Chapter Text
He had been out late the night before, probably (absolutely) later than he should have been before a traveling day, but it was the first time he’d seen Jamie, Joey, and Kane since all three had disappeared into the quagmire of scouting talent for development, and one drink led to seven, until he was stumbling back to his room smelling more than faintly of a delightful mixture of tequila, gin, and whiskey. He vaguely remembered attempting to take off his shoes, giving up, and then, annoyed at his own drunk failings, angrily ignoring a text and throwing his phone across the room.
He woke up at an hour much earlier than he would have liked to, bile in his mouth, and managed to make it to the bathroom before he puked all over himself; he had turned the shower on then, clothes and all, and just laid in the stream for a few minutes until he smelled less like the worst kind of leftovers. He still felt like garbage, but a quick glance at the clock on the microwave (why were they always visible from the bathroom?) told him he had no time to wallow, so he stripped off his wet clothes, tossed them in the trash, and scrubbed the rest of the previous night off himself.
He shrugged into the most comfortable sweats he owned, fighting the urge to ruin these with the rest of the contents of his stomach, when his phone buzzed insistently. He was in zero kind of mood to deal with the rest of humanity, but he dragged himself to the corner where he thought drunk him had lobbed his device, and suddenly his hangover was the least of his problems.
He thumped to the ground, scrolling through an inbox that read like a card for a pay per view: Nikki, Brie, Paige, Jimmy, Dolph, Kevin, Cesaro, Cena; all of the messages read various forms of “I’m so sorry” that made his throat close up and his already throbbing head pound. The last time he’d gotten this many messages, it had been for Dusty—he choked down another round of vomit, this one not entirely fueled by alcohol, and continued scrolling, trying to banish the anxiety that train of thought induced. Finally, close to the bottom, he found one from Hunter. His heart, already halfway into his intestines, plummeted all the way to his feet. It took all of his self-control to force himself to read even the snippet his phone displayed.
“Seth—there’s been an accident. Dean and Roman…”
He inhaled, head between his knees, shakily, all thoughts of hangover gone for the moment. His entire existence centered on that single line and his thundering heartbeat, his finger hovering in suspended animation over the message. He was breathing hard and fast, one hand clutching at his hair, body curling in on itself as if for protection from what he had just read. His eyes flickered down, desperately seeking some sense of normalcy, some sense of stability in this suddenly fucked-up universe, but the message under Hunter’s, timestamped fifty-five minutes before, made him throw his phone again, this time in his hurry to make sure he reached at least a trash can to lose the little control he had gained over his stomach.
When the retching finally ceased, the shuddering continued, and the wrestler wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, barely acknowledging the tears that were too numerous to have originated solely from the force of the vomit. He flopped onto his back, staring haphazardly into the fluorescent hotel lamp, trying to burn out the image from his phone screen that stubbornly floated in front of his eyes.
“Trip
Seth—there’s been an accident. Dean and Roman…”
Dean
Hey dickbasket. Meet up w me n Roman at…”
As soon as he could manage to move without setting off another round of spasms in his gut, he stood, grabbed his keys, and hauled his ass to his car.
He was rehearsing his entrance into the waiting room over and over again, sitting in his car like a fucking moron, paralyzed with fear of more than just what would happen when he walked in.
It isn’t your place anymore, the nasty little voice in his head whispered, the same nasty little voice that had kept him pinned to his seat for the last twenty minutes, shaking with terror and uncertainty. The dark-haired man groaned and slammed his head forward, banging his forehead into the steering wheel and smashing his forearm clunkily into the vent and radio. It did no good for the headache still throbbing in his temples, but the instant of sharp pain seared into his miasma of indecision and stabbed him with some clarity.
If it were him in that hospital, he knew they would have been inside before the car even stopped.
He closed his eyes, feeling the ever-present and uncomfortably comfortable and familiar guilt wash over him, luxuriating in his own self-pity for a moment, and feeling another layer of guilt fall onto the pile with a crash that may have been his face plunking farther down the wheel to rest on the horn. The physical pain he could handle; that was a realm with which he was intimately familiar. The other kind of pain, the one that danced around the edges of his thoughts and vision and took control of his chest with a frenzied kind of grip that felt like his bones and organs were crushing together and he couldn’t draw the air he needed no matter how much he gulped—he’d rather land a hundred suplexes on his face and then suffer a kick to the groin than deal with that.
