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All night, Roman keeps thinking about the look on Seth’s face after their match and something about it...eats at him. Like Seth was scared of him.
Like Seth thinks Roman is so full of himself he’d want Seth to be less, to make himself feel bigger. Takes one to know one, huh? The thought starts out just a little bitter, like trendy salad greens, but by a couple hours later it’s at 100% unsweetened cranberry juice.
He doesn’t want Seth to be scared of him.
He keeps thinking, too, about Finn saying I just don’t trust you. I might never. What a relief it was to hear it. It had seemed like such a big deal when he just knew it, and then Finn said it out loud and it wasn’t as bad as he thought.
He was only scared of the demon until he knew what it was.
He still waits until he’s driving them back to the hotel and Seth can’t get away. It’s dark, the road only really visible a few feet ahead. The world is yellow and white lines flashing out of the darkness and disappearing under their wheels. “I want to talk.”
Seth’s hand stops fussing with the icepack on his knee. He gives Roman another scared glance. He looks surprised, too. “All right, big guy. Shoot.”
His pulse hammers in his ears. Well, shit. Seth’s not the only one who’s scared. They have to get past this. They have to. Family can talk about what’s on their minds. Roman squares his shoulders. “You, uh. Tonight.” He can’t figure out how to phrase it. “After our match. It seemed like you expected me to be a sore loser. I don’t get it.”
Seth’s eyebrows shoot up. “Maybe because last time we had a match, you lost your shit and walked away from me.”
Roman blinks, stunned. Green signs shoot by overhead. The engine’s hum is suddenly noticeable in the silence.
This is why you have to talk about stuff, he guesses. Because you never know what the fuck bullshit someone else has in their head.
“Hey, I get it,” Seth says, conciliatory like he never used to be. “I don’t like losing either.”
“Seth, I—I don’t give a rat’s ass about that.” Shame trickles in. He should care more, or what the hell is he doing here? “Sure, nobody likes losing, but...” He can think about that later. “You said you owned me.” Even now, the words stick in his throat. His grip tightens on the wheel. “That’s why I walked away. I said that. I said it straight up.”
Seth looks confused and nervous, but he still stretches smugly in his seat, wincing when his knee protests. “Whatever, big dog. I owned you tonight, didn’t I?”
I own Roman Reigns.
“You meant more than that,” Roman said stubbornly. “You said it like you did, anyway. Not own like in the ring. Own like I was your dog, and I’d come begging for your scraps.” The trickle of shame is a wave now. His face burns.
Seth laughs. “What? Why would I say kinky shit like that in an interview? You need to pay more attention to the language of the youth, my friend—”
“Because it was kind of true.” He doesn’t raise his voice, but the words feel hot and heavy in his mouth. He doesn’t understand why telling Seth the truth feels like revenge. Like justice, even.
Seth is silent.
“I had to walk away so I’d know—so we’d both know I could.”
Seth’s jaw clenches. “What is up with you tonight? I fucked myself up before a big match for no fucking reason and you just felt like twisting the knife? Like there’s any chance I don’t know I’m just on probation with you guys. Don’t worry. I got the message loud and clear.”
Roman’s knuckles are white on the wheel. “After we tagged one time.” His voice is thick. With anger and other things. “You said to them—‘Love him or hate him, he’s a hell of a tag team partner.’ And I didn’t know...” He takes a deep breath. The more he says, the less ashamed he feels. He remembers Summerslam last year, thinking his love for Seth was like an alien invader in his chest, corrupting him from the inside out. It seems silly now. People love other people. Sometimes even other people who don’t love them back. That’s life. “I didn’t know if you meant you loved or hated me. I just knew if I was a good tag team partner you might ask me again. I couldn’t keep going like that.”
Seth’s eyes are slits. “That’s rich. You only took me back in the first place because you needed help.”
Seth is so wrong about everything that Roman’s blood boils. “I didn’t need your help.”
