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“Marcus!”
Marcus sharply turns his head to the right and breathes a sigh of relief at seeing Clem right in front of a small gathering of people. It’s not like the flight was particularly rough—nothing worse than a little turbulence waking him up somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean—but he wants to get home so, so badly. Clem rarely meets him at the airport, and neither does he; it’s not that easy to carve out an extra hour or two in their schedules, and it makes getting Clem’s message about picking him up in Heathrow even more special.
It all goes through Marcus's head in a flash as his lips are stretching into a happy smile and his legs are carrying him in Clem’s direction.
“Hi!” Clem immediately hugs him tightly, and for the umpteenth time Marcus thinks regretfully of how unfair it is, not being able to do anything more, always mindful that they’re in public.
“Missed you,” Marcus mumbles back into Clem's shoulder, getting squeezed even tighter in return.
“Your calendar was made by absolute morons.”
Marcus can’t help but laugh, and Clem releases him from his embrace to inspect closely.
“You look like you haven't slept in a week. Again,” he grumbles, then suddenly smiles and reaches out to touch Marcus' hair, who immediately dodges it. “And your hair is so long now; how did it grow so fast?”
“Not that fast; I haven't had a haircut since my last visit.”
“Really? I thought you'd found someone in Indianapolis,” Clem remarks, taking Marcus’ backpack from him.
“Nah,” Marcus shakes his head, “come on, give it back; it’s not that heavy. Let's go get my suitcase; I can’t wait to be home.”
“Can’t believe you cleaned your car for me,” Marcus smiles, fastening his seatbelt.
Clem just snorts in response and starts the engine.
“What? Don’t tell me it’s always this tidy.”
“Well, I think so? Or do you,” Clem lets out a high-pitched gasp, “think I'm a slob?”
“For the record, I didn't say that. Can I turn on the radio?”
“As if you ever needed my permission.”
Marcus has never told anyone, and he wouldn’t admit it if asked, but he loves being Clem's passenger. Yes, maybe his reactions to (in his opinion) the stupidity of the drivers around him are a tad too emotional, but who even cares, not Marcus anyway, not when Clem looks like this, with his hands on the steering wheel; not when he sings along, absolutely horribly, to the songs he likes; not when he wittily comments on everything around him, trying to make Marcus laugh. Today Marcus doesn't even have to respond; to be honest, he’s not really listening now, just enjoying the sound of Clem’s voice instead.
Clem is in the middle of a monologue about where and how deep he’d like to see the repairs that just caused them to take a detour when one of his favourite songs comes on the radio, and he immediately cuts off mid-sentence to start singing along. Marcus laughs. It’s good to be home.
“Was this a remix?” He asks as soon as the song finally ends.
“Why?”
“It sounded kind of... different? Didn’t you notice?”
“Not really? It was the same, I think, just as usual.”
“Okay.” Marcus can swear it wasn’t the version that Clem played literally every day during their previous holiday, but he stays silent. Clem is probably right, and he needs to sleep more. He shakes his head frustratedly, as if trying to get rid of a sudden feeling of discomfort stirring somewhere in the back of his mind. It doesn’t help much, and he stares out the window, hoping that the monotony of the familiar streets will calm him down.
“I didn't want to tell you, but the coffee shop on the corner was closed down,” Clem says quietly as they are driving up to his house. Marcus furrows his eyebrows; they did indeed just drive past an empty store with large windows. He can’t remember what was here before, but he is absolutely sure it had nothing to do with coffee. A cheese shop? Or a flower shop, maybe? He looks at Clem in bewilderment.
“What coffee shop?” He asks cautiously and immediately feels like he made a mistake when something subtly changes in Clem's face.
“What-” Clem abruptly stops himself, “-no, it doesn't matter. We’re home.”
As soon as they enter the flat, the uneasiness that has been drilling a hole somewhere in the back of his head suddenly comes over Marcus completely, down to the very last cell of his body. Something is wrong. It doesn’t make any sense-
It's our flat, you fucking idiot; nothing is wrong! Look, here's the shelf with our helmets on it; here's the couch where we'd spent so many evenings making out and watching stupid French films; here's the everlasting wine stain on the carpet-
There is no stain on the carpet.
“Is everything alright? You look pale; do you want to sit down?” Clem, who comes from out of nowhere, anxiously studies his face, and Marcus nods but then shakes his head.
“I'm going to take a shower,” he mutters; he desperately needs to spend a few minutes alone to try to understand what is happening to him.
“Yeah, yeah, sure.” The worry on Clem's face doesn’t go anywhere, and Marcus feels a stab of guilt. It has been so long since they last saw each other, and now he’s just ruining everything by acting like a total weirdo. He needs to do something, and quickly, so he does the thing he was dreaming about for all these endless weeks.
