Notes: Part three. The timeline gets a little fubar here, but please forgive me (it's why it's called fiction, lol). Takes place roughly six to eight months after part 2. Mostly introspective and symbolic feathers (of what, I do not know), Samoa Joe makes a brief appearance. Still not mine nor am I claiming this ever happened. Thanks to those of you left comments on the first part, they were much appreciated! *huggles*

3.

Over the next several months, the easy friendship that had always existed between the two men became strained to the point of nonexistence. They no longer met up for beer at Jack's on their days off or made it a point to seek out different bars in Orlando after the tapings. JB no longer went out of his way to talk to Eric, whether about business, what he was doing after the show, or nothing at all.

Eric saw the way JB was distancing himself and knew it was his fault. Every time JB caught his eye from across the room and hurried away like he hadn't noticed Eric there at all twisted an icicle in his heart. He wanted to apologize for his drunken indiscretion, wanted to beg JB to forget it had ever happened, even if it meant he would have to forget it as well.

It would kill him to forget that moment; having JB in his arms, the feel of his lips moving sweetly and without hesitation over his own. But if it would get him out of this purgatory he felt whenever JB's eyes would look at him and then pass him over as if he wasn't even there… he would be willing.

His work within the company certainly wasn't helping; he had gone from being the laughingstock to being Robert Roode's personal bitch. If he thought being the comic relief was bad, being someone's gofer was ten times worse. Bobby was good-natured about the whole thing, but he could see the laughter in his eyes… in everyone's eyes.

Not to mention the fact his throat was bothering him again. When he finally had a few days of spare time, he made an appointment with his doctor, fearing the worst. He went in for the typical battery of tests, and the grim look on Dr. Halloway's face only confirmed his worries. She encouraged him to go in for surgery as soon as it was possible, and he promised he would, as soon as he cleared it with Jarrett.

Fortunately, Jarrett was perfectly willing to give him as much time as he needed, as soon as possible. Unfortunately, he wanted to send Eric out on a "bang"… and set right on planning the most humiliating joke yet. When Jarrett outlined his plan, Eric nodded and smiled in all the right places, wondering how on earth he'd allowed himself to be conned into this.

After taping his segment with Bobby, Eric trudged backstage, leaving feathers to drift and eddy in his wake. Most of them had fallen off at ringside, but a great deal were still left clinging to the honey smeared over his chest and stomach. He was going to have to sit in the locker room and pluck them all off, one by one, before he could take a shower. He pulled them off on his way, dropping them on the floor as he went, staring down at himself and muttering under his breath.

There was movement in front of him and he looked up in time… to run into JB. Hands came up to grasp his shoulders briefly and then let go, as though his skin was burning. JB looked at his hands and then down at himself; feathers were sticking to his tie and streaks of honey were staining his white dress shirt.

"Damn it Eric—"

"J, I'm sorry—"

"—Don't you ever watch where you're going?"

Eric's eyes narrowed. "Don't you? I should think this hallway is big enough for two people, or didn't you ever learn to, oh, I don't know, swerve?"

JB either missed the biting sarcasm in Eric's words or chose to ignore it. He brushed at the feathers sticking to his clothes, but only succeeded in getting them to stick to his hands.

"God damn it, I don't have time for this," he muttered to himself. He glanced up, apparently just now noticing Eric's honey-and-feather-covered chest. "You let them tar-and-feather you? That was a brilliant idea, Young."

"I let them? Yeah. Yeah I did. It was my idea and everything. I just love getting humiliated in front of thousands of people every week. It's great. This was totally what I hoped to do when I joined TNA. No thanks to you."

"No thanks to me? What the fuck does that mean? I was the one who had to convince Jarrett to hire you in the first place! If it wasn't for me, you wouldn't even be here right now! And don't blame your shitty angles on me, maybe if you were actually a decent wrestler—"

Anger bloomed rose-red in his mind and before he could stop himself, he shoved JB hard enough to knock him back a step.

"Jesus Christ, Eric. What—"

He wrapped his hands around the lapels of JB's suit coat and lifted him to his toes, thumping his shoulders against the wall behind him. "I would stop right there, before you say something else you'll regret."

The look in JB's eyes as he spoke, holding him to the wall, was strikingly similar to that night behind Jack's. Eric felt his breath catch in his throat, and he loosened his fists, dropping JB carefully back down to the floor. He took a few steps back, and then turned and walked away.

