in Silverstone, and she ought to let him recuperate, less somatic more mental — when he’d been the one Mark had slummed that time out with.
Yes, Renjun had answered. he’d fucked off w/ Jaehyun and Jeno to Trinity again. wna come up?, he’d texted Mark by the first autumnal breeze of November.)
Mark could think up a hundred nonoverlapping reasons why that is an asinine idea — Renjun could too — but he digresses. Settles for the lightest detriment of the proposition. “I don’t think he’d be too happy around me. Jeddah’s still fresh.”
In Saudi Arabia, Mark was weaving to keep Donghyuck behind subtly enough to evade the stewards, but it hadn’t gone unnoticed by Donghyuck. He’s smart — you don’t become the incumbent champion if you weren’t — so he barks it to his engineer. Mark was slammed with no further action and hightailed it to a win, and Donghyuck had made his displeasure known, keeping Mark dry of his champagne.
Renjun is hardly bothered. “He’s still 16 points up on you. He’ll get over it.”
“Within a race win,” Mark says matter-of-factly, with the hubris of a risen martyr. “I’m winning it this year, you know?”
Renjun’s grin takes the shape of sovereignly pride. He turns his body to Mark and perches two fingers on the underside of his chin, lifting it with regal grace, arresting his eyes like they’re conduit for hypnosis. Mark feels tears welling up; not for cascading but for the sheen that glints at Renjun. He’s begging but he doesn’t know what for. Renjun levels himself and kisses Mark squarely on the mouth, and Mark is overcome with reverence. Hand of God, delivering. “Sure you are.”