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The first time Roman could remember Dean cooking for him was back when they were both starting out in FCW.
It was a Sunday morning. Roman lay on a soft surface. He tried to move, detecting spots of stickiness. He opened his eyes: right. Dean's living room in Dean's filthy apartment. All the newbies had been out drinking and the two of them staggered back here. Roman twisted and felt the remains of the six pack he had been dragging behind him half the way here.
He smelled something. Partially burning but partially food-like. He peeled himself off the sofa and padded barefoot to the living room. He had lost his shirt along the way, or...
He saw Dean at the stove, also barefoot, wearing HIS SHIRT.
“That's my shirt,” Roman said.
“Oh, shit. I found it on the floor, thought it was mine. Sorry,” Dean blushed. “Here, I made grilled cheese.” He scooped something off of a battered skillet on the stove with a slightly melted plastic spatula onto a paper plate and handed it over.
It was mostly black on the outside. Something yellow was oozing out from the middle. But he was hungover, and hungry, and Mox was looking pretty damn cute wearing his shirt. So Roman shrugged and bit in, distracted.
“OWW!” He spit it out, feeling the sting of the molten cheese on his tongue.
“Dude, it just came off the stove. What were you thinking?”
Roman didn't want to say it. “Just hungry!”
Dean grinned. “Only the best for any guest of mine.”
The next time it happened, FCW's “Street Team” (aka the company-sanctioned hazing all the new people had to participate in) had just finished hanging up seven hundred goddamn flyers of Sheamus's stupid face all over the suburbs of Tampa, and they were all angry and tired and hungry. Seth wanted to go out for sushi.
“I will punch you in the nuts if you drag me to that fucking raw fish place,” Bo swore. They were piled five men into a Bronco and the air conditioning was broken.
Roman was not in the mood for this. He tried to calm them all down. “We can find something everyone likes.”
“I could grill,” Dean suggested. He was driving.
The car went silent.
“No really. I got one out on the patio now. We go get some dogs, some buns, some beers, we hang out at my place, you don't gotta eat any raw fish, just weird pig parts.”
“...man, I could go for a hot dog right now,” Brad piped in from where he was wedged in the middle of the backseat.
Roman sighed with relief.
So. They all trooped into the Publix and filled a cart. The manager came out to tell them to quit horsing around in the condiment aisle after someone lobbed a thing of mustard at Roman and it busted open in his hands. But they got their chips and hot dogs and beer and baby carrots and Twinkies and got it all up the stairs to Dean's.
Sure enough, since the last time Roman had passed out drunk on his couch, Dean had gotten a little gas grill out on his patio. He also tidied up a little--all the dirty laundry was corralled somewhere other than the living room, and he had taken out the trash recently.
“Damn, looks nice in here.”
“Well, can't bring a date home to a nest made out of empty beer cans and Hostess Fruit Pie wrappers,” Dean said.
“You brought me here,” Roman piped up.
“Who wants hot dogs?” Seth interrupted, the last up the stairs into the apartment and the one with the bag of meat.
“Everybody wants a fucking hot dog,” Dean said, snatching the bag. He headed out to the patio to cook and nobody said anything else about dates the rest of the night.
It happened all the time: Roman would wonder about what to do for dinner, or breakfast after the two of them had crashed somewhere, or any time of day, and Dean would offer to cook. Nothing fancy, but competently done. Scrambled eggs. Spaghetti. Whatever he had in his fridge was Roman’s if he wanted it, even when they were both scraping the barrel at the end of the month before payday. It was good to have a friend like that, even if the way they looked at each other and communicated wordlessly raised some eyebrows among the other guys in FCW.
Then they got called up to the main roster. It was a blur of a time: always on the road, figuring out how to be The Shield instead of indie chucklefucks, working bigger crowds than they had ever seen in their lives.
It took its toll. But Dean kept being Dean.
One time Roman had a fever. He didn't want anyone to know he had a fever, but he did. Seth had the single room that night but by all rights Dean should have made him switch with Roman. But by the way Dean stomped into the room, it was clear he had not done so.
“I'm going to get you sick. We can't both get sick,” Roman said, his grey eyes bloodshot from coughing.
“Fuck that. No friend of mine's gonna cough themself to death in a hotel room. Here, I got some stuff from the store across the parking lot.” Dean pulled cough medicine and Vick's Vaporub and some ramen noodles and some other soup-looking instant foods out of a bag.
“What is all that?”
“We got a microwave, don't we? I'm making you chicken soup. My mom's recipe.”
“Didn't think your mom was much of a cook.”
“She wasn't. But we lived in a motel for a while so she got good at figuring out what you could make with only a microwave. So. Rodeway Soup.”
Roman laughed weakly. Dean pulled more things out of the bag. Sprite. Tissues.
“Is that really all for me?”
“Yeah, dude.” Dean shook his head like it was a dumb question.
“Can you turn the TV on?”
“Thought you'd never ask.” Dean opened a Sprite bottle and shuffled over to the bed where Roman lay. “Sit up, drink this.” He helped Roman to sit up against a pile of pillows and handed him the drink. Then he clicked the TV on with the comically large remote. “What do you want to watch?”
