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"I dunno why you the hell y' sell yo'self short all the fucking time. You the best. Out 'f all of us? You the best." Jey’s voice, his face, his eyes were dead serious when he said it, like he really truly meant it, yet Sami felt a dry chuckle work its way from his throat into the space between them.
Yeah, right.
"I think you're really overestimating my abilities here, uce." He tried to keep his gaze locked to Jey's growingly intense one, but the sincerity in the other man's eyes was too damn much to handle and so he let his own fall to the stained carpet, trying to make out intricate patterns in all the gunk that was more or less permanently stuck to it.
"I'm really not, uce. Fuck. I jus' wish you could see yo'self the way I see you, man." frustration in his voice palpable, he slowly inched his way closer to Sami bit by bit.
Sami knew what this was. Jey tended to back his sincere words up with physical touch to really drive his point home sometimes. Only his most sincere words though. And Sami had noticed that that seemed to happen a lot lately whenever they were alone.
The thought had a smile pull at the corners of his lips, his mood changing from gloomy darkness to playfulness in mere seconds.
Only Jey would be able to pull off that impossible feat.
"And what would I see, huh?" he challenged as Jey plopped himself down onto the couch, right into Sami's personal space, ass almost in his lap, pressing his side into Sami's. Not a sheet of paper would've fit between them, but he really didn't mind.
No, he loved when Jey got like this.
"Man, I dunno... you like a damn superhero to me." his large hand finally landed in Sami's hair, stroking the tangled mop of red carefully and almost reverently while he seemed to contemplate his own choice of words for a second "Damn that was cheesy as fuck."
Sami molded himself into his side and went completely pliant, allowing his head to come to rest on Jey's shoulder, eyes falling closed against the harsh neon lights of the room.
The Uso let out his own chuckle and kept playing with his hair, a simple forehead kiss joining his ministrations.
"It was." Sami mumbled out eventually.
"Huh?"
"It was cheesy as fuck."
"Don't make it any less true." And damn all that fucking sincerity, seriously. It made Sami want to believe him.
"Please, Jey. It's not like I'm out there saving the world-" he tried again.
"You saved mine." The finality of his words left no wiggle room, no doubt that this discussion was over and done. And really, what could Sami even say to that? What was there left to say?
The warm and tingly feeling quickly spread from Sami's very core through his entire body, warming and reddening his cheeks, making his heart flutter, sending the butterflies in his stomach into a frenzy.
There really was nothing left to say and so he lifted his head from Jey's shoulder, laid a tender hand on his cheek and caught the other man's plush lips in a whisper-soft kiss.
"Thank you" he sighed.
"No. Thank you. For not giving up on me." Jey had probably thanked Sami a million times by now, yet it would never get old.
They wrapped their arms around each other tightly as Jey toppled them over on the old filthy couch that had definitely seen better days. With Jey's body lazily stretched out under his own, Sami's head instinctively fell against Jey's chest, so he could listen to his heartbeat.
(...)
They must've dozed off, cause the next thing heard was the voice of a very frantic producer in his ear yelling about "schedules" and "matches" and "15 minutes till curtain".
He was used to dragging his exhausted barely awake carcass all over the world and that's exactly what he did this time around, the fingers tightly locked around his own and never once letting go, letting him know that Jey was right there with him.
They made it from the dingy office to the locker room to change and to gorilla in just under 15 minutes with barely a second to spare. It earned them harsh glares from Hunter and the rest of the team and he knew that they were in for a proper chiding later on, but that would have to wait. For now there was a show happening and they were an integral part of it.
Seth came hobbling through the curtain a second later, took one look at them and burst out laughing. "Had a nice nap, huh?" Judging by the gleam in his eye, he didn't believe that one for a second, even though it was the truth.
"You should fix your hair, Sami. Or I won't be the only one assuming things." with that he walked over to Hunter, leaving them to their own devices.
He quickly looked down to where his hand was still holding tightly onto Jey's. His taped wrist, the one that usually had a hair tie wrapped around it at all times, was void of one today.
He cursed inwardly.
"Don't worry, uce. You look jus' fine." Jey was quick to reassure him. And while he fully believed that Jey believed that, he wasn't so sure about the rest of the world.
He sighed. It really shouldn't matter. But somehow it did. Today it did. He was usually good at blocking out the nasty or rude or teasing comments about his appearance, but in a business that was so heavily built on vanity, his own insecurities got the better of him sometimes. And sometimes was today.
Another sigh left his tired body.
“Still. I’ll need a hair tie. Apparently I’m not going to save the world with my hair down. At least not today.”
As their opponent's music hit, the duo strolling right past them through the curtain, Jey looked at him for a moment and really looked, before he offered up the hand that was currently not holding Sami's.
Sami stared at it - confused more than anything - before he noticed the slim black hair tie wrapped around the tattooed wrist.
Of course Jey would carry that.
His mullet had recently undergone a cut, so he didn't really need the tie for himself.
But he carried one around still.
The warm feeling from before returned and settled deep into his bones as he snatched the band from Jey's wrist, his other hand only leaving Jey's long enough to gather his messy hair into a half-bun.
"Beautiful. With and without."
As Sami's music hit and the crowd behind the curtain erupted into cheers, ready and waiting for their favorite duo, he couldn't help but look back at Jey fondly and reply
"Yeah. You truly are."