The discomfort is gone.
It is replaced by a panic attack.
He kisses Clem and chokes, but not from the love overwhelming him, or the elation of intimacy, or even a trivial lack of oxygen, no; the sense of everything being wrong is so powerful that his hands start shaking.
What the fuck is wrong with him?
He doesn't remember what he said to Clem or how he ended up in the bathroom, coming to his senses only when the water falling on him became scalding hot. He immediately yanks the tap, and the sharp cold makes his mind slightly clearer. So he continues to alternate between hot and cold water until his body stops shivering, and then he does the breathing exercises Angela taught him. He’s probably just tired. It was a long season; Indianapolis turned him into a right hermit; tomorrow he'll wake up and everything will be just the same as before.
He’s still terrified of looking in the mirror.
But it’s just the same old Marcus looking back at him. He breathes out a sigh of relief, and then he scrutinises his body, not even knowing what he expects to see, but it, too, is quite ordinary, familiar—the moles, the scars, the fading bruise he got in the accident during the penultimate race.
He’s definitely just tired.
He comes out of the shower in a much better mood, and Clem is so obviously relieved. There are boxes of takeaway food on the table, and Marcus suddenly realises he is hungry; he totally forgot that he didn’t really eat on the plane; no wonder he felt so unsettled! And the stain on the carpet- the stain on the carpet is no big deal; Clem must’ve finally gotten round to getting it dry-cleaned.
However, he doesn’t dare to ask about it.
Instead, they exchange gossip from their paddocks, discuss holiday plans, laugh at each other's dumb jokes, and by the end of lunch, Marcus is convinced that all the oddities of the morning are just the result of lack of sleep and his blood sugar dropping too low. But while he did successfully deal with the latter problem, he has to put off the former for the time being—he knows better than to give up and be rewarded with terrible jet lag.
“You’re sleeping with your eyes open,” Clem laughs as they move to the sofa. “Do you want me to keep talking to keep you awake?”
“As if you ever needed a reason for that,” Marcus smiles back. Clem is sitting next to him, and he can’t resist fixing the stubborn strand of hair that has once again fallen out of his fringe.
His heart sinks to the pit of his stomach, and Marcus feels sick.
“What happened to your scar?” he asks quietly, his voice wavering.
“What scar?”
Clem is still smiling.
“On the forehead. Did you have it removed?”
“I don’t have a scar on my forehead.”
Clem’s smile gets tight.
“What do you mean you don't, you do! Right here,” Marcus gently touches the soft, smooth skin with the tips of his fingers. It’s warm. It’s real. But there’s no scar.
“I don't.”
“You've told me about it so many times. You fell when you were a kid. You hit your forehead on the corner of a table. You scared the hell out of everyone. You had to get stitches,” Marcus feels more and more agitated but still tries to sound calm, not wanting to freak Clem out.
“Marcus, maybe, just maybe I know better whether I fell or not.” There’s frustration in Clem’s voice, but then he takes a deep breath. “Maybe you dreamed about it?”
“I- wait. It’s so visible, you can see it on almost every selfie of yours.” Marcus wants to stand up, but Clem grabs his elbow and holds him down, and it grounds him a little.
“Exactly, on every selfie,” he says and unlocks his phone, “here, look.”
Marcus looks. He recognises immediately where the photo was taken; it’s the flat that Clem was renting a few years ago, when he and James lived together. He remembers the beige curtains behind them so vividly, but that’s where the familiar ends. He doesn’t remember the moment the photo was taken or the shirt he is wearing. After all, he's never owned a blue shirt in his life, much less a striped one. Right?
“See?”
Marcus takes a closer look. There is no scar.
“Clem, what's going on?” He asks quietly.
“You tell me. You arrive today all out of sorts, dressed in god knows what, and your hair- I don't understand why you had to lie to me that you cut it! And you didn't say a word about the coffee shop, like you don’t even care-”
“Clem, wait, wait. Look.”
Marcus hands him his phone. There is a selfie on the screen, but a different one, taken before the Indy 500; they are standing in front of the Pagoda; Marcus is wearing his flashy pink firesuit. He kisses Clem on the cheek, and they both look blissfully happy.
Marcus still remembers the reprimand he received for that kiss from the team's PR manager.
“Here's your scar,” he states, but Clem is staring at the photo with unseeing eyes.
“I didn't go to the Indy 500 this year. Couldn't make it. Family emergency,” he says slowly, carefully, and Marcus feels a violent chill going through him, like he’s just been thrown into a cold stream, and suddenly there’s no air in his lungs anymore.
“Who are you?”