Alejandro x Rodolfo Sick Fic WIP
this is an incomplete fic i found in my many drafts. the start is good enough on its own to release as a teaser but i'm still 50/50 on completing it as i have other projects in the works. if you'd like to see it finished tho (thinking it'd be a two parter), plz lmk. thoughts and critiques welcomed.
By most definitions, it was a good day.
The sun in the bright clear sky overlooked a sparse forest below. Late spring decided to be kind and offer gentle breezes that rustled the green leaves and grass, the faint aroma of earth getting swept up in them. It was neither too cold nor too hot; just the right temperature where most clothing wore without the shivers or sweats. After weeks of on-and-off torrential rain, gray clouds, and furious winds, this break in the weather breathed new life into the sodden countryside.
If not for the fact that half of the Los Vaqueros were out for the count with a gnarly fever.
Could it be that they’ve been pushing their bodies too hard after hunting down a new lead in the cartel’s supply chain and the last deployment in the worst thunderstorm of the season finally crashed some of their best? Possibly. Or was it that flu bug making its yearly rounds in the military, plaguing and incapacitating soldiers regardless of rank? Also plausible. Either way, whatever it was, it has crippled their forces into sniffling red-eyed messes for the upcoming few days.
The ill retired to their quarters, quarantined with other ill so as not to spread the contagion, and groveled in their stiff beds until the bug decided when it’d stop ravaging them. Those who recovered or managed to avoid infection were stuck on the other side of the base, left to clean and maintain operations with a fraction of the manpower, praying that this godforsaken pestilence doesn’t come for them.
Alejandro Vargas, the larger-than-life leader of their band of cowboys, had evaded the virus’ claws but was instead buried with mountains of medical discharge and temporary sick leave papers to sign off on. So there he was, silently working away in the lamplit warmth of his office, hands weary from the repetitive flick from his own name.
Damn his ironclad immunity.
His mother would always chide him as a boy when he threw around sewage mud or swam in the freezing river for too long. She would yell that he’d get too sick to play with the other neighborhood kids if he continued to disobey. It never happened. His father joked that Alejandro ran hotter than active volcanos and thus no disease could survive long in his body. Being the hot head he was and still is, that remark wore like a badge of honor. Rarely getting ill was the norm and on the off chance he did catch something, it was a runny nose at most.
Alejandro huffed a dry sigh as he dropped his pen to knead the thick muscle in his right thumb, trying to fight off the cramp he could feel incoming. His robust immune system saved him on many occasions, especially as a military man who has seen all sorts of climates and terrains that came with his particular job description. But this time around? He quietly wished he too was sequestered in his room, if it meant reprieve from these tedious administrative duties.
A tightness curled in his leg—upset with being seated and bent for hours—making Alejandro to rock and flex uncomfortably in his wooden chair then hiss at the sharp painful reminder of his age in his back. Grunts of varying pitch grumbled from his throat as he forgoed the documents and stretched with what little room he had between his desk, hitting arbitrary pressure points from his sides to his neck.
As if that’d miraculously erase decades worth of bone-deep aches.
His shirt rode up a little as he twisted his entire torso around as far as he could manage and groaned in sweet relief when it finally popped, crackles decompressing his spine. Alejandro shook out the remnant tension with a wiggle of his shoulders. At some point, he must’ve closed his eyes since his vision opened focus onto the piles of white pages inked in patchy black laid out on his desk. An uncountable amount of files sat in stacks on the dull oak wood. Awaiting. The clock rhythmically ticked away in the corner, precious seconds he could've spent doing anything else.
Hit with a sudden weariness, Alejandro leaned over and rested his elbow on the table, fingers now pressed into his temples attempting to massage discipline back into place. It wasn’t the admin work that gave him a headache—he knew what he was getting into when becoming colonel. Hell, the monotony of it certainly bored him out of his skull but he’s done more in less time. He was irritated by what lacked.
From the pages, sunken eyes wandered over to the closed door of his office that sealed him off from the rest of the base. Where it would’ve been sporadically opened by senior troops and expected privates, the reinforced doorframe saw no one through today besides him. Not even a visit from a man whose own office sat right outside his and ushered soldiers along with a relaxed smile. That man would’ve taken a chunk of the administrative workload off Alejandro’s hands since his signature was on par with his best friend’s, as far as medical requests were concerned. He'd check in every half hour or so, sometimes with two cups of tea in hand, and chat briefly while they sipped.
Sergeant Major Rodolfo Parra, his second in command, was among those bedridden and sickly.
