Chapter Text
At the point they were going, Valentino would never get the sound of crying children out of his ears. Everytime he got one to shut up, another one would start sobbing and like Sisyphus, Valentino would have to start soothing that one. The string of sicknesses happened every winter and yet it never got any easier to handle somehow.
“It’ll be okay,” he said to Pecco, swaying with the kid in his arms and patting Pecco slightly while the crying slowed down to hiccups. When he finally got Pecco lay down for a nap, he kind of wanted to cry too. Instead, he collapsed onto the couch and screamed into one of the decorative pillows like an adult.
When he had been a kid, the holidays had been fun; who didn’t like getting gifts and running around in the snow? But now that he had (so many) children of his own, the winter was like hell on earth. If one got sick —and one always got sick— everyone in the house got sick at the same time and then Valentino was left to suffer. Some parents had went on and on about how you had to treasure these “precious” moments, but Valentino found being covered in vomit multiple times a day very hard to treasure.
His eyelids felt like they had ten pound weights attached to them. The couch had never felt more comfortable, going upstairs to his bed was looking more and more like an undoable act than ever. It was insane how little sleep he had run on when he was younger, now nothing less than six hours made him want to curl onto the floor and pass out. He closed his eyes and told himself that he would only rest his eyes for a moment and everything slipped away.
The sound of the doorbell ringing made Valentino jostle so much that he fell off of the couch. He rubbed his eyes and squinted at his phone to see that it was already seven in the night. He had managed to fall asleep for a few hours without any of the gremlins waking him up somehow. His back was killing him, but he didn’t feel like he was going to pass out and die anymore at least.
“Coming, coming,” Valentino grumbled when the asshole at his door rang the doorbell again before opening the door.
He shivered at the cold and cursed himself for choosing somewhere where it snowed a shit load before opening his mouth to say that no, he didn’t want to become Mormon, before quickly shutting it when he realised that it was Marc standing on his doorstep. They both stared at each other for a second, before Valentino asked, “what are you doing here? Wait, better question, how did you know where I live?”
“I found out that the kids were sick and I brought some food—” Marc thrust the bags he was holding at Valentino’s face as if to prove it—“and I just asked Alina very nicely. It would be a shame to waste all this food, no?” Valentino cursed Alina for being swayed so easily before begrudgingly letting Marc in.
The little demons had, of course, already woken up at the sound of Marc ringing the bell and were piled up into one big sniffling mess on the couch. When Marc entered the living room, however, Bez untangled himself from his brothers and stared at Marc with his mouth agape with shock.
“It’s you,” he gasped before turning wide-eyed to his brothers and repeating, “it’s him! It’s the weird man from the grocery store! I told you guys that he was real! I told you!”
Mig threw a pillow at him before saying, “shut up Bez, you’re hallucinating again.”
Marc let out a laugh at that (Valentino did not think that his little cackle was adorable at all ) before saying, “hi, I’m your dad’s coworker, it’s nice to meet you.” At the sound of the new voice, all six boys jolted up in shock, their eyes blown wide open. Immediately there was a cacophony of sound.
“So Bez didn’t imagine him?”
“I told you that he was real! You all didn’t believe me but I was right!”
“What’s a coworker?”
“He does look really pretty, Bez.” There were murmurs of agreement from the rest for that comment and Marc went bright red at the compliment.
Valentino rolled his eyes with a small smile and said, “alright, alright quiet down. Pick out a movie and we can have dinner in the living room.” All six gasped at the same time, Valentino never let them eat in the living room much less have dinner and watch a movie
Immediately, Franky yelled, “I call dibs on choosing,” before lunging at the tv remote, the rest of his brothers immediately started to complain like Valrntino knew they would. While they all started to argue and throw themselves at each other for the remote, Valentino dragged Marc into the kitchen.
“Where should I put my coat?” Marc asked awkwardly, looking a bit out of place in Valentino’s kitchen and still wearing his snow-drenched coat.
For some reason, the jacket was definitely a size too big and made Marc look even smaller than he already was. The cartoonishly large jacket along with his wide eyes, and nose still pink from the cold was objectively adorable and made him very unwanted in Valentino’s general presence.
Valentino scrunched up his face in displeasure, “you are going to be staying?”
“Yeah,” Marc said with a shrug, the fake embarrassment nowhere to be seen when he realised that Valentino had seen through it. Valentino knew that unless he physically threw the other man out of his house Marc wouldn’t be leaving. His stubbornness was a trait he had learnt to hate.
“Just put it on the chair then,” Valentino sighed and Marc’s face lit up.
“I knew you’d come around,” Marc said happily, dropping off his coat and setting down the bag at the kitchen table before striding into Valentino’s kitchen and rooting around his cabinets like he owned the place. “You probably haven’t had a shower yet, no? How about you take one while I get everything ready. I’ll make sure the kids stay alive too,” Marc said without turning away from where he was rummaging through his cabinets. Valentino stood there for a second, absolutely bamboozled at how Marc had made himself completely at home without even being invited. Marc had asked (read: told) him so confidently that he had actually debated on going and taking the damn shower before his mind rebooted.
