#I just think Alex trusting himself to Pato would be a whole thing

[nico-di-genova]

To Be Known, To Be Loved

Summary: Alex is sick, Pato takes care of him. AKA: Palex sickfic

A/N: This originally started as a prompt fill, but then it went off the rails and became its own thing. So the prompt will get filled eventually, but now there is also this. The mortifying ordeal of having to be known to be loved. The horror of having to put your trust in someone in order to let yourself be cared for. Trigger Warning for Emetophobia!

There is vomit on Pato’s shoes, specks of it dotting the toe when he kicks them off at the doorway to his bus. They land on their side, next to Alex’s half-hazardly thrown pair, whose are vomit free because when he’d doubled over behind the truck, after their debrief, it had been Pato who was in the splash zone. He’d just barely managed to step back, and so most of the sick had ended up on the pavement, watery and thin, spreading in a puddle across the cracks in the surface where the weeds had managed to break through. A diet of liquids, that’s what Alex had been operating on apparently, all of it now emptied from his body and left soaking into the track that had delivered him another P4 finish.

How he’d managed to race at all was still beyond Pato. How his entire team had failed to notice the heat roiling off his body, and the glassy-eyed expression he’d worn during the entire debrief meeting was a bigger mystery. Pato had known from the moment he saw the sweat beading on Alex’s forehead, the wince when he tried to talk about the roll bar adjustments they’d made to the car, and his voice came out like it was scraping against rock, physically paining him to speak.

“I’m not sick,” he’d grumbled in annoyance when Pato pressed a hand to his forehead and was met with furnace levels of heat, and then he’d barely made it two steps away from the truck before he lost the little bit of water he’d managed to sip down during the debrief.

Pato had kept a hand on the small of his back, rubbing soothing circles as Alex retched, feeling his body tremble and shake. Thankfully they’d waited inside the truck long enough, Alex insisting he felt fine even though he hadn’t had the energy to pull himself out of where he’d slumped in his chair. There was no one to see him lose the battle with his upset stomach. Pato is sure Alex would have been ten times more mortified if there was anyone else there, he already can’t look at Pato now.

“I’m sorry,” he says, swaying on his feet and leaning against the dining table behind him for support, instead of Pato’s outstretched hand. “About your shoes.”

Pato waves dismissively at the footwear, “Eh, whatever. They weren’t my favorite pair.”

They were, but the vomit can be wiped away, and he doesn’t really care about the cost to replace them if it doesn’t right now. He’s more focused on how Alex is shaking again, all of his energy focused on keeping himself upright, despite the fact that he’s leaning heavily on the table. His skin is pale, other than the red flush on his cheeks, the same flush that had indicated to Pato there was a problem when he first sat down for their meeting. It could have been blamed on the race, the heat of the car, but even as they sat in the airconditioned truck it hadn’t faded. Now it’s impossible to miss.

“Alex-“ he tries, starts to reach out.

“I just- I just need sleep,” Alex waves him off, “’m tired.”

He takes one step away from the table, starting for the bedroom at the back of the bus, before his knees give out. Pato is anticipating it, the way he tips and loses his balance, and so he manages to dart forward quickly enough and steady Alex with one hand on his chest, the other on his hip. He stumbles under Alex’s weight, bangs into the kitchen counter hard enough that he’s sure he’ll be sporting a bruise along his side – he and Alex matching, since Alex took a hit from Ferrucci in turn 3 earlier and has his own budding collection of darkening skin to show for it.

“I got you,” he promises when Alex tries to take another step, finds his knees too weak to do so.

“Fuck.” Alex states in response.

It’s a process to get him stripped out of his clothes and to ease him into bed. Alex on a good day is unwilling to accept help, self-reliant to a fault, but a sick Rossi is a whole other beast. Pato thought the time he’d had to nurse a hungover Alex back to health was bad, when he was hiding under the covers in their hotel room in Mexico because the light hurt his eyes. He rethinks that now. At least then they’d had the crashing waves on the beach and room service to provide some modicum of comfort. And when Pato had traced the bare skin of Alex’s shoulder with his finger, kissing at the back of his sun warmed neck, Alex hadn’t minded the touch – had leaned into it even, because it was a welcome distraction from the pounding of his head.

Now, it’s dark and it’s cold because Alex keeps the bus at an inhuman temperature. When Pato tries to ease Alex out of his hoodie that’s got vomit crusted on the sleeve from where he’d wiped at his mouth, Alex whines and pulls away like the touch hurts him.    

“We have to cool you down, babe,” Pato tries, “you’re really warm.”

An understatement, the heat roiling off his skin may as well be visible, coming off of him in waves.

“I’m already cold,” Alex argues, which is another sign everything is wrong. Alex has highjacked Pato’s thermostat, hacked it, so that it can be set to ungodly levels of cold, because he doesn’t like to be warm. He doesn’t like to feel his clothes stick to him with sweat, as the hoodie is so clearly doing, soaked through under the arms and on the back when Alex curls over where he’s sitting on the bed to put his head between his knees and Pato can see the darkened fabric.

Pato reaches for the hem of the hoodie at the small of his back, peels it upward so it’s pooled around his neck. Alex whines again as the cool air hits his skin, but doesn’t pull away, maybe because he’s lost the strength.

“Come on, Alex, work with me here,” Pato pleads.

