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Uccio has the 'flu.
Four little words. Normally they'd generate a thimbleful of sympathy and nothing more. Perhaps two thimblefuls from Valentino, and then a desire to keep far enough away from Uccio so as not to catch it himself. But, well. Valentino has a thing. A need.
Not like that, you understand. Whatever whispers might go around, it's not like that. Really, it's not. But Valentino has a need, and it's always up to Uccio to satisfy it.
It's really not like that.
But it doesn't matter now, because Uccio has the flu. It's a bad enough bout that he hasn't even left his hotel room since arriving into the country three days ago. And Valentino's having a bad enough year, he doesn't need to end up bedridden too.
But Valentino needs Uccio. It's like a little itch at the back of his brain that's getting worse and worse the more he realises he's got no-one else to turn to. Really, who could he ask in a situation like this? None of his mechanics. Not Jeremy, definitely not Jeremy. Other riders...?
Valentino rules out half the grid in less than a second, and the rest of the grid a second later. Then he thinks again. He needs this, so he has to at least try, even if he gets laughed out of the room. Maybe, just maybe, he can play the team mate card...
"Nicky..." Valentino begins, without, in the intervening hour, having come up with a suitable way to explain his predicament. But here he is, in Nicky's room. About to put himself quite heavily in his debt. "You know I have, ehh, the foot peg?"
"Sure, we all got foot pegs," Nicky replies, giving Valentino a funny look.
"No, no - you know before the race I...I touch my boots, and I crouch and hold the foot peg and I talk with my bike, and then I always get on from the same side?"
"Rituals, right."
Valentino pointed at him, perhaps a little too enthused by Nicky's grasp of his words. "Yes! The rituals. Well...there is another one that I never say to anyone, but now I have a problem, because I cannot do it, this ritual."
Suddenly Nicky looks very suspicious. "...And you need me to help you."
"I need you to help me."
"I feel like I'm gonna regret asking, but what do you need me to do?"
"Is easy, really," Valentino says, and gives a small but hopefully disarming smile. "I need you to be sleeping." There's a long, too long, pause in which Valentino performs a curious shrug-nod in an attempt to imply what he doesn't particularly want to verbalise. Nicky looks at him blankly, so he musters the will to say it anyway. "With me."
Momentarily, Nicky's eyes look as though they may pop out of his head; then he stares at Valentino, brow knitted, for an unnerving few moments. His expression finally eases, and he laughs. "What?!"
Valentino sighs as Nicky continues. "Is this some hidden camera thing? Did my sister put you up to this? Oh man. I'm gonna get her back so bad..." He pulls his phone from his pocket, and Valentino has a moment of panic.
"No no no--" Valentino reaches out to take the phone away and inadvertently clasps Nicky's hands rather earnestly; he doesn't let go straight away. He and Nicky lock eyes for a very long moment, and he says seriously, "I don't make a joke."
Nicky breaks from Valentino's gaze to look down at their clasped hands. "You sure this ain't no hidden camera thing...?," he asks softly, full of doubt.
"I don't make a joke, Nicky."
The skepticism remains on Nicky's face until he appears to realise something. "Uccio's sick, right?"
Valentino feels a measure of relief, releasing Nicky's hands. "Yes. And the race is tomorrow. So you see, I am here."
"And you want me to be Uccio?," Nicky says with heavy implication, his eyebrows raised. Valentino's measure of relief dissipates.
"Is not like this, I swear to you!" he protests. Perhaps, he thinks, a different tactic is needed. "Maybe if you had a small drink, it would be not so bad?"
Nicky snorts. "You wanna get me drunk so you can sleep with me?"
"No no no, is not like this, I promise!" Another tactic, maybe? "Maybe, if it's better, we sleep like, eh," An increasingly desperate Valentino puts his hands together with his fingertips pressed against the heels of his palms. "Like this?"
Nicky holds his hands up and takes a step back, beginning to smirk. "Listen, that ain't why my number's 69..."
Valentino takes a breath to exasperatedly protest yet again, and stops, pressing his hands together and bringing them to his lips in prayer. He closes his eyes and exhales through his nose and starts to think about going to someone else. Maybe Dani would just put up with it. Cal would probably be otherwise occupied. Is Loris around this weekend? Aleix is friendly enough, but how old is he again...?
"Nicky, I promise, if it was easy to ask somebody else, I ask them. I ask you because you are a team mate, you are a good guy, you know? For sure, we are not so close--" Here Nicky quirks an eyebrow and seems about to interrupt, but Valentino soldiers on - "But I think maybe you are the only person who can help me. I owe you something huge for this. Really huge."
"What, like maybe you can suck me off when we get under the sheets?"
Such is his desperation, Valentino begins to answer before Nicky's words have processed; when they do, he stops and stares. He begins to shrug in dumbfounded compliance before Nicky splutters a laugh. "Shit, man, I was joking, but if I ain't getting anything else outta this deal..."
Hope swells unbidden in Valentino's heart. "You say it's a deal...?"
"Listen, far as I'm concerned, this room just became Vegas. What happens in here stays the hell in here." Nicky approaches the minibar and pulls out two miniature bottles, looking at each of them. "You more of a whiskey or a tequila man? I'm not saying we should get hammered or nothin', but I think y'all might need a shot of something as much as me."
