You Don't See Me

A/N: This story was more of an exercise in writing a song fiction that never mentioned the words of the song. When I finished it, I showed it to a friend, and he said that he would take it as a personal insult if I didn't post it. So, Reece, this one's for you.

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"OH, YES!" Randy Orton lept from the couch and turned, his long finger wagging in the face of the man to his left. "I so own you, bitch!"

Jeff Hardy shook his head and pushed the hand away. "Dude, get off me," he whined, rolling his eyes as he made his way to the mini-bar. If he had to play one more fucking video game during the course of the afternoon, he was going to slit somebody's throat. His own or Randy's was still up for debate, and as far as he was concerned, it was John's funeral if he gloated one more time.

With a huff, Randy made his way to his bed and flopped down with an exaggerated "oomph" against the mattress. "Oh, don't pout, Jeffro. It's not like you're not used to having your ass kicked by now." With his hands folded behind his head, he stared at the ceiling, relishing the feeling of the cool air conditioning against his bare chest. "That's, what? Six tournaments in a row now?"

Jeff rolled his eyes and lifted the whiskey tumbler to his lips as he turned and leaned against the counter at his back. "Does it even fuckin' matter, man? It's a fuckin' video, for fuck's sake."

Randy's eyes widened, filled with a mocking expression that he knew would only serve to further irritate Jeff. "Oh, somebody's got his panties in a twist," he chuckled as he fought to a seated position and glanced at the clock. "I gotta get outta here, dude. Got match shit to go over with Cena." Hoisting himself from the bed, he pulled a black tee shirt over his head and cast a glance at his friend. "You wanna grab dinner before the show?"

Running a hand absently over his middle, Jeff shook his head. There was no sense to their friendship, but it didn't seem to matter when they were hangin' out or bar hoppin' together. "Can't eat 'for a show," Jeff muttered as he lifted his tumbler to his lips again, his eyes fixed on the floor.

"Hey, man," Randy called out, his keys in his hand as he studied the man before him. "You cool?" Not that he considered himself Jeff Hardy's best friend, but Randy hadn't been spending nearly as much time with anyone else lately, so he figured he could kind of read the enigmatic superstar as well as anyone.

Jeff nodded, his head snapping up as he shook his head to clear his thoughts. "Yeah, man. I'm cool," he exclaimed, his voice a little too eager for the statement. "Fine," he added a little less dramatically.

But Randy wasn't convinced. "You sure? Cause I could let you win one next time," he offered, his expression sincere until Jeff glanced at his face and rolled his eyes. When his friend flipped him off, Randy grabbed his wallet from the bedside table and shoved it into his back pocket. "Help yourself to whatever, Dude," he said, nodding to his room before disappearing with a wave over his shoulder.

Moving to the couch, Jeff sank into the plush cushions and buried his clenched fists in his chin-length hair. How many opportunities had he passed up this time? How many chances had he been given in which he could let Randy know just how he'd been feeling for weeks, and he fucked it all up again. Just let him walk right out the door without saying a word.

Maybe it was for the best. Randy was his friend. One of the few he still had left. Sure, he understood Jeff on a level that nobody else even attempted to reach. But they were so damn different. And as if Jeff hadn't noticed it already, Randy had readily pointed those differences out the last time he had visited Cameron.

The two had been laying on the floor of Jeff's studio, surrounded by recording equipment and broken-down old instruments. An ashtray between them, they had puffed from their own joints, staring at the ceiling and speaking in dulcet tones that sounded sweeter to Jeff's ears than any music that had been created in that room. The sweetened smoke rose over them, creating a curtain from the pressures of being WWE superstars. From the stress of Jeff's suspension. From the memories of Randy's prior indescretions.

"Dude, it's so weird that we're here, ya know," Randy said, his eyes squinted against the smoke that swirled from his lips. "Mean, no offense, but you're the last person I thought I'd be chillin' with someday, ya know?"

Jeff had grunted softly, holding his own drag in his lungs until he felt his knitted brow begin to relax without permission. He exhaled slowly before clearing his throat quietly. "I hear ya," he admitted. Yet, even though he knew it was unpredictable, he couldn't say it felt weird or wrong.