He manages to work the hoodie over Alex’s head, and then down his arms. It ends up on a puddle at the foot of the bed, along with Alex’s socks and then his race suit. A normal Alex would be peeved by this, make an offhand comment about the laundry basket two feet away from them, nestled beneath the clothes hanging in the closet. A sick Alex doesn’t even seem to notice, just shivers when he’s stripped down to his underwear.

In the lamplight coming from the built-ins along the wall, Pato can see the bruising already forming along Alex’s left side. Splotches of purple along his ribs and down to his thigh. It’s not the worst Pato’s seen on him, minimal and not nearly as dark as it seems in the dim lighting, but it isn’t fun to look at. Not when Alex is breathing so heavily his chest expands with the effort, his ribs visible beneath the bruising.

“You’re going to make yourself dizzy like that,” Pato says, eases him up with a gentle hand on his shoulder so his head isn’t between his knees anymore. Alex goes, lets himself be lifted and then eased back on the bed.

Before leaving this morning, Alex had insisted on making it. Pato, one shoe half-on, already preparing to dart out to the track, had been ready to leave it as it was. Pillows askew, sheets rumpled, and half balled up at the end of the bed. He wasn’t the sort to wake up in the morning and immediately begin to assemble his life, not before he’d gone for a run or had breakfast. Alex, he has learned in the short six month span of their relationship, is the opposite. He wakes up and gathers himself slowly, makes the bed because he hates coming home to an unmade one. If he’d moved slower that morning, tucking the duvet in between the mattress and the box spring with careful movements because his body was beginning to ache with the sickness that had now set in, he was better at hiding it then.

He gets a better look at the bruises once Alex is laying on his back. They’re really not bad, but he can’t help but wonder if Alex had felt like this when he was driving. Eyes watery and body shuddering, hands trembling when he pulls at the duvet he’s tucked in too tightly. He wonders if he’d been alert he maybe might have been able to avoided the contact altogether.

“Here,” he says instead of continuing to think about Alex sick and borderline delirious in his car going 200+ mph, “Let me do it.”

“I’m not useless,” Alex grumbles.

He stalls the man’s fruitless pulling of the duvet with a hand over his. “No. But you’re sick, so let me take care of you. Okay?”

It may be that Alex is foreign with the concept, because he continues to try to pull the blanket free so he can tuck himself under it. Or it may be that the fever has him acting with single minded purpose.

“Rossi.”

“What?”

“Stop.”

Alex stops. He pulls his hand back so Pato can take over, and shivers on the bed until Pato gets him under the blankets. Then he curls onto his side and shakes until Pato crawls under the covers beside him.

“Gonna get you sick,” he mumbles.  

Pato shrugs, presses himself along Alex’s back and pulls the man closer to him, letting Alex leech away some of his warmth to maybe help with the chills. He’ll get another blanket for him later, press a cool towel to his forehead and hope it breaks the fever. Right now though he just wants to hold him. He wants to feel the way Alex grabs at his arm when he wraps his arm around him. His hand gripping at Pato’s wrist with a desperate need, like if Pato holds him close enough it will maybe help him feel better.

This morning the roles had been reversed, Pato tucked into Alex’s arms and waking up to find he wished he could stay there. It wasn’t the first time he’d yearned for a place to stay. There was Punta Mita, with the Airbnb he was fond of booking. Texas, where everything was familiar. Indiana even, in the small bits of time he and Alex got to spend there, appreciating the sprawling space of Alex’s house before they had to pack their lives back up into suitcases again. He wonders if maybe this is the travel catching up, the late nights and stress of the championship, all of it building on Alex and taking its toll physically. Or maybe it’s just that he’s caught whatever bug has been floating around the bus lot.

Whatever it is, Pato takes the gamble of catching it. He holds Alex tighter and kisses at the nape of his neck and thinks of Mexico. Sunkissed skin that smelled faintly of aloe-vera and waves crashing on the shore, how Alex had laughed when he was drunk. How his cheeks had flushed pink, not from fever, but from the alcohol. How they’d chased each other along the shoreline, knowing that when they did eventually collide they’d both end up toppling into the water.

How Alex had looked in the moonlight, eyes glinting, shirt soaked through by the waves he’d ended up in first.  

“Oh, you’re gonna pay,” he’d warned, seconds before lurching forward and grabbing Pato to pull him into the ocean beside him.

When they’d kissed it had tasted like salt and the Coors Alex had imbibed in heavily at the bar. Pato chased the taste of it, tried to commit it to memory, alongside the feel of Alex’s hand in his hair when he pulled it to tip his head slightly. Their first kiss, messy and uncoordinated and then broken by the waves that crashed against them.

When morning had come Pato had woken to Alex in his arms and sunlight piercing at the headache he was nursing. Alex, who had drank more, had buried his head into the blankets with a groan. The same way he did now. Except now Pato knows the feeling of kissing him sober, knows the feel of Alex’s hand in his hair when he’s not pulling it. He knows Alex likes to make the bed in the morning and will do so even if he’s fighting his own body. Knows he would drive a car in oppressive heat, despite the fever spiking his own temperature.

He knows Alex doesn’t like to be taken care of, but that he’s letting Pato take care of him anyway.

Alex shudders in his arms, and Pato holds him, kisses the nape of his neck and tells him, “I’ve got you.” He finds he means it, fully, finds he can think of home now and it comes in the shape of Alex - familiar, safe, shaking in his arms with a fever he is trying to beat.

“I got you,” he repeats, as Alex presses closer - as he does not pull away.