Or keep dealing with it, he thought with a sinking heart. He sucked in a breath and sat up, angry now though no particular target, fairly kicking the car door open and lurching to his feet. He’d felt that way for what seemed like interminable hours now and sitting in the car did nothing but encourage the simmering shock and fear into a rolling boil of self-blame, remorse, and absolute panic, which helped no one. He jammed his sunglasses further back on his nose and threw up his sweatshirt’s hood, doing his best to hide both the trademark blonde streak and the rats-nest nature of his uncombed hair.
His confidence lasted the whole way to the emergency room entrance, when both his nausea and his uncertainty reared their ugly heads again. He faltered at the door, one hand on the handle, then decided he had come this far and couldn’t very well slink back to his car now; taking a deep breath, he pulled the door open and walked into a sterile and surprisingly vacant room. It wasn’t austere, but décor was decidedly sparse; two nurses quietly talked over the counter, while a third typed and kept glancing at her coworkers and then at a corner, where a dark figure slumped in a very irregular posture in an attempt at sleep. Seth’s heart skipped twice because he recognized the slump. If he was totally honest with himself, deep in the slimy black hole he called his soul, it had skipped the second time out of disappointment. This person was not who he had wanted to see in the waiting room, because that meant—
He shook his head, regretting when his teeth clicked together and reminded him of his still-very-powerful hangover. Belatedly, he realized that one of the nurses was approaching him, and furthermore he realized that he was still standing stupidly in the doorway. She bumped a chair on her way, and the clatter of metal on metal made Seth cringe and stirred the lightly dozing man in the other row of seats. He bolted upright, wild-eyed, and stared right at Seth, who had to choke back a sudden wave of horrified queasiness at the state of his face.
“Roman,” he murmured, voice hoarse, and took a step toward his friend—his brother—then paused. The Samoan’s expression was unreadable, but then again, there wasn’t much that was left to be read. His face was one giant bruise, a swelling of livid red and blue and purple that spread from his left cheek to his jaw, one eye puffed up and closed, lower lip split and swollen as much as the rest of his cheek. Even the eye on the right side of his face, the one that hadn’t ballooned, was a little puffy and red-rimmed. The man shifted, and his dark hair fell over the mess, but Seth knew the shock and dismay was still written all over his face.
The nurse had paused halfway between the two men, and she cleared her throat to gain attention. “Excuse me, sir, are you here to be admitted?”
His gaze still locked on the seated man, Seth swallowed and shook his head. His throat was still dry and his voice was even more hoarse than it had been when he addressed his friend, but he managed an “I’m here with him.” He would never really be sure after that how he got to Roman’s side, but the next thing he knew he was next to the man he cared about probably more than his own family, stomach churning, head and heart throbbing in unequal rhythm.
A frank “Fuck,” was all he could say, even after a long moment of appraisal; the other made a harsh barking noise that could have been a laugh. Roman’s face looked even worse up close, lacerated and stitched back together, and from the upward angle he had, Seth could see a long, rectangular bruise that started at his neck and slashed down his chest, and he held one of his arms at an awkward 90 degrees to his chest, a wrapped icepack tucked into the crook and held against his ribs by his elbow.
He released a long, shuddering breath and sank down next to his former teammate, burying his face in his hands and retreating into the hoodie for just a second, just a second of dark solitude. The smell of his breath caught in his cupped hands and he gagged, quickly dropping his hood and flopping forward to put his head between his knees. The last thing Roman needed right now was for Seth to hurl all over him. After his nausea had subdued a bit, he became vaguely aware of a soft, hacking laugh next to him, and he turned to see the other man shaking with the force of restraining himself. Seth, despite his undignified position, glared at him, and Roman shrugged helplessly, cutting off his laughter with a sudden hiss of pain.
The thinner man sat up quickly, scrutinizing him. Roman’s hiss subsided, and he began breathing normally again, though he growled quietly when he shifted and put a hand to the icepack. “Fuckin—not doing anything,” he muttered, shifting it sideways and pinning it back against himself with the opposite elbow. The two sat in silence for a while, both digesting the presence of the other.