They were complete opposites in ever sense of the word. Jeff loved his country home with his expansive acres of forest and nature as far as the eye could see. Randy knew he couldn't survive without the bustling city surrounding his condo, and he wouldn't know what to do with nature if it stumbled onto his doorstep. Jeff raced his hand-built dirt bike over paths he had created himself in the backyard. Randy paid someone to customize his Hummer, and ran it through a car wash every time he was home, just in case dust settled on the hood while it sat in the garage. Jeff created art from the most mundane household products, and spent uninterrupted hours painting any number of canvases, from the side of his house, to the back of his couch. Randy paid obscene amounts of art he didn't even understand because his mother said it complimented his color scheme.

Jeff was deeply introspective, rolling ideas around his head from every angle, examing them and analyzing them to their most basic elements. Randy took things at face value, having not the time, nor the desire, to pick every world issue to pieces for his own understanding. Jeff loved his family more than life itself, and would have gladly sacrificed his career to bring his mother back. Randy barely took the time to answer the phone if his mom called, unless he needed her to do something at his house while he was gone. Jeff felt torn between staying at home in Cameron with his father, and travelling the world with his big brother. Randy couldn't wait to get on the road, to stop hearing his father's stories about the 'good ol' days with Piper and Flair' and could count on one hand the number of times he'd actually seen his siblings in the last year.

Jeff was a man of the people, opting to join a group of fans in a restaurant rather than eat with his colleagues. And they loved him for it, cheered until their voices cracked when his music started. Randy would rather eat in his hotel room than risk being bothered by another woman wanting her breasts signed in the hotel bar. And he couldn't buy love for a dollar in most arenas. While Jeff smiled at everyone, remembered the names of every member of the crew, and was generally the easiest of people to get along with, Randy was known for his glowering look of entitlement and outrageous, diva-like demands in most cities they visited.

Still, something transcended that. Something seemingly more important than all of the differences between them floated to the surface when they were together. An understanding. There was a common bond, beneath all of the differences, that held them to each other. Undefinable, but equally undeniable.

And it was killing Jeff. He wished he could focus on the differences, but it was becoming more and more impossible to pretend that they were just too different. It was becoming too difficult to convince himself that Randy wasn't the guy. That he wasn't the one that Jeff had been searching for most of his adult life. That they weren't destined to be more than friends.

With an angry growl, the hand moved from his hair to the back of the couch, his fist sinking into the cushions until it hit the wooden structure beneath. With a wince, he stood and raked his fingers through his hair again. They were friends. As far as Randy was concerned, they were just friends. Just boys. There was nothing else there. And he couldn't keep telling himself that there was.

He reached for the door handle and flung it open, only to be greeted by a shocked-looking Edge. "Hey, man," Edge waved when he found his voice. "Orton around?"

Jeff just shook his head and stood back, motioning for the older man to enter. "I thought you were wastin' away on your couch," he grunted, pushing the door shut once again, fighting the anger that bubbled in his chest when Edge perused the room and flopped down on Randy's bed like he owned it. Why the hell was he so comfortable here? What right did he have? As quickly as the ridiculous thoughts raced through his brain, though, Jeff pushed them back down.

Edge had been the one who encouraged him to hang out with Randy in the first place. He had promised Jeff that they had more in common than he thought, and that if he needed someone to talk to about backstage bull shit, he should track Orton down and talk to him. Jeff had told him to back off and mind his own business, so Edge had taken it upon himself to have the same conversation with Randy. And then, to make the connection impossible to avoid, he had arranged a Guys' Night In right before his injury. After Edge passed out on the bed, Randy and Jeff stayed up until the sun broke pink through the curtains at dawn.

Flipping through a magazine from Randy's bed table, Edge tossed the publication to the bed and smirked at Jeff with amusement. "So you fuckin' him yet?"

If there was anything more shocking he could have said in that moment, Jeff certainly couldn't figure out what it was. "What?!?" he asked, sure his eyes were going to buldge right out of his head. "What the fuck, dude?"