“If I’d left you in that cage—”
“Do you remember what you did to us?” Roman bursts out. “What you did”—he almost can’t say it—“to me?”
He never thinks about it. He doesn’t think what Seth did to me. He thinks what Seth did to us. Seth sold them out, he stabbed them in the back, he broke their hearts, whatever. Those aren’t specific physical actions. Now Roman has to remember the searing pain, has to remember his back seizing. The rope smashing into his throat when he fell to his knees, the lights blinding him when he rolled onto his back. The thwack of the chair when it hit Dean. The choking sound Dean made. The mics didn’t catch that noise, it's not in the clips the vultures in Gorilla love to play every chance they get, but Roman heard it.
His fist comes off the steering wheel, opening and closing, and he remembers trying to get the feeling back into his fingers, trying to get up. Trying to get to Dean, to protect Dean from—from—
He remembers not knowing how to think the rest of that thought. He remembers closing his eyes and staying down a little longer.
“I thought we put all that behind us,” Seth says. “How many times do I have to apologize?”
“Once would be nice.”
Seth’s eyes almost pop out of his head. “I said I was sorry about six million times!”
“You said that to Dean. Not me.” They’re almost to their exit. Roman’s head is pounding with adrenaline.
“Sure I did....” He keeps talking. Some people don’t like his voice. Roman’s never really understood it, but now, suddenly, he does. How much more of this conversation is there? Why can’t Seth ever give in?
“If you said it so many times, I guess once more won’t hurt.”
There’s a long silence. “Look, I’m sorry, okay?” Seth says tightly. “I remember. I—I fucking remember.”
For a second he can’t let go of his anger. He can feel that he’s about to, and he fights it. A taste of Seth's blood, and he wants more. “You remember putting Dean’s head through those cinderblocks?”
“I thought I was apologizing for stuff I did to you.”
He lets his breath out. Rubs the back of his neck. There the anger goes, slipping away. “Hey, that took like ten years off my life, man.”
“Yeah, me too.” Seth’s voice is a little shaky. Then he grins, that wicked grin that Roman can’t remember not loving. “But it probably took twenty years off Ambrose’s, so we’re still ahead, right?”
It’s a horrible thing to say but Roman laughs so hard he has to pull the car onto the shoulder. He can’t catch his breath. Seth huffs at the lack of concern for road safety and presses the hazard lights button for him.
Roman feels so relieved. Relieved isn’t a strong enough word but he doesn’t know what another one would be.
He used to know that the Seth he loved was gone forever. That maybe he was never real in the first place. And now Seth is back, and Roman guesses part of him thinks it knows that isn’t real either. He’s just been keeping his mouth shut about all of it—afraid to name his fear, afraid to name what Seth did, afraid to speak anything aloud in case it breaks the spell. Summons the demon.
Maybe Seth was afraid of the same thing. Maybe that’s why he’s always so vague Roman had to ask him if he’d forgotten what happened.
But now it’s like they just brought it all out in the light and took a good look at it. And it’s just stuff that already happened to him and Seth. Bad stuff, yeah. Really bad. But it’s not...it’s not something coming out of the darkness to drag them through the ring into hell.
Seth was always kind of an asshole—they all were—and then he made a terrible decision, or had a breakdown, or whatever the fuck happened, and he hit Roman in the back with a chair. That’s it. He’s the same Seth he’s always been, just a few years older. Wiser maybe, but maybe not. Sadder? Roman’s not sure about that one.
For a second, he tries to imagine this shit from Seth’s point of view. Tries to imagine it was him putting that chair in Seth’s back. And when he does, he’s suddenly...glad. Grateful for his own memories. He’d a million times rather that than have to see that look on Dean’s face and know he did that. That he put it there on purpose and no matter how hard he tries or how bad he wants to, he can never, ever take it back.
