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As Damian laid on the ground, blinded in one eye, all nerves in his face firing off, skin singed, body aching all over from his impact with the table, all he could think was a singular, pathetic thought.
Inside his own mind, he held it like a fragile thing. It trembled and he could only picture it as a pitiful, childish whine.
I want Rhea.
He kept thinking it as the staff rushed in, as they wrapped his face in a towel, as Aleister gloated, somewhere above him.
I want Rhea.
It had been a long time coming, really. Far, far too long since he’d last seen his twin. His best friend in the entire world. The only person who hadn't left him, really.
But she was away. Over at the red brand, doing something else.
Something that had nothing to do with him.
Something more important than being here with him.
It was a shameful bitterness to have to call his own. He tried to distract himself with anger, with rage at the damage Aleister had done to him, as the medic observed his eye. Made him stare into a light, moved the light around. Applied some kind of cream on the skin of his face, secured a bandage onto his eye.
He was still dazed, stunned. His vision was blurry, watery.
Realistically, he knew the way his eye still streamed down his face was natural. The unbearable light and heat it’d been exposed to; the human body working its magic, doing its best to protect his eyeball.
But he couldn’t shake the absurd way shame still sneaked its way into his body language, making him crouch down slightly, look down as the medic worked.
He felt like he was crying, even though he wasn’t.
When the medic was finally done explaining…whatever it was to him, Damian cleared his throat, keeping his voice as calm and stable as possible for a man who had third degree burns on his face and about a thousand new bruises.
“Um, Rhea, is she…where is she?”
I want Rhea. I want my friend. Why isn’t she here? I want her here.
The medic gave him a sympathetic look.
It was awful.
Like he could read the longing in Damian’s casual tone.
“I’m sorry, I don’t know. You’d have to ask the higher-ups, maybe Adam Pearce could-”
“No, no, it’s okay. Thanks.” He nodded slightly, knowing he’d never do all that.
//
Damian cursed, he wasn’t even sure if it was mentally or verbally by now, stumbling to the floor.
The eye. He’d gone for the fucking eye.
His agony peaked, and he turned over, sweaty, anguished.
He must’ve been bleeding from Aleister’s claws in his face.
His vision blurred again, made him dizzy, nauseous.
I want Rhea.
There it was again.
He groaned in frustration at himself, because there were more important things to focus on right now.
Like the way he found himself heaving now, spit gathering in his mouth rapidly.
I want Rhea.
And where was she?
On Raw, with her new girlfriend, not paying any mind to what Damian Priest was up to.
What a stupid thing to be upset about.
People had relationships. It was natural. People got into relationships, and forgot about their friends.
It was natural.
That’s what they say.
When you find the one, everyone else becomes irrelevant.
I want, I want, I want,
Finn, Dom, Rhea.
What a stupid thing to be upset about.
That was when he broke.
He’d been fighting it off for far too long, and now he was vomiting.
Face down, no one there to hold back his braids.
Eye still bleeding, Rhodes and McIntyre still fighting on in the background.
He was distantly aware of a cameraman turning frantically away from him, far too late.
And it didn’t matter if this was on camera or not.
He was in front of hundreds, if not thousands of people right now.
He couldn’t see from his other eye at all.
His head was spinning, why was this happening?
Hijo de puta, why, why?
He was shaking.
Moments away from collapsing into his own vomit.
Again, staff rushed out to help him up.
They thought he was having a medical emergency of some sort, and they weren’t about to have a repeat of what happened to CM Punk way back when.
He would’ve let them think that too, claim he had food poisoning or something like that, but the actual medical staff could instantly tell that wasn’t the case.
Spit, drool, heaving, very little actual substance, said the poor intern who’d cleaned it up, making Damian’s face burn worse than when he’d actually been on fire.
He was sweaty, sure, uncomfortable and both hot and cold; but not feverish.
Not even nauseous anymore.
Pure stress, that was the diagnosis.
Stress-induced puking.
What a ridiculous concept.
