DISCLAIMER: Seth Rollins, Roman Reigns and Dean Ambrose are the property of the WWE and/or the Sports entertainers/actors/superstars that play them. I have absolutely no claim on them at all. This fanfiction was written as tribute only and is not intended to infringe on any copyrights held by the WWE and/or the actors/sports entertainers/superstars.
The original characters in this story are products of my own imagination and any resemblance to them and real people, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Road Trip
Part IV
By the time they got to the car, Dean had moved it away from the pumps and over to a small parking lot near the gas station. "What took you guys so long?" he demanded.
"Huge lines in the food court," Roman smoothly lied.
"Well, something was going on in there," Dean said, shaking his head and pointing to a huge line of traffic waiting to get on to the highway. "They stopped anyone from leaving this place and the cops were all around here. They came over and looked in the car and the trunk while I was here, but wouldn't tell me what was going on. Do you have any idea what happened?"
"None at all," Seth lied himself, looking at the line of traffic waiting to leave and groaning. "This is going to hold us up."
"Then we might as well eat," Dean suggested cheerfully, taking the bag from Roman. "What did you get?"
"Turkey subs," Roman said. "With all the veggies."
"Turkey?" Dean's lips curled up in a sneer, "Damn it, Roman, I know you like turkey, but that doesn't mean the rest of the world does. Just please tell me it's not on that stupid flat bread. That's like eating meat on a soggy cracker."
"No, I got you and I the multigrain bread," Roman said. "Seth has the flat bread."
"Good," Seth said. "I like the flat bread."
There was a low stone wall along the edge of the sidewalk, right near the car. The three men sat down. Dean passed out the subs. When he opened his and looked inside, he groaned. "Bro, no bacon?"
"Nope," Roman said, biting into his own sub. "I forgot. It's not like it's that important."
"Yes it is," Dean stubbornly insisted. "It's the candy of meats and I like it on my sub."
"Too bad, so sad," Roman said, cheerfully. "At least I remembered you liked Swiss cheese."
"Swiss cheese is no substitute for bacon," Dean griped, but he bit into his sub.
By the time they finished their lunch, traffic was back to normal, so they got out on the highway quickly, Roman behind the wheel now. Seth offered to sit in the back seat, but Dean said it was okay, he'd stay in the back and then surprised both Roman and Seth by falling asleep easily. "He's out like a light," Seth said, leaning around to look at him.
"Boredom sleep," Roman said. "But, if we're lucky, he'll stay that way for awhile."
He did sleep for almost two hours, two hours where Roman drove just a bit faster than he should, which helped make up for some of the time they had lost getting lunch. Not all of it, but enough so that Seth was convinced they could get to the hotel, change as fast as possible into business attire and make it to the arena just in time for "late call" He began to relax, enjoying being the passenger, convinced that while they didn't have all the time in the world, they had enough to do what needed to be done.
Then Dean woke up with a start, thrashing about. He was lying on the back seat, but he started kicking the back Seth's seat with his left leg, rapidly, insistently. Move your seat up, Seth, move it up, NOW!"
"Hey!" Seth said sharply, "I'm up as far as I can go, okay?"
"My leg is cramping," Dean said through gritted teeth. He twisted around in the seat and started thumping is knee into the back of the passenger's seat. "Seth, you have to move up, now. I swear, it's killing me!"
"Then stretch out on the seat!" Seth protested.
"It isn't long enough," Dean objected. "C'mon, I have to stretch!" He kicked Seth's seat again and again with the uninjured foot.
"Dean!"
"Seth, I'm serious!" Dean cried out, and to be honest, there was a hint of pain in his voice. "I need to stretch my leg, my calf muscles are cramping, really bad!"
"Dean!" Roman called out, his voice sharper than usual. "Sit in the middle, put your leg on the console between the two seats, okay?"
"But-" Dean began.
"Don't argue!" Roman insisted, "Just do it."
Dean did as requested, making sharp, hissing little noises as he moved his leg. Seth almost had some sympathy for him. His toes were curled up in his sneakers and looking as if they were going to freeze in that position.
"This fucking sucks!" Dean muttered angrily.
"It's just nocturnal leg cramps," Roman said. "Try to bend your foot and wiggle your toes."