“I always watched Return of the Jedi when I was sick as a kid. Maybe a movie or something.” He took the bottle from Dean and sipped some. It felt good on his throat.
Dean flipped channels until he found one showing Kill Bill Vol. 1. “Is this ok?” he asked. Roman nodded, feeling pathetic for how good it felt to have someone take care of him. He drank some more Sprite, then closed his eyes and listened to The Bride kicking the shit out of Vernita Green.
He must have fallen asleep because he woke up to Dean perched next to him, absorbed in the movie and quoting it along with the TV. “I've allowed you to keep your wicked life for two reasons...” Dean's lip curled.
It felt nice to have a warm presence at his side, Roman thought. He rolled onto his side.
“Hey there,” Dean said, seeing Roman's eyes flutter open. “Soup's ready.”
Now that he thought about it, Roman's stomach growled a little. “I'll give it a try,” he said.
Dean brought him a hotel coffee mug filled with a steaming substance, and a plastic spoon to eat it with. “Try it. It's not too hot, it's ok. Dive in.” Then he stood there, expectantly.
Roman cautiously took the mug. He smelled it: soup-like, with a hint of rameny goodness. And a hint of mint? And lemon, maybe? He sipped at the broth and fished out some noodles. It was instantly soothing to his stomach.
“This ain't bad, D. What's in it?”
“Secret recipe, dude,” he grinned.
Roman ate all of the first mug of soup and then Dean made him seconds. When he slowed down on that, Dean brought a blue jar over to the bed.
“What the hell is that?” Roman asked.
“I told you before. Vicks.”
“Come on, I'm not five.”
“Take your damn shirt off. Trust me. I had to be my own doctor for a long time--I know you would never let me stitch you up, but I got this down.” Dean grabbed at the hem of Roman's shirt and started lifting it up. Roman felt a flare of heat under his skin. Probably the fever.
“Geez! I got it!” He grabbed his own shirt from Dean and stripped it off.
It had been a long time since he had anyone forcibly take care of him. He liked it more than he would admit.
Dean scooped up a big, greasy wad of Vicks on his fingers and leaned into Roman's space. He put his fingers on his chest, right at his solar plexus, and started rubbing gently outward in circular motions. He rubbed it up onto Roman's neck and almost all the way to his shoulders.
Roman felt funny all over. Possibly not just from the flu. His nipples got hard while Dean was massaging him, and Dean laughed, rubbing his hand over Roman's pec. Roman bit his cheek to stop from moaning because it felt nice. He felt his dick stir, but he was well covered by blankets, and if Dean noticed Roman's wood, he didn't say anything, though after it was over and done and the lights were off and he did speak softly into Roman's ear as Roman was drifting off to sleep: “Night, love.”
So, all these memories were scrolling through Roman’s brain the night that Dean brought him home, home, to his “for real home that he actually owned” as Dean had been describing it for two weeks.
They had taped Smackdown in Las Vegas and finally, finally, they got out of the arena and into Dean's truck and out into the suburbs and into the driveway of Dean's house. It was, in fact, real.
Dean was tapping his fingers nervously on the steering wheel the whole time they drove there. He spoke with a nervous energy. “I think you're going to like it. I mean, it's more house than I need. But it's more house than I ever had in my life! Roman, it's got all these bathrooms.”
Roman smiled and shook his head. “Yeah, Dean, houses usually do.”
“But these ones are special!”
They got out of the car and Dean flipped his keys around in his hand, walking backwards to not break eye contact with Roman.
Dean opened the door and Roman followed him through.
“This is the front hall. These are the stairs--”
“Dean. I know how a house works. Where should I put my stuff?”
Dean's face fell a little, and Roman immediately regretted what he had said, though there was not much backtracking to be done. “Up the stairs, first door on the right is your room.”
“Thanks.” Roman shifted his gear bag on his shoulder and started to go up the stairs to drop it off.
“Dude. Shoes. Off,” Dean said. Roman looked at him like he had been replaced by a pod person, but he kicked them off before heading up. Dean didn't follow.
He opened the door to a bedroom, sparsely furnished with a dresser, a nightstand with a lamp, and a bed. He dropped his stuff on the floor and flopped down on the queen-sized bed for a minute. His back was sore from a particularly nasty bump from Luke Harper that he had not taken well, rolling wrong onto his shoulder. It wasn't injured, it was just a little fucked up. He lay back a little and didn't realize he had accidentally drifted off until he woke up out of a dream about taking a walk on the beach with Dean back in Florida and buying food from a fried chicken cart that was floating twenty feet back from the shore. Chicken. Frying chicken. He opened his eyes. He was in Dean's house, but he could still smell that chicken.
Chicken. From downstairs?
Roman staggered back downstairs, rubbing his eyes. He wandered in, finding a large open-plan living area with some flat-pack furniture, Dean's old couch from Florida, a huge TV, and a bar with built in stools dividing the kitchen area from the rest of the space. Dean hunched over a sizzling skillet, sprinkling something into the pan.
“Are you cooking?” Roman asked.
Dean looked up, his eyes alight. “Yeah! It's chicken.”