“Man, what happened?” Seth finally asked, unsure how else to begin. He shifted in his seat, angling more comfortably toward Roman and slinking down in the chair. It was an unconscious defense mechanism, a supporting surface to lean into when he heard what he knew he wouldn’t want to. The Samoan sighed, rubbing his free hand along the bruise on his face, stopping to finger a slice near his jaw. He shifted again with another groan, this time turning the ice pack sideways before tucking it back into the space between his arm and chest.
“I was driving, and I was sober,” he started, voice cautiously flat, “Dean wanted to go to a bar closer to the arena, but we made a wrong turn. Asshole was tipsy and didn’t read the directions on his phone right. Finally straightened ourselves out and we were at a light—the other driver barreled through red, I didn’t have time to do anything, just smashed right into the passenger side—fuck, Seth, I couldn’t do anything!” His voice had risen and gotten shakier with each sentence, until the normally unflappable man was practically in hysterics, gasping for breath between each sentence, good eye glittering shiny with unshed tears. Seth grabbed the hand closest to him and squeezed, not sure what else to do, but apparently it was the right thing because Roman sucked in a breath and squeezed back hard, fighting to gain control once more. In a few moments, he was calm again, calm enough to continue, but his eye was still wet.
“I was on the opposite side, so I didn’t get the brunt of the force. Smacked my head into the window hard enough to crack it, seat belt snapped my collarbone and a couple ribs, but they don’t think I need surgery, and I passed the concussion test.” His speech was picking up pace, and Seth squeezed his hand again, though his grip faltered at the next sentence. “Dean—Dean’s still in surgery. He was in the passenger seat, he took the worst of it, and—fuckin moron didn’t have his seat belt on, he dropped his phone and he was trying to grab it from under the seat—”
A wall of guilt crushed Seth like a knee to the gut and this time it was Roman supporting him, because even though he knew consciously it wasn’t his fault, he couldn’t help but think if I had only answered that text last night… He only realized he was hyperventilating when the big hand of the other wrestler came down on his shoulder, shaking him enough to jolt him back to reality. He gasped in a deep breath, lungs still tight in the vise of self-loathing, and coughed until he tasted bile.
Finally, the fit passed and he turned back to Roman. “H-how long until he’s out?”
The other man’s head shake was far from encouraging. “The nurse said it would be at least a couple more hours, and that was at least three hours ago. They keep telling me to sleep, but every time I close my eyes I just keep seeing the flash and hearing the screech.” Roman turned to Seth, his good eye now watering openly. “Seth—thanks for coming, man. Just… I wasn’t sure if anyone would. Dean’s—a tough dude to get to know. I know he’d… It means a fuckin lot that you’re here.”
Seth felt his own eyes get hot, and he finally let it sink in. His fears had been unfounded, he had no reason to be worried to come here. Roman had—had actually wanted him here, had needed someone at his side who knew Dean as well as he did. Far from hating him for being so busy lately, Roman wanted him here. There was no shame this time when the tears began trickling down his face, and he leaned closer to Roman, sliding his hand farther up to grip his forearm.
“I’ll always come when either of you needs me,” he choked, equal parts gratitude at Roman’s acceptance and fear for Dean in his voice. “You’re my brother, man, and Dean…”
Roman exerted a gentle pressure on his arm, cutting him off and letting him know he didn’t need to continue. He knew well enough what Dean and Seth meant to each other. Seth was almost completely overcome then, but he stuck his jaw out and finished part of his thought, if not the whole thing.
“We’ll always be brothers.”
With a final squeeze, he let go of his brother’s arm and flopped back into his own seat, exhausted already. He cast his eyes over to Roman, and now that the tension was at least a little bit broken, he managed a chuckle.
“Dude, you look like shit,” and Roman flicked his wrist over to punch Seth in the arm.
“You were in a car crash, and I look like shit?"
Their smiles were genuine, if short lived. The banter was a cover for their inner terror--their best friend lay less than 300 feet away, his life literally hanging in the balance. They talked a little bit more, before Roman finally started to doze for real, and Seth settled into a more comfortable position for the long wait. He was going to be here when Dean got out of surgery, and—and what? He really wasn’t sure, but he was sure as hell going to be here for him.
This time.