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Rex never thought he'd stand like that. Frozen and unable to process what was happening. He wasn't overwhelmed or overstimulated, no. He was staring at his girlfriend laying on the floor, a pool of blood surrounding her head like a halo. Except it wasn't gold, it was dark red and starting to stick to the floorboards. Rex let out a barely contained scream before dropping to his knees.
This was Rex's job; To lay on the floor, bleeding. Not Jesse's. Never Jesse's.
He was crying, not even caring about holding back the tears.
Fuck, how did Jesse always do this?
He fumbled to find a pulse point, nearly passing out from panic because he couldn't find one, and then finally he felt a heartbeat and he saw the slightest rising and falling of her chest. Her beautiful eyes were closed. God, Rex longed to see those beautiful big brown eyes again, to see them looking at Rex with the biggest heart-eyes known to mankind.
"Jesse- hey.. wake up?" He muttered as he called 112. "Jesse come on, I'm supposed to die first"
He held her, trying to stop the bleeding with a cloth, as he waited for the paramedics to arrive. He couldn't remember the last time he had been this panicked and emotional.
Fuck, I've really lost myself for her, huh?
He heard Jesse let out a soft groan, and a small sprout of hope planted in his gut. Maybe she'd pull through. Maybe she'd get to live on to Rex's final days, maybe she'd take care of the flowers in the apartment's shared garden after he died. Maybe she wouldn't.
Maybe this was the last time Rex would get to hold her while she was breathing. The thought made him cry again. He could barely see through his tears, but he could see that the tears fell onto Jesse's perfect skin. His hand moved to brush against her cheek repeatedly, as if reassuring himself she was still here with him.
Maybe, when all of this was over, Rex would ask Jesse to marry him.
˖.𖥔 ݁ ˖ ⊹ ࣪ ˖
Rex walked into the hospital room, his eyes wet with tears and his cheeks red from stress. When he noticed Jesse was awake, he quickly put his usual facade back on and smiled. He hoped he looked much braver than he felt, because he felt like he was shattered into pieces.
"Hi" Rex simply said, forcing his voice to sound stable, despite it always having the same flat tone. He leaned against the doorframe, his body not cooperating with his desire to move closer to his girlfriend laying in the bed, staring up at him with those gorgeous brown eyes he had longed to see again for all of the 5 hours that he had been waiting.
"Reeeex!!" Jesse's voice sounded loopy and so innocently happy. Rex couldn't take it. He fought the urge to just rush out and leave. Instead he took two steps closer and let out a lengthy exhale.
"Hey, you... you're okay?" Rex asked, hating how his voice shook slightly. Jesse probably didn't notice, she was high as a kite.
"Yeah.. banged my head pretty hard.. concussion and 14 stitches in the back of my head.. but.."
"could've been worse?" Rex suggested when he noticed Jesse couldn't think of a way to end her sentence.
Jesse nodded giddily. "Coulda been worse" She grinned at Rex like a kid, and it reminded him of the times he'd visited his baby sister. Not so baby anymore, Charlotte had matured a lot during her Leukemia period. And she was turning 17 this year, so not so little anymore.
"Yeah.. umm.. what do you need? Water.. more medicine?" He muttered the question so softly that he wasn't sure if Jesse had heard him.
"I need... I need you" Jesse said back, still grinning happily but there seemed to be real longing in her eyes. Rex choked up and stood frozen again. The same way as when he'd found her.
"Gimme kiss!" She giggled giddily, making grippy hands towards him, expecting him to come over and kiss her.
He couldn't. He was paralysed and couldn't bring himself to move. His breathing quickened slightly and his hands started shaking again. He really hated feeling this helpless, not able to give Jesse what she so clearly wanted, and maybe even needed.
Lucky for Rex, two familiar faces walked, Lunive Thompson and her boyfriend, Kimi Antonelli. Lunive and Jesse happened to be sisters, and Rex and Kimi happened to be best friends and teammates.
After taking one look at Rex's pale and tired face, Kimi scoffed softly. "Rex mate, you gotta sleep" Kimi spoke in Italian, their preferred way of speaking. Rex huffed out a humorless laugh as he watched Lunive hug her sister, giving the Canadian girl all the attention she clearly needed.