What started as a stuffy nose that Rodolfo passed off as allergies snowballed into a gross cough then flu-induced brain fog in the span of a couple hours. He could barely keep his head upright two days ago, face red and searing to the touch. Alejandro had to practically drag the man to his dorm while he insisted on his competence under slimy breaths. A faint sheen of sweat anointed his pallid skin and yet his body fought the entire way down the halls, flailing trained muscles powerless to summon strength.
‘There’s too much work for you to do alone.’ Rodolfo had wheezed as tawnier arms wrangled him into his room.
‘I can move around just fine.’ The haggard almost tripped on the bed frame, cursing the person who shoved him towards it.
Said the guy actively struggling to stay conscious, rolling around in the sheets like a blind worm, writhing against his superior's grasp.
Alejandro found thin threads of humor in the frustration of essentially manhandling his childhood friend into mandatory recuperation. This felt similar to when they were young boys: scrawny, scraped, and too confident for their size. When one of them would see pain, the other would persistently fuss until they sought care. Usually, it was Rodolfo who played concerned, admonishing the kid and the colonel for waving off steadily bleeding flesh wounds or staying up all night honed in on some intel tip. With a stern grip, the major would literally hold him back and figuratively put his foot down, unafraid to use his full weight to press for an agreement and only an agreement to seek aid.
Now it was Alejandro that wrestled with his stubborn second. A rare sour treat.
The sourness must've shown on his face as cockiness because Rodolfo had grouched incoherently about how Ale was going to forget the concept of time and hissed at the playful pinch at his neck. Just because it was true, Alejandro’s notorious tunnel vision has resulted in him forgetting to eat for days, didn’t cancel out the first and foremost importance of Rudy getting over this delirious flu.
‘I can handle it.’ Tanned calloused hands guided his friend towards bed.
‘You’re going to fall the longer you’re on your feet.’ Alejandro barked and sat the ailing body onto the mattress.
‘Rudy, you can't help me until you get well again. You know this. The sooner you recover, the faster you can return to your post.’
Like how Rodolfo knew and loathed Alejandro’s many self-destructive habits, Alejandro knew what served to soothe Rodolfo’s nerves and worries. Knew what he meant behind the resistance. Logically honest assurances were offerings for the blubbering but genuine care masked as anxiety. Promises that Ale wouldn’t suddenly go mad in the few days he needed bedrest and their unit would survive alright without the duo’s supervision. The colonel even went as far as to pledge to personally deliver him his meals as physical tangible proof of his existence.
After plenty of bickering, enough reassurances slipped had finally coaxed Rodolfo to stay put. Great timing too since that might’ve been the last lucid thought he processed. He’s been out like a light since. Only quiet nonsense mumbled from his chapped lips whenever Alejandro dropped by with food, tea, and medicine. Credence reasoned that it was thankfulness verbalized to the best of his ill-rattled ability.
This was decades of friendship at work.
Alejandro was really starting to question the structural integrity of that word.
Friendship implied and was defined by the platonic: a bond between people you found common ground with and kept in sporadic touch. Digging deeper, it could look like mutually assured banter that skirted along harsh truths, understanding the funny and the criticism in the same breath. Brotherhood lay at the far end of the spectrum where gayness was a sport everyone fought in.
For a word so fluid in its use, even it stretched gaunt to define what Alejandro wanted it to define.
The twinkles in dark brown eyes. Missing the lukewarm ghostly imprint left by a fistbump. A sixth sense for reading someone based on how they put their mug on the table. Distinctively feeling the green one-eyed monster perched over his shoulders when an other infringed on self-perceived territory. Maybe—potentially that all could be forgiven if the intentions were wholly innocent.
And he couldn’t ever profess innocence.
Not while his blood smoldered hot like charcoal: that gentle presence whisking by was enough to fan the embers of his lechery. A slow burning. Yearning. The hungry want for grabs to linger, for the heli rides where they sat shoulder-to-shoulder to lapse. To hug tighter after a terrible day. Kilos of it piled up over years and Alejandro should've seen the smoke billowing from miles away, but he was too busy making teenaged memories with the object of his warmth to notice it’s the then juvenile boy's laughter that lit him up from within.
Don't ask him when the realization kicked in his teeth. Alejandro has been reeling for ages since the initial revelation that he preferred watching Rodolfo in a loose tee and slacks take inventory of their armory over burning cartel stockpiles to ash. Both captivated him, but only one managed to make him walk face-first into a concrete wall.
Everything they ever did together had flipped.
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