"I've had those before!" Dean disagreed. "This feels worse." He gritted his teeth and forced himself to uncurl his toes. "This sucks this sucks this sucks."
It's always this kind of stuff that messes us up, Seth thought, feeling the sympathy start as he realized this wasn't just Dean being bored. All three of them could take enormous amounts of pain. They had dislocated bones and kept going, they had torn ligaments and kept going. It was the nature of the business and if you wanted to make it in your first day of training, you learned that your pain was nothing but an obstacle to work through. And in the ring? It worked. In workouts? It worked. You listened to the pain, assessed the damage as fast as possible, and kept going. After, when you could, you dealt with it. But sometimes, it was the simple things, the aches and pains that everyone suffered, the ones that came outside of the workout and outside of the ring that actually felt like they would bring you down.
Seth had once worked with a wrestler who had an appendix burst at the beginning of a 60 minute iron man match. He rolled out of the ring, stuck his head under the apron and vomited. Then, he got right back up into the ring, completed his match, walked back stage, did some photographs and autographs for fans, then drove himself to the hospital, where he finally passed out in triage. This same wrestler, once he came back, six months later, in the ring, broke his leg resulting in a compound fracture, which his boots covered. Again, he finished the match before notifying anyone. Yet, this same wrestler would be almost to the point of tears every time an arm or leg fell asleep and he went through the pins and needles stage. It was like that was the pain his body just quit at. "Break my bones? Fine. Rupture my organs? Child's play. Pins and needles? Screw that, I'm going to cripple right up!"
"It is nocturnal cramping, it's just really bad," Roman said. "You haven't been drinking as much water today, you've been sitting a lot and you just slept. Keep working the muscle."
"Thissucksthissucksthissucks," Dean hissed, trying to flex his foot, but having trouble.
"Grab some water out of the cooler," Roman insisted.
As Dean did what Roman requested, Seth turned as best he could with his seat belt on and ran his hand down Dean's calf. Right at the thickest part of the calf was a knot that was so hard and so large it felt like someone had put a baseball under his skin. Seth grasped the area, fingers on top of his leg, thumb on the center of the knot, and started rubbing at the knot with the ball of his thumb.
"I hate your fucking guts!" Dean roared at Seth, almost dropping the bottle of water he had taken from the cooler. "You are the biggest asshole the world has ever known! Your father was an ass, your mother was a hole, and thus they produced you, asshole!"
"I love you, too, Dean," Seth said, rubbing the area harder, really pressing his thumb into that hard lump, trying to force it to let go. He wasn't at all worried about Dean's declaration of hate, knowing it was the pain talking. And to be honest, Seth had never felt a muscle knotted as tightly as this one was. The rubbing he was doing was barely having any effect.
"Keep flexing your foot," Roman said. "Curl them back as if you're pointing to your face, then like you're pointing up at the ceiling, then point to the radio." He was using his calm voice, the same voice he used when his daughter suffered aches and pains, the same voice he used when any of them were physically hurt. It was a reassuring voice, just the right levels of calm and soothing that your mind started to believe everything must be all right, because no one would be able to be that relaxed if something serious was going on. "And drink that water, okay?"
Dean opened the bottle and drank down half of it without pausing. "Okay, I think it's helping," he said. He started moving his foot the way Roman told him, toes pointing to his face, the ceiling, then the radio. And even though it hurt like the devil, having Seth rubbing that knot, the knot was starting to untie itself, letting the muscles go back into place. "God that hurt," he gasped. "I feel like a wuss for getting upset, but Jesus, that really, really, hurt."
"Yep," Roman said. "I used to get bad ones back in my early football days, when I was still in high school," he commented. "I'd work out so hard that I'd come home, eat dinner and just go to bed. And I'd always wake up with with those godawful cramps. I finally told my dad who rolled his eyes and said, 'you're not drinking enough water.' Every night he'd make me drink four or five big glasses of water or unsweetened iced tea before I went to bed. Sure, I had to wake up at least twice a night to pee, but the cramps stopped. My Mom also put a bar of soap in my bed. I don't know if it was the extra fluid or the bar of soap or a combination, but I almost never got those cramps again."
"A bar of soap?" Dean asked.