When they finally moved on to address his eye instead of his apparent actual fucking panic attack, it was the biggest relief of his life.
He still felt sick to his stomach with shame and confusion.
He hadn’t even thought that a betrayal like that was something his own brain was capable of. Nevermind whatever the hell his body had done with it.
“Dame? Fuck, shit, get out of here, all of you! I don’t care, I’m going to talk to him.”
Familiar voice.
Damian weighed the likelihood of it being a stress-induced hallucination.
“Damian, hey, hey, I’m here, I’m here, what happened?”
Rhea.
Rhea.
Rhea.
He wanted to lean into her hands on his face, and weep forever.
Instead, he swallowed, and looked her up and down…as best he could, without use of one eye.
“I think I threw up on live TV, so that’s new. How have you been?”
//
“I’m so, so sorry I couldn’t get here sooner. I wanted to talk as soon as I saw that bastard burn you, but Pearce wouldn’t let me-”
“Rhea, hey, Rhe, it’s all good. I get it. You’ve been busy. I have too. You’re here now, that’s what matters.”
They were close. Very, very close.
A lot of people would say too close for friends, but a lot of people were wrong about what friendship could be.
They’d always been like this, for as long as they’d been friends.
Casually leaning against each other, holding hands, wrapping around each other at night when it got cold.
Damian distantly wondered if that was why so many people were obsessed with the idea of them being a couple.
For some reason, the concept always made him feel…wrong. Like he was being chained to something incredibly heavy.
Damian Priest had never really…gotten love. Of the romantic sort.
It was uncomfortable, to be the most important person in someone else’s life. The pressure that came with it.
But at least Rhea had always understood him.
…Until now, apparently.
She was sitting right there, next to him, but too far away. Far too far away.
And all she could talk about was Iyo Sky.
“This girl, I swear, I’d give her the whole world…” She sighed, staring off into the distance.
“You ever felt like that?”
Damian felt his heart sink. No, he hadn’t.
Rhea knew he hadn’t.
They’d talked about this.
“No.”
He answered, honest, quick.
“C’mon, not even for Finn?”
“No. What me and Finn had- It was nothing like that. Just sexual. Platonic. You know that. I’ve told you that.”
He felt like a prey, for some reason.
Heart beating faster, sweat rising to his forehead.
“Man, I always thought you were just in denial or something. So you were, what, just fuck buddies?”
She said it so casually, completely unaware of her friend’s inner turmoil that was about to turn external.
Damian felt nausea rise inside himself again, throat tightening around his own words.
“No, no, not just- F-for fuck’s sake, why does it always have to be just, just friends, as if that’s not…enough. As if that doesn’t mean anything. Just friends.”
He was shaking.
His hands were shaking.
He gripped at his thighs to stop it, but the damage was done.
His tension was clear.
“…Woah, woah, Damie, what is it? What’s going on? You hurting?”
His damaged eye went blurry again. Blurrier than its current resting state.
He could barely breathe.
“No, no, no, I’m just- I need to- Fuuck…”
He sighed, infuriated with his own body once again as he dashed for the bathroom.
Not right now. Not like this. Please, Lord, just…not in front of her.
His prayers went unanswered, though, as Rhea ran after him, kneeling down next to him on the bathroom floor.
It was the closest she’d gotten to him all night, and horribly, it made him feel like he was about to burst into tears.
Instead, he began to puke his latest meal up rather aggressively, Rhea able to grab his hair out of the way just in time.
She stayed like that, holding Damian’s braids back gently as he threw up and spat and heaved into the toilet bowl.
Her other hand found its way to his back, contracting back and forth with his frantic breaths, muscles flexing wildly as he spewed.
She rubbed slow, soothing movements into his back, mumbling,
“There ya go, mate, just get it all out at once, okay? Just like that, take a deep breath now, I’m right here.”
After what felt like an hour but according to the clock was actually about ten minutes, Damian’s body finally decided to calm down.