"Eric—" JB called after him. Eric paused in the middle of the hallway, feathers floating off his shoulders and drifting to the floor.

"I don't want to hear it," Eric muttered over his shoulder, and continued down the hall.

JB hadn't realized they had an audience to this bizarre confrontation until he heard a polite harrumph from behind him. He turned to see Joe standing a bit further down the hall, the opposite way from which Eric had gone.

"What was that all about?" he asked, throwing a towel over his shoulder. JB could only shake his head and pull feathers off his tie. Joe reached out and plucked a feather off JB's lapel and watched in amusement as it fluttered to the floor. "I'd ask if you if you were joining the rest of the guys at the thing tonight for Eric, but in light of… whatever the hell just happened here, I'd say you might be better off skipping it."

He was too busy picking the feathers off his clothes to be able to register what Joe had said. "The thing? What thing? Eric doesn't go out anymore."

Joe furrowed his brows in confusion, but elected not to ask for clarification on the odd comment. "You know, all the guys are giving him kind of a good luck send-off thing before he flies back to Nashville tomorrow."

All the feathers were successfully off his clothes and scattered on the floor when he finally looked at Joe. "What the hell are you talking about? He didn't get fired, did he?"

"No…" Joe spoke slowly, looking at JB like he'd suddenly dropped about fifty IQ points. "He's going into surgery the day after tomorrow… you know, for his throat? So most of us are going out, have some drinks with the guy before he leaves."

"Surgery…"

Although it didn't really seem like a question, Joe answered anyway. "Yeah. I thought Jarrett told everyone like last week. He shouldn't be out too long, couple weeks at most. JB, are you okay?"

"Surgery," he muttered to himself, looking down the hall where Eric had gone, no sign of him but a few scattered white feathers drifting and turning in tiny currents of air. "Oh, shit."

JB didn't go out with the other guys that night; instead he sat in his hotel room stared blankly at the wall with a glass half full of scotch and partially melted ice in his hand. On the outside, he was trying not to think of anything. On the inside, his mind was racing. He hadn't meant to go off on Eric earlier. He was exhausted, pulled in about sixty directions at once with no time to breathe, let alone sleep. Not to mention he'd felt increasingly odd, if not strangely awkward around Eric since that whole… whatever that was behind Jack's that night.

He tried to forget about it, brush it off as just something that happened once; he was drunk, Eric was drunk and it was just… something that happened. No reason to get worked up about it or go out of his way to avoid Eric in the halls and backstage. No reason for heat to flash through his body whenever Eric would meet his eye from across the room and flash him that little half smile.

No reason at all.

He raised the glass to his lips and knocked down half of it in a gulp.

Certainly it had no bearing whatsoever on why he called things off with Christina. He was barely home to see her and he could tell she was feeling resentful. She wanted to get married and start a family and he… just wasn't ready. He barely had a life now, what would happen if one, two, three kids came along? So Eric, Eric and his sweetly sappy talks of destiny and fate and love at first sight, pulling him against flush against his body in the muggy heat of Jack's parking lot….

He raised the glass again and pressed it to his forehead, the beading condensation feeling lovely on his suddenly overheated skin. It was just… a thing that happened. Once.

And so Eric was going into surgery the day after tomorrow. JB had asked about his surgeries during one of their numerous trips to Jack's (before that thing that happened, of course) and Eric had brushed it off. Routine surgery, every couple of years. Nothing to get worked up about. In and out in one day, living on milkshakes for a week. He'd smiled but JB could see the fear in his eyes when he'd mentioned it, even behind the two glasses of beer he'd drank that night. At the sight of that fear, JB made a sudden but absolutely honest promise to Eric that he would be there for his next surgery so he wouldn't be alone. Eric had protested, but JB did not relent, even making sure to reassure him the next day he'd meant what he said. And Eric's eyes had just absolutely shone at those words, at the promise.

And now look. He'd completely forgotten Eric even HAD surgery, after going through such lengths to prove his sincerity. Maybe he should ask Jarrett for the next couple of days off and fly into Nashville. Visit Eric in the hospital, try to rebuild their friendship, make good on his promise. It wouldn't kill him to take a little bit of a break, and it was high time – beyond high time – that they talked about what had happened and put it behind them. After all… it was just a thing that happened.

Once.