Valentin's shoulders sag and he nods, gratitude washing over him in waves. Then he remembers that he suggested they might top-and-tail...
Nicky passes him an empty glass and pours him the tequila, Nicky himself opting for the whiskey. They clink glasses and Nicky throws the shot down his throat, narrowing his eyes a little at the burn. He frowns when he notices Valentino's shot still intact. "What is it, did you want the Jack?"
Valentino's expression is one of guilt and trepidation. "Is okay if we, ehh..." he gestures with the glass towards the bed. "Hug...?" Before Nicky can respond beyond a disbelieving stare, Valentino continues in a more placating fashion. "For the ritual, the ritual! And you say, this is Vegas, no?"
"You better mean, like, the standard definition of a hug," Nicky says after a long pause. "I don't wanna get in there and you start giving me a reach around, like, 'oh, is the ritual, Nicky, the ritual!' - I can't do your accent, but y'know..."
Nicky laughs, and then Valentino laughs, and he feels the tension gripping his stomach begin to relax. That little itch at the back of his brain has faded. There's weary ease, a level of acquiescence on Nicky's face that Valentino didn't really expect; he recalls his own words earlier with more appreciation than before - you are a good guy, you know?
Soon they're stood either side of the hotel bed. Nicky's hands are on his hips, and Valentino has his arms crossed.
"Alright. So." There's a long silence, then Nicky reaches back and pulls his shirt over his head, tossing it over the chair behind him. Valentino takes it as his cue and begins to undress himself, looking off to another corner of the room as he does so. Not that there was any point in being demure when they'd be sleeping together...
"There a particular position in this here ritual?"
Valentino's gaze swings back to Nicky, whose hands are prising open his belt buckle, and he shrugs a little sheepishly. "To be comfortable is the most important thing."
"Sure it is," Nicky responds dryly. "But if we're gonna spoon, I got dibs on being the little spoon..."
Valentino had to guess that, when Nicky jokingly referred to spooning, he hadn't expected to actually do it. It was agreed upon, after some fidgety, sheet-tangling trial and error, to be the most comfortable position. For Nicky, at least; Valentino couldn't exactly ask him to sacrifice any more comfort in this situation.
"Think I coulda stood to have another shot or three," Nicky mumbles, curled up on his side with his team mate fitted against him. Valentino nods, his temple rubbing against the muscle of Nicky's shoulder. The arm beneath him awkwardly hugs his own stomach, his free arm draped gingerly across Nicky's side. And Nicky is tense.
Valentino purses his lips in thought. "Maybe I give you the back massage for you to relax...?" he eventually offers with a smirk, curling a finger and digging his knuckle into Nicky's ribs, making him arch away.
"You're not so big that I can't beat your ass with this here pillow," Nicky threatens mildly over his shoulder. Valentino grins, though Nicky can't see it.
"Maybe we can fight with the pillows, but I don't think it's so relaxing."
"You know what's relaxing? Going to sleep."
"But how do you sleep if you are not relaxed?"
"As fast as I can."
Valentino goes quiet for a while.
"Do you snore very much?"
"Are you gonna drool on my back?"
"...For sure I try not."
Nicky smells so different to Uccio. Not the deodorant or shower gel or shampoo; just his skin. It's the first time in two years of working together that he's ever come to that conclusion. Probably because it's the first time in two years of working together that he's ever rested his head against the bare flesh of Nicky's back. In bed. Together.
He's more muscular than Uccio, too; his torso is slender, not the same way that Valentino's is, but slender all the same, longer, toned...and this is not where he should be allowing his mind to go in this position.
"When'd this become a ritual, anyways?"
"Ehh," Valentino is a little cagey, though he is grateful for the distraction. "I don't remember so good. But it's particular, it has to be like this. Not only the sleeping in bed, is the," he catches the tip of his tongue between his teeth, searching carefully for the word. "The touch."
"The contact," Nicky murmurs. "I get it."
The silence that falls is a comfortable one. Nicky has relaxed, the shallow curve of flesh to his hip supple under Valentino's forearm.
"Uccio ever get sick like this before?"
"I think yes, but only when we are not racing."
"So you never had to spoon with Biaggi?" The smile across Nicky's face is audible in his words.
Valentino gives a soft, disbelieving chuckle at the very thought. "Fuck..."
His breathing has fallen into rhythm with Nicky's. Some idealistic, romantic flicker in him wonders if his heart beats the same way. It'd likely be a little too much to ask to rest his palm against his team mate's chest and find out.
"I try to be gone when you wake up tomorrow," Valentino says, for some reason hoping that he might not be. Perhaps it'd be less awkward than encountering one another the next time in the paddock. Perhaps it'd cheapen it to pick up his clothes and slink away at dawn.
Whatever 'it' was. Which was nothing, of course. And how can you cheapen nothing?
Valentino wishes his brain would switch off.
"You mean you're not even gonna stay and make me coffee?" Nicky asks in a faux-hurt voice. "That's cold, man. I thought we had something."
Valentino smiles and pats Nicky's stomach, pleased as the skin jumps under his touch.
But really, it's not like that.