"You know I can't. I'll probably go for a run though, I feel like I'm gonna puke just by seeing Jesse like this" The Fiorentian teen kept his voice down, his eyes locked onto Jesse's perfect smile, even though she was drugged the fuck up.
"Do whatever makes you be able to come back into this room" The boy from Bologna sent an apologetic smile towards Rex, but he didn't see it, his eyes tearing up again. Fuck, he really could not handle this.
"Just.. make up a good excuse" Rex mumbled, the Italian words rolling off his tongue. He didn't even see the lustful look appearing in Jesse's eyes, hell, he didn't even notice that the heart monitor was beating faster. Jesse was infatuated with him, and he didn't even know it.
˖.𖥔 ݁ ˖ ⊹ ࣪ ˖
A few minutes later he was sprinting down the street. He knew he should jog, that was probably better for his knees anyway, but he couldn't bring himself to stop sprinting. He wanted to continue running until he collapsed and didn't ever wake up again. When he caught himself having that thought, he pushed harder. It was getting better again, so why was seeing Jesse like that enough to send him back into this sick spiral of hating himself and his life. He was supposed to be strong, smart, cool, mysterious, funny, sassy, cocky, arrogant, too cool to care.. So why was he feeling the exact opposite? And why was he constantly falling back into the same habits again and again since he was 11?
He remembered his first attempt vividly, he still had the scars from it. He would've been successful if it hadn't been for Miles Romano. A British-Italian-Nigerian boy who was a year older than Rex, but had been one of his best mates for ages. It was like fate when they met, Rex was 11, Miles 12. Rex had been depressed, Miles had been a ray of sun. Rex hadn't been seeing Kimi much around this time, they both raced in different leagues, Rex worldwide and Kimi only European. Eitherway, Miles Romano had dropped out of school to focus on youtube, whatever that may mean for a 12 year old British school boy. Rex had been sceptical of it, but all that scepticism disappeared once Romano landed a role in the sidemen as their new found little brother. Dropping out gave Miles the opportunity to travel to his to other nationalities; Nigerian and Italian. So in Italy, he met Rex. The boy had just lost his mother, and his father was quite obviously abusive. To this day Miles still wondered how no one else noticed. Not even Pascale Leclerc. Miles felt bad for Rex, so he got to know the Italian boy better and realised that this scared little boy was actually super tough, cool, talented and fun to be around with. Miles helped build Rex's confidence back up, and stuck with him when he was complaining about bullies again. But then on that dreaded evening in 2020, his first attempt was close to a success. It was June 8th, just a few days before his mother's birthday and her death date. He'd lost an important race, and it was all too much for 14 year old Rex Tabino.
So he slit his wrists. The left wrist was less deep than the right, because he'd cut into the right first and his hands had been shaking too much to have finished the job on his left wrist.
Miles had found him, blood streaming down his wrists, staining his sleeves and pants that his arms has been resting on.
Rex couldn't remember much after that. Maybe that was for the better, because if he did remember it, he'd probably think about it a million times a day.
Rex puffed out short breaths, really not able to go on longer without collapsing, so to his dismay, he slowed down into a jog, then a walk and before he knew it his hands were on his knees, his back slightly arched as he looked up to see where he was, before relaxing and panting down to the pavement.
He loved suffering, it made him feel alive. But not the unhealthy suffering, not the one where you almost bleed to death. No, he loved the kind that comes with pushing yourself to the very brink and feeling the rewarding muscle aches the next day. Muscle aches meant you were getting stronger, and maybe that was exactly what Rex needed to proof as a diabetic F1 driver. He was strong, people just tended to not adress that because of his diabetes. It was either 'the diabetic driver' or the 'young phenom' or anything in that direction, in articles. Never cool nicknames as drivers like Charles, Max and Carlos had. Even Kimi had a cooler nickname than him ever since the boy from Bologna had won a race earlier that year. It genuinely just seemed like they refused to acknowledge anything great about Rex except for his age and the fact that he was achieving all this with diabetes.