With a nonchalant roll of his eyes, Edge stood again and helped himself to a beer from the mini-bar. "Oh, come on, Jeffro. You know you want to." With a glance over his shoulder, he shrugged. "So what's the hold up?"

"Uh," Jeff stammered, his brain refusing to wrap around the absurdity of what Edge was proposing. "I don't even know . . . uh. . . how do I respond to that?"

Assuming the position Jeff had been in just a few moments earlier, Edge crossed his arms over his chest and one ankle over the other as he gave Jeff another one of his infamous 'I don't get the problem' matter-of-fact glares. "You guys hang out all the fuckin' time now. You obviously like him. He digs you. I don't see the problem."

For a split second, Jeff wondered if he could charge the room and just spear the hell out of Edge. "Look, just because we're both gay," he started, shaking his head. He'd heard the guys talk, even before he and Randy had started hangin' out. Two openly gay men on the same roster would inevitably hook up at some point, wouldn't they? "That's so fuckin' ignorant, motherfucker," Jeff spat.

But Edge took it in stride, tipping his bottle to his lips again. "Doesn't make it a given," he corrected the misunderstanding. "Does make it easier, though." When Jeff shot him another death glare, he held up a hand. "Look, all I'm sayin' is you don't have to worry about that whole 'I like him, but he's not into dudes' obstacle. Which, if I remember correctly, puts you miles ahead of the whole 'Chrisian' crush you used to have." Jeff's cheeks flushed crimson. "What else is there?"

"Maybe the whole 'we're just friends' thing?" Jeff finally spat, helping himself to another drink. "Randy just doesn't see me like that, okay?" He tried to shrug it off as he lowered himself to the edge of the bed, but his shoulders slumped in defeat. "It's fine. We're friends. I can deal with that. We're good as friends."

"Tryin' to convince me?" Edge asked, his beer bottle tilted toward his chest before he tipped it in Jeff's direction, "Or you."

With his elbows on his knees, Jeff held his head in his hands and shook his head. "I don't know, man. I mean, it's fucked up, ya know? We shouldn't even be friends. How the fuck could we be more? I'm not the kind of guy that he's looking for."

"He told you that?"

Flopping backwards on the bed, Jeff groaned and stared at the intricate pattern that had been carved into the ceiling. "He doesn't have to tell me that. Look at me. I'm a hillbilly farm boy from North Carolina. Son of a tabacco farmer. I'm not enough for a guy like Randy Orton. I'm the guy that guys like him look around to get a better glimpse of the underwear model," he stated.

"Maybe he's not the one with a vision problem," Edge deduced, setting his half-empty bottle back on the bar. When Jeff didn't move, he gently nudged his friend with a knee. "Dude, you're easily the most interesting person Randy's ever hung out with. And take it from someone who was forced to hang with him for months, he doesn't spend his precious time on anyone he doesn't wanna be with."

Maybe it was true. Maybe Randy felt the same things Jeff did. But there was no way of knowing because, for Jeff, the chance to keep hanging out with Randy was worth far more than the risk of losing him in some true love confession. Seeing him grin when he won that stupid game, or talk about whatever popped into his over-gelled head, or see the tinge of red in his cheeks when he was angry about whatever pissed him off for the moment was so much more important than the mere possibility of something more.

When it became apparent that Jeff had no desire to speak with him further, Edge made his way to the door. "I'm headin' to the arena," he announced. "Think about it, though, dude. You really wanna sit around forever, watchin' him stare through you?" Shaking his head, he pulled on the door. "If you're gonna sit around and mope, you might wanna start practicin' your happy face for when he brings home a guy who actually tells him that he likes him."

If Edge intended on motivating Jeff, he had succeeded. The idea of Randy bringing some guy home, watching them swoon over each other on the couch, was more than he could take. Bolting upright on the bed, he took a piece of hotel paper and began to write. He wouldn't be able to say it to his face, but if there was one way Jeff knew to express himself, it was through poetry. He would leave it on the pillow, and go about the evening as though nothing had different. Enjoy Randy for one more night.

Because no matter the response to his declaration, Jeff knew that, tomorrow, everything would change.