Roman took a seat on one of the bar stools and looked down into the pan. There was definitely chicken sizzling in there.
Dean went on. “So, I'm browning the chicken thighs, and then I take them out and fry the curry paste in the pan. Then I'm putting in coconut milk and like some more seasonings, and then some vegetables, and then I put the chicken back in, and then we eat it with like some rice. The rice is cooking too.”
"When did you learn how to cook like this?” Roman asked.
Dean scoffed. “I've always known how to cook. I cook all the time.”
Roman raised one eyebrow skeptically.
“Well. I could cook in the microwave before. Or do easy stuff. I took this class? And I got a bunch of books.” He gestured toward a small bookshelf next to the kitchen area. “So I'm cooking now. You want a beer?” Dean grabbed a bottle off the counter and took a swig.
“Love one.”
Dean stepped over to the fridge and pulled a Rogue Dead Guy Ale out of a black cardboard carton. “This okay?”
“Fancy house, fancy cooking, fancy beer...who are you?”
Dean rolled his eyes. “For that, I should refuse to open this for you.” He grabbed a tool off the counter next to the fridge and popped the bottle cap off.
“No, I like you like this,” Roman said. “You should get one of those little aprons.”
“Like this one?” Dean grabbed something off of a wall peg and pulled it over his head. He turned back to Roman, handing him the beer over the counter. The apron read “KISS THE FUCKING COOK.”
“Nice,” Roman said. Then they were silent over the sizzling of the chicken. Dean took the pieces out and put them on a plate, then dumped some stuff out of a jar into the sizzling chicken fat and turned down the heat.
“You really had all this ready to go, just for me?”
“Well, I’m going to eat it too,” Dean said sarcastically.
“Seems like a lot of work after a taping.”
“Not that much work.” Dean shrugged.
Roman watched in a little bit of awe as Dean chopped something that looked like a tiny onion and threw it in the pan, then grabbed some more covered prep bowls out of the fridge and brought them to the cooking area. He grabbed a can opener and a can of coconut milk, opened it, and poured that in. He added some mystery leaves. He stirred it. He diced the chicken and added it back in. He put a lid on the pan. “So, now it just has to simmer for a while.” He left the stove to come around to where Roman was sitting.
“Not that much work?” Roman asked again.
Dean stopped in his tracks. He was sweating from the heat of the stove but maybe also from something else. “Stop, Ro.”
“Why do you do it?”
“What,” Dean said flatly.
“Cook for me. All the stuff you do. You have a whole room made up for me up there. Cart my ass around. You know.”
There was a moment of silence between them.
“I want to be able to take good care of the people I care about, you dumbass,” Dean said sharply, his voice wavering. “That's what you do. Like, I've had plenty of people in my life tell me they love me and I'll fucking tell you, that doesn't mean shit.” He brushed his hair back from his face with his right hand and gestured in the air with the other. “I saw it happen to my mom and then it happened to me. People walk out on you. People screw you over. Words don't mean anything. Actions mean something. If you love me than fucking hold my hair back when I'm puking over the toilet or pick me up from the bus station or--”
“Cook you dinner?” Roman asked.
“Well yeah! Love means doing something for someone that you don't gotta do. And then you keep doing it. That's love.”
“So you love me?” Roman asked, stunned realization taking over his expressions.
“Of course I fucking love you. I took cooking classes for you! I was hoping you'd stay over more. Or forever,” he muttered under his breath. “I know it’s not fucking Florida but it’s big and I just want you to be here with me.”
Roman took Dean's gesturing hand and held it in his own, held it against his cheek. “Dean, you don't have to worry about keeping me. That's the flip side, isn't it? If you want someone to love you, maybe if you do enough stuff for them they will?”
Dean looked down, his eyes hooded. He pulled away. “You don’t have to feel any way about me. But don’t fucking string me along!”
“God, Dean! I’ve loved you since I caught you wearing my shirt around your damn apartment!”
Dean looked up to meet Roman’s eyes and held his gaze, reading his sincerity. “That place was such a shithole,” he laughed.
“Why did you keep your couch?” Roman asked.
“Dunno. I’ve always had this couch. It’s a comfortable couch. Don’t change the subject, if you love me back then fucking kiss me, numbnuts!”
Dean stepped quickly into Roman’s space, his eyes darting, not knowing what to do with his hands. Roman grabbed Dean’s waist and tilted his head to catch Dean in a hard kiss. Dean shivered and relaxed his mouth, feeling Roman’s tongue against his own. He kissed back, grabbing the back of Roman’s head with one hand and his back with the other.
And then the timer on the stove went off.
Dean pulled back, eyes wild. “It’s going to burn. But I don’t want to stop.”
Roman smiled. “Go stir it.”
Dean backtracked to the stove, checked under the lid, turned the burner off, and gave it all a few good stirs with a wooden spoon.
“What do we do now?” Dean asked.
“Well, is dinner ready?”
“...yes.”
“Then we eat. And then we take it from there, like we always have,” Roman said, feeling a happiness growing in his chest that he never thought he would have, not for real, not like this.
Dean looked at Roman with love and gratitude. “I think I can do that,” he replied.