With more help from Rhea than he wanted to think about, he cleaned his face, brushed his teeth, and drank way more water than he would have, had she not been there, staring daggers at him every time he tried to stop.
Finally, she guided him to sit back down on the couch.
And he felt like the biggest idiot in the entire world.
“…I think you should tell me what’s going on.” She spoke, voice far too calm.
“I- I don’t want to.” He practically whispered, staring decidedly at the floor, heat spreading all the way to the tips of his ears and the back of his neck, tears welling in his eyes despite his own protests.
“I think you should anyways.”
“Y-you’re leaving me too, aren’t you?” His deep voice, typically so stable and certain, shook like a leaf now as he stumbled over his words, both frantic to get them out but still fighting them back.
“Just like Finn. Just like Dom. Because when you find the one, everything we had- It means nothing to you. It was just a-a placeholder, until something more important could replace it. Love. It’s always about love, how love is reserved for one person and one person alone in your entire life, how love is the same as…romance.”
He took a break, gasping for breath. He forced himself to continue, even as his voice broke further, humiliating him even more.
“But that’s not something I’m capable of. Romance. Romantic love. I never have. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, hermana, I just…can’t. So it hurts. It hurts so fucking bad when this, friendship, the only type of love I’m capable of, is just…secondary to everyone else. That something I’ve never felt is apparently supposed to be this profound, incredible thing, that makes you want to abandon everything and everybody else. It hurts. It hurts so fucking bad.”
He was fully crying now, pulling his knees up to hide his face in them like a child.
How fucking embarrassing.
But Rhea was there again, forcing his face out of his knees to wipe at his tears herself, arms wrapping around Damian’s trembling form, just like she used to.
His sobbing didn’t last all that long, in the end.
“Shh, shh…there ya go, you’re okay, you’re gonna be fine.” She mumbled into his shoulder as she held him.
And when he was finally calm enough to listen,
“Damie…have you ever, uh, looked into the term ‘aromantic’?”
It didn’t take him long to understand the concept when she started explaining it- After all, it was…exactly what he’d felt his entire life.
It was a lot.
To hear his own lived experience read out back to him in the form of a blog post by someone else, someone who had gone through the exact same things he had.
A few more tears rolled down his cheeks without him noticing.
“I’m…guessing that resonated, huh?” Rhea teased lightly, wiping the tears away with her thumb.
“Oh, shut up.” Damian rolled his eyes, the embarrassment of his entire situation beginning to hit him in waves.
“That, uhh…doesn’t explain the vomiting thing, though.”
“Yeah, no, I think you should see a doctor about that one. Stress-induced vomiting is no joke.”
“You’re telling me…” He groaned, running his hands over his face.
“Honestly, it’d be fine if it was just you, but like…there were hundreds, maybe thousands of people in that crowd, and even though the cameraman had quick reflexes, most of them were filming on their phones, and…”
“Hey, it’s not the worst case scenario. Y’know CM Punk-”
“I know.”
“AJ Styles-”
“I know that one too. Not even that bad, honestly.”
“You remember that time I put Dom in a shark cage and he fell out and I beat him like a piñata?”
That, finally, got a proper chuckle out of Damian.
“Yeah, I remember.”
“Y’know, Seth Rollins might have you convinced he’s had it the worst, but he’s just being dramatic.”
“What’s he even gone through, honestly?”
“Well, Dean Ambrose did slime him that one time. Oh! And he tripped over the barricade.”
“Wait, that’s not it, Ambrose also dropped a bucket of ice water on him and threw relish on him.”
Now it was Rhea’s turn to giggle.
“Oh! Oh! He also ripped his pants, right? Around the thigh?”
They went on like this for what felt like hours, exchanging various stories and anecdotes they had about their co-workers.
It was…nice. Familiar.
How they used to be.
By the end of the night, Rhea promised to talk to Iyo. Explain that her and Damian had different boundaries than most friends, that he wasn’t a threat to their relationship.
She reassured him that Iyo would understand.
He chose to trust his best friend.