alerudy in peril my beloved.
cw: hospital. emotional whump. ale praying, begging, and crying. Rudy is not doin great. I need Alejandro to be desperate and crumbling apart btw, a la his devotion to Rudy.
Alejandro kneels because there is nowhere else for him to go.
The chair is there, plastic, uncomfortable, but sitting would require composure, and he has none. Standing would mean pacing, and pacing would mean he'd be thinking, and thinking would splinter him open. So he kneels on the cold tile, elbows braced against the mattress, forehead pressed into the blanket just below Rudy’s hand.
Three in the morning is a cruel hour. It strips everything down to its bones. There is no noise here. None that Alejandro can hear anyway. Just the soft, mechanical rhythm of machines and the faint sound of Rudy’s breath, shallow but there, still there, please God still there.
Alejandro hasn’t prayed like this in years.
He’s said the words, sure, automatic things murmured out of habit before missions, after death. But this is different. This is ugly and desperate and full of bargaining. This is the kind of prayer he was taught as a boy and abandoned as a man who knew the only way through life is to be in it, not hoping for a miracle.
But he could really fucking use a miracle.
His hands shake as he clasps them together, knuckles white, thumbs digging into each other hard enough to hurt.
“Okay,” he whispers hoarsely, like God might be nearby and impatient. “Okay. Listen. I know I am not… I know I am not good at this.”
His voice cracks immediately. He swallows, breath hitching, forehead pressing harder into the bed as if he can physically hold them both together.
“I know I am selfish,” he says, words tumbling out of him. “I know I am crude, and loud, and I swear too much, and I do not always do the right thing for the right reasons. I like my pride. I like my anger. I hold onto it. I know that.”
Tears well and slip free, darkening the fabric beneath him.
“But he—” Alejandro’s voice breaks fully, a sound wrenched from somewhere deep and unguarded. He takes a broken inhale and tries desperately to continue. “He is good. He is patient. He is kind even when I make it difficult. He believes in people when they do not deserve it. He believes in me when I do not deserve it.”
He lifts his head just enough to look at Rudy’s face, pale against the bedding, lashes resting gently on his cheeks. Alejandro reaches out, carefully, and cups Rudy’s hand between both of his own. His hands are too cold.
“Please,” he whispers. “Please do not take this one beautiful thing from me. Do not take my Rudy.”
His shoulders shake, the sobs quiet but unstoppable, his bravado stripped clean away.
“Take my pride instead,” he murmurs. “Take my anger. Take my ego. I will give it to you. I will give you everything. Just—just let him stay. Let me wake up and complain about his coffee again. Let me hear him laugh at my jokes even when they are bad. Let me grow old and annoying at his side.”
Alejandro presses his lips to Rudy’s knuckles, a trembling kiss, wet with tears.
“I am not asking because I deserve it,” he says, voice strained. “I am asking because I cannot be without him.”
He muffles his next cry into the mattress. The night does not answer.
Alejandro stays kneeling. Desperate.
He thinks, cruelly, that God or the devil, or whoever else would dare, will have to pry Rudy from his cold, dead hands.