Freshly twenty, diabetic, autistic- The media had a field day whenever anything happened to Rex, good or bad. But in every article, either positive or negative, they still managed to paint him as a weakling, not necessarily with words but purely by vibe and weird way of twisting sentences into something slightly different. Rex hated it, but he had learned quite quickly that media never changes.
He rarely did short form interviews except for the ones he was mandatory to do every race week. 2 every day and atleast twice with the official F1 channel. The rest of the interviews he could plan himself. And of course there were the media things for Mercedes, but he'd found himself grow fond of the 3 admins that there were. One for the fun/welcoming stuff, one for the more serious stuff and one for the long form videos. He loved long form videos, whenever a podcast (he loved the ones with gay hosts) reached out to him, he tended to say yes. It really depended on what their interview style was though. Rex was a bit of a yapper, and somehow he was easy to listen to even though his voice was almost constantly the same tone. He could easily give an answer to questions and somehow make that answer an hour long. Even though the ending of the answer was probably unrelated or not so much related to the question to begin with.
Rex checked his phone, not sure how exactly he had run, because he'd mostly ran without a destination in sight. He checked the time and realized he'd ran a full on sprint for about half an hour. Rex was fast, like really fast, so he was surprised he'd had the stamina to do that. Maybe he'd need to take a cab back to the hospital though, when the adrenaline fully wore off he would probably not be able to even walk properly..
˖.𖥔 ݁ ˖ ⊹ ࣪ ˖
After a long cab ride back to the hospital, there had been an insane traffic jam for whatever reason, Rex walked back into the room that Jesse was in. She was asleep now, Lunive holding her hand while her head was also resting on the bed. Rex was sure her back would ache when she woke up. Kimi was also still in the room, but in a corner on his phone, seemingly tense. Rex felt for the guy, he barely talked with Jesse, because he was either busy with his own work as F1 driver, talking with Lunive or busy with Rex. Of couse sometimes the three of them hung out together but even then Kimi tended to talk Italian to Rex, which made Jesse annoyed, so the three of them were barely ever seen together. Rex also tended to seperate love from friends, he wasn't entirely sure why. Kimi said that for Rex it probably felt like protecting the relation- and friendship, and Rex just assumed Kimi was right.
Lunive woke up with a slight groan when she heard Rex and Kimi talk, even though they were trying to be quiet. Lunive stood up and said to Rex thaf it was his turn to stay with Jesse. He nodded and sat down on the chair, hesitating to grab his girlfriend's hand. God, why was this so difficult? It was just a hand for fuck's sake, why did he care so much? His hand twitched a little and then he forced himself to hold her hand. Immediately he could see that the heart monitor slowed down a little. So even unconsciously, Jesse recognized his touch and calmed down because of it.. the thought made Rex's head spin with something he couldn't quite place, but that might've also been a hypo, because before he knew it his stomach was churning with the usual acidic pains that came with too-low blood sugar.
"Cazzo.. why now?" Rex muttered under his breath, the Italian worda rolling off his tongue. Fortunately for him, Lunive didn't understand and Kimi hadn't heard. He hated it whenever people go unnecessarily worried about him. Maybe not unnecessarily right now, but he certainly did not want to worry these people more than they'd already been.
Rex whispered apologetically: "Hey Jess.. stay calm, I just need to fix my sugar real quick, my hand will be right back", his hand left Jesse's weak grip and reached for his phone so he could check his app. He was still trying not to puke, and to ignore the pounding headache pulsing behind his eyes tht was making his vision blur. He heard Jesse make a slight whining noise, what indicated that she was at least somewhat aware, but Rex was more focused on trying not to die, or at least, not end up in a hospital bed as well.
He mumbled sorry over and over again like a mantra, hoping to calm Jesse down, but it only seemed to stress her out more. Her hand was weakly gripping around in the air as if to find Rex's wrist. Eventually she succeeded, and at the same time Rex let out a sigh of relief after adminstrating a glucagon dose. His hand found Jesse's again and this time Rex was sure he heard her mutter 'better' under her breath.
"I love you, Jesse" He smiled, his voice monotone as usual, but it made Jesse smile, who was gradually becoming more aware of her surroundings.
"Love y..you too, Rex" She slurred, a goofy grin being shot back up at him again. Rex smiled. They'd be okay.. of course they would.