He unbuckles his seatbelt and pulls Seth into a rough hug, as best he can around the gear shift and all the other crap they put between the seats in a car these days. “It’s okay,” he says, ruffling Seth’s hair. “It’s gonna be okay.”
“So you forgive me,” Seth says quickly, pushing his advantage like always, but Roman will let it slide because he also sounds really hungry for the answer.
Of course, he almost says—but then he doesn’t. “Right now I do,” he says slowly. “Tomorrow maybe I won’t. It’s—”
Seth pulls away sharply. “So you’re just gonna jerk me around—”
“Sit your ass down and listen to me,” Roman says, exasperated. He remembers again how relieved he was when Finn said I don’t trust you. He wants that for Seth. “I didn’t say that. I—I’m trying to be upfront with you, man. This is gonna take time. But if we’re just patient...I think we can get there. I’m in here working for it same as you.”
“I’m not great at being patient.” Seth looks a little embarrassed about it. He pokes his icepack, frowning.
Roman is about to laugh and say Me neither. But— “Lucky for you, I might be.” This telling the truth shit is weird. Sometimes even you didn’t know the truth until you say it. “I waited three years for you to come home, little brother. And here you are.”
Seth turns away and looks out the window. He swallows hard. His fingers jitter on his thigh.
Roman starts to smile. “Are you crying right now?”
“No!” Seth whips his head around—but his voice cracks. “God. You’re worse than Ambrose.”
“You were amazing tonight.” Roman’s voice dips. “You were the best. I’m never gonna be mad at you for that.”
“It doesn’t matter if I can’t win at Elimination Chamber.”
“It matters.” That’s something he’s been learning. Something he and Dean had to unlearn, from their time in the Shield. The goal matters, but it also matters how you get there. You can’t just stand on the mountaintop and pretend you were born there. Everybody else remembers where you came from.
Seth sighs and leans back in his seat. He presses the heels of his hands into his eyes. “I don’t hate you, big dog. Not right now. But I worry...” His voice gets real quiet, like he’s spilling a dirty little secret he wanted to take to his grave. “I worry sometimes that tomorrow maybe I will.”
Roman’s throat is tight, and the skin around his eyes. He worries about that too. But Seth sounds like he’s as terrified of going back there as they are, and suddenly Roman remembers something he wanted to tell Seth, a long time ago now. “You did that promo once,” he says huskily. “You said you used to imagine pushing us down the stairs.”
Seth looks sick. “It was just a promo.”
“Everybody has terrible moments. It doesn’t mean you didn’t love us. I know you did. I know you do.” He thinks about how mad he gets at Galina sometimes when they’re fighting, or the Usos. Rosey, when he was alive. Even Dean a few times. “It’s normal for brothers to hate each other sometimes. There are times I’m fighting with Galina and I feel like I hate her. I just try not to turn around and hurt her because of it.”
Seth breathes shallowly, his beautiful eyes wide and dark. “Yeah.” He sounds unconvinced.
“Can I kiss you?” He doesn’t usually ask. It feels nice.
Seth gives a jerky nod. Roman has to scooch over so half his butt is off the seat and the gear shift is stabbing him in the thigh, but whatever, he slips his hand into Seth’s hair, still half-wet from the shower and the other half starting to frizz. He’ll never tell Seth this because Seth hates it and a man’s hair is sacred, but this is how Roman likes it best. He presses his mouth to Seth’s, and Seth’s arms come up around his neck like a stranglehold. “Tell me how you feel about me,” Roman murmurs, and kisses him again.
“I love you,” Seth whispers. He pretty much only says it when they’re kissing or fucking, like it’s only part of his playbook if it’s romantic.
Roman thinks of all the people in his family he grew up saying it with, easy as breathing, and his hands tighten on Seth’s face. “I love you too.” He kisses down Seth’s jaw, rubs his cheek over Seth’s beard, comes back for his mouth. “Believe that.”
“I’m gonna beat you Sunday,” Seth warns.
Roman shrugs. “Bring it.”