Work Text:
“That felt really good,” Dean said, watching himself on the TV screen, levering Rollins hard into the turnbuckle, forcing the little weasel to make a flailing tag to Harper.
“I'll bet,” Roman replied. The match played on, with Harper evading Dean's offense and planting him onto the canvas. “Figure that part was a little less satisfying.”
“Good eye,” he deadpanned, and shifted against the foot of the bed, carefully eyeballing the peeling label on his beer bottle, instead of continuing to follow the broadcast.
He didn't need the replay to see himself crawling across the mat toward Seth's corner like they were still brothers. The camera probably hadn't been at the right angle to catch Seth's face when he recognized what Dean was doing a heartbeat before he'd registered it himself, but he wasn't taking any chances. There had been a beat before his head cleared when he'd have sworn that Seth looked gut-punched before he recovered and that gloating little sneer twisted his mouth; he didn't want to know whether he'd imagined it. He didn't need fresh evidence of all the ways he couldn't get past Seth, and he was way too fucking tired to try to get his head around what it would mean if it'd been real.
He set his bottle aside and moved to stretch his legs at a different angle. He wasn't ever going to be the biggest guy on the roster, but he was still bigger than the person they designed airline seats and economy rentals to fit. He leaned back against the mattress and tilted his head to look up and over at Roman, sprawled across the bed behind him and looking just as beat by the day of travel.
The big guy caught him looking and extended a fist that Dean reached up to meet with his own, bumping their knuckles together in a series of restless punches, lighter than he'd have done in the ring, where they'd both have tape on their hands and adrenaline in their veins. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that the screen was full of Seth, vined around him and grinding the blade of his forearm against his face.
“You ever have to remind yourself you hate him?” he heard himself ask. He hadn't planned to bring it up. Didn't want to talk about Seth at all, except maybe to say again how gratifying it had been to feel him and his stooges and his swamp creature crumple under that elbow drop.
Roman opened his hand and, on the next swing, caught Dean's fist in his open palm, warm fingers curving over the back of his hand, for a moment squeezing tight enough to dig his own blunt fingernails into his palm. “No,” he said softly. “Hurts to remember what he is, but it's not something I ever forget.”
“Oh, shit. Stupid question.” He tapped his free hand against his temple. “After 'Mania, 'course you can't forget. Him prancing around with the Title.”
“Yeah, that shit doesn't help,” Roman admitted with a rueful smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. “Mostly, though, I think about how he fucked you up.”
Dean felt himself stiffen – body automatically prepared to cut and run, whether it was what the rest of him wanted or not – and swallowed down hard on the urge to shrink away. He'd clawed out a career for himself mostly by refusing to back down from half of the stupid shit a wiser guy would've dodged, but holding the soft gaze his brother leveled at him now was where he had to tap out. He dropped his eyes to their hands as Roman's grip on him shifted, thumb stroking over the back of his knuckles.
“How much fun he had working you over," Roman continued, "and how I couldn't do a fucking thing to stop it.”
On-screen, the announce team exploded as Roman flattened Seth with a spear, and folded him up into the cover.
“Least you're making up for lost time now?” he offered.
Roman chuckled. “Gonna need to do that a bunch more times. He's got a big tab to settle up.” The hand that wasn't basically just holding Dean's reached out to ruffle through his hair, fingers curling into the strands. “You're pretty important to me.”
“Ugh. Shut up,” he protested. Roman had never understood – was too unbroken to really get it, probably – how it scraped him raw to hear that shit like it was a simple, straightforward truth. Still, when he tugged gently at his hair, Dean tipped his head to go with it and ended up facing the TV again. In the ring, Roman dropped his head onto his shoulder, hands spanning the space between Dean's own shoulder blades, pulling him in tight.
“Not happening, brother.” Roman pressed a kiss to the back of his fist, and this time Dean didn't feel like taking a swing was his only safe move.