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"Ay caramba."
"You know Ali, swearing doesn't exactly help the healing process," Van Dijk said, walking into the darkened bedroom with a tray in his hands.
"What am I supposed to say then? 'Woe is me'? You have to accept that swear words are necessary sometimes." Alisson buried his head in his pillow, trying to muffle the sounds that only he could hear. "This has got to be the worst migraine in the history of migraines."
Van Dijk had to admit that Alisson had a point. The goalkeeper had been preparing for training along with all the other players, when suddenly he'd slammed his hands over his ears and pleaded to invisible entities to just make it stop.
The others had panicked, thinking something horrible had happened. It was nothing of the sort; the cause was a simple, mundane migraine.
In his life, Van Dijk had seen three kinds of sick people. There were the grumpy ones, who wouldn’t even admit they were sick until they nearly passed out; the chill ones, who would accept they were ill but try to handle everything themselves until they couldn’t anymore; and the dramatic people whose illnesses could be the subject of a soap opera episode.
Unfortunately for Van Dijk, Alisson was one of the dramatic ones. More specifically, he was the clingy version who would stick to their caretaker within sight like a baby koala. And even more unfortunately for Van Dijk, who just happened to be Alisson’s caretaker for now, Alisson happened to cling to people like a baby koala even when he was the picture of health. So one could only imagine the clinginess when he wasn’t.
Ever since Klopp had let Alisson out of the day’s training, the goalkeeper had clung to Van Dijk as if it would save his life. But once he’d finally managed to get Alisson in bed, he’d buried himself under the pillows and refused to come out. And even though Van Dijk had to get ice packs, something in him always managed to feel terrible when Alisson begged him to stay.
Van Dijk sat on the side of the bed, arranging the ice packs. “This should help. Still don’t want to eat anything?”
Alisson burrowed further under the covers, almost disappearing into them. “No. It just hurts, it’s terrible Virg. Who invented the migraine, and who sent it here?”
“Dunno.” Van Dijk chuckled at the thought of somebody literally inventing a migraine. Alisson’s bluntness in the face of pain sometimes reminded Van Dijk of a small child. “But if somebody ever tried to do that, I’d give them a talking-to.”
Van Dijk wrapped the blanket tighter around Alisson, fluffing the pillows for what seemed to be the thousandth time. Tall as he was, Alisson seemed to shrink at least a foot in height whenever in distress, appearing more like a lanky teenager than a grown man.
What a strange combination we haveth here! Van Dijk smirked, imagining Lijnders phrasing his mundane problems in Shakespearian prose. It was a habit that Lijnders had recently taken up as a hobby, bringing the other players and staff confusion and sometimes amusement. The aura of a lad, and the curiosities of a small child, befall this ill man’s grown body.
“I’m surprised that Bobby and Flaco haven’t found some excuse to get out of training,” Van Dijk noted, leaning against the pillows as well. He knew that he couldn’t afford to get too tired, as he would still take part in training later.
Alisson shook his head in wry amusement. “They probably think that migraines are contagious. I love those two to death, but man, can they be idiots.”
“I feel the same about Cody, Gini and Nathan. And they probably think the same about me,” Van Dijk chuckled. He gently elbowed Alisson, tousling his hair. “Just like you. I like you Ali, but honestly…hiding in the showers to try and scare me wasn’t your brightest idea.”
“I wholeheartedly agree, I don’t have the best ideas when I’m desperate. But you’re no exception to the rule.” Alisson held up his fingers, listing the incidents one by one. “What about the time you jumped through my kitchen window, or when you bought a whole bunch of sweaters without trying them on first? Or the time you snuck me into a secret garden to eat caramels and—”
“Okay, okay, I get it!” Van Dijk rolled his eyes. He was a little annoyed, yet slightly relieved that Alisson was talking again; a sure sign that the migraine was subsiding. “So maybe I’m not a walking masterpiece or Michelangelo statue. But love is blind, and love hath taken multiple skins; as a ghostly apparition may.”
“Virgil?”
“Yeah?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”