“Wait a minute, what are you doing? You want to have dinner, okay fine the kids like you for some reason so I’ll let it happen, but ordering me around?” Valentino said, affronted. Marc turned around and shot him an unimpressed look as if he was the one being unreasonable.
“I’ll take care of the kids, you go shower,” Marc said again, more pointedly this time, and in defense of Valentino, he tried.
Valentino huffed and muttered, “Okay, but it’s not because you told me to, I want to take a shower so I’m going to shower.”
“Yes yes, this was all your idea. Now go shower you smell like shit,” Marc replied and Valentino sulked off. He entrusted his phone to Pecco and told them to scream loudly just in case something happens. It wasn’t like Marc would run off with his kids and even if he did Vale would only pray for the poor bastard’s soul.
The shower was a welcome break from the insanity of the past few days— not that he would ever tell Marc. He never realized just how exhausted he was while he was running on fumes, but then when he was all alone everything would come crashing down on him like a heavy bag of shit.
He stood under the boiling hot water for a few seconds, watching everything fog up with the heat before making some half assed attempt at cleaning himself. If his bath was exceptionally long on purpose that day, it was for the sole reason that the kids would have more time to accidentally murder Marc.
By the time he got out of the shower, the bathroom looked more like a sauna with steam still hanging in the air. The hazy tiredness returned but now it was something softer, more comfortable. He rooted through his closet before landing on a soft sweater that was comfortably oversized on him and a pair of sweatpants and calling it a day.
His bed was looking more and more enticing, the multitude of soft pillows and blankets attracting him like a siren’s song. Valentino had almost given in when he remembered that Marc was probably still in his house and he still had children. Mourning the sweet embrace of sleep, he trudged back down the staircase to see if his kids had killed Marc yet.
When he got down, the sight that met him was not in fact the sight of gleeful children running around with the blood of Marc on their hands. He stood there in shock for a second, looking at Marc, his kids, and then back at Marc. The children were all asleep on a huge dog-bed looking bean bag he had gotten as a joke while Marc was sprawled on the pull out while Cars was still playing . It was a holiday miracle that Marc had gotten them to sleep, most days it was a struggle to stop them all from running around for five seconds much less fall asleep.
It was no one’s business but his own if he stood there for a few minutes, watching his kids and Marc sleeping soundly. The other man was far away from the main dogpile that the kids had made for themselves. Which was a good idea on his part honestly, Bez was a kicker and Pecco rolled around too much for it to be comfortable.
He didn’t want to think about how this could have happened much much sooner if Marc hadn’t done what he did, but Marc was making his life hard as usual. Instead of lingering on it, he cleaned up (read: threw in the sink to deal with later) all the bowls that were neatly stacked on the coffee table and reheated the pasta that Marc had brought to scarf down for dinner— the pasta was edible and homemade which meant Marc was definitely not the one who made it— before he made his way back to linger by the door once more.
As he stared down at Marc’s peacefully, Valentino had half a mind to just wake him up and tell him to get the hell out but he hesitated. He peered out the window to find that the snow had worsened and it would be cruel to make Marc leave now he thought to himself, worrying his lip between his teeth. It would be unjust to kick him out, he rationalised before he threw a blanket over Marc and slipped in onto the couch. It wasn’t because he missed him that he had let him stay, he told himself, it was just because he didn’t want to leave his kids alone there and he didn’t want Bez to give him bruises from his kicking again. He wasn’t really sure he could believe himself anymore either.
Marc jolted up somewhere in the middle of the night, waking up Valentino as well from where he had migrated to lay on top of Marc. If Valentino was more awake, he would have laughed at the dumbstruck face that Marc pulled when he saw who was lying on him, but Valentino wasn’t barely awake if at all, so he just groaned out an unintelligible string of words that vaguely resembled “what the fuck are you doing, stay still asshole.”
“Get up Vale,” Marc murmured and tried to lift the other man off of him without Valentino waking up too much, but the other man only whined and clutched onto Marc harder, “come on Vale, you won’t like this in the morning.”
“No,” Valentino whined, still mostly asleep, “stay. I don’ want you to go.”
Marc smiled at the unfiltered sleepy sight of Valentino Rossi and settled back into the couch. His eyes trailed down almost like they were compelled to and he noticed that the sweater that Vale was wearing was so loose around his shoulders that it slipped down to show his protruding collar bones. He swiped his tongue over his lips, but he restrained himself— maybe he had lost Vale once but he wouldn’t make the same mistake again.
Once Marc had Vale again, Marc was going to find a way to make sure Vale never left again. But for now, he contented himself with a feather light kiss on Vale’s forehead and going back to sleep with Vale in his arms.