"Yeah, a bar of soap. Ivory is the best, but almost any type of soap will work, except for Dial." Roman shrugged. "You just throw it in the bed. Mom learned it from her mother, who learned it from her grandmother, so on and so forth."
"It sounds like an old wives tale," Dean said, looking skeptical.
"I know," Roman agreed. "It does, but get on the 'net sometime and Google it, there are all sorts of theories about why it might work, but mostly, people claim it does work. It's one of those weird things that I figure someone will eventually find out why it does what it does."
"Placebo effect?" Seth offered.
"That's what I thought too," Roman said. "But there are a lot of stories about people who refused to try it, but their bed partner sneaked it in without them knowing about it, and the cramps stopped that night. Or stories about the cramps coming back and people finding out the soap had fallen out of the bed. Also, after a few weeks the soap stops working so you have to score the outside with a knife or something, and it will work again. That tells me that there's something in soap that gets released under the covers that tells the muscles not to cramp."
"Interesting," Seth said. And it was kind-of interesting. Or, maybe it just seemed interesting because there wasn't much else exciting going on.
"What I want to know," Dean pondered as he finished one bottle of water and fished in the cooler for his second. "is how did someone discover it worked? Who thought to themselves, 'hey, let's throw some soap between the sheets and see what happens!' and then connected it to leg cramps. 'Hey, since I started having an affair with a bar of soap, my leg cramps have stopped!'"
"Maybe someone noticed that on days when they had freshly washed sheets on the bed, they stopped having leg cramps," Seth pondered. "And they connected it that way. They figured out that on the day the sheets were washed, they probably had soapy residue, but as time passed, it stopped working, so they thought maybe I should just sleep with some soap and see if that does it."
"I don't see how you'd connect laundry detergent with a bar of soap," Dean countered. He pulled three bottles out of the cooler and leaning forward, he put two of them in the spots on the consol on either side of his foot.
"People used to wash laundry with bars of soap," Seth said, accepting the water. "They still sell some types of laundry soap in bars."
"Oh," Dean thought about this then shook his head. "Do you believe it? Here we are, philosophizing about soap."
Seth and Roman chuckled. Dean was right, it was a little strange. "Is the leg feeling better?" Roman asked as he opend the bottle of water Dean had put up in the holder for him and took a big swallow.
"Yeah," Dean admitted. Seth had already removed his hand, because the knot was gone. "It's still kind of sore though. It was really knotted up."
"You need to work it," Roman said. "And I know just the solution," he added as they passed a sign that indicated there was a rest stop up ahead.
"Roman!" Seth warned, having seen the stop himself.
Roman looked at him. "Leg cramp, Seth. He needs to stretch out his leg. Hell, we all need to stretch out. And a Nerf war is a perfect solution."
"Roman, we don't have the time!" Seth protested.
"Nerf war!" Dean crowed happily, fist pumping the air. "Yes!"
"Look, we'll play for a short time, like an hour, maybe even less," Roman proposed, as he signaled and moved into the far right lane preparing to pull into the rest stop. "Then, instead of the hotel, we'll go right to the arena. We'll slip into the locker room and change into our report-for-work suits before anyone sees us."
"But-" Seth started.
"-Nerf war!" Dean interrupted, gleefully bouncing up and down in his seat like an eager child. "C'mon, Seth, Neeeeeerrrrrrrrfffff war!"
Seth drew in a deep breath knowing protesting was useless. Then he shook his head. "All right," he said, giving in, a small part of him actually glad to be losing, because yes, despite that it was the worst idea ever, part of him was eager to have a Nerf war. Roman and Dean weren't the only ones who were feeling like they had spent way too much time sitting today. And, he had the feeling that if he didn't agree, Roman might blurt out to Dean about Caleb. I think that from here out when someone talks about the C word, I'll first think Caleb, he thought. Thanks kid, at least I've crossed one name off the list of potential handles for future offspring.
"All right!" Dean shouted, pumping his fist in the air.
"Under one condition!" Seth said, raising his index finger in the air.
"What?" Roman asked.
"That I get to keep the car keys on me," Seth said. "I don't want either of you trying to get us to stay longer than we should. We have forty five minutes to play, then we have to leave, no questions, no problems, right?"
"Sounds fair," Roman said, as he pulled into the rest stop. When he parked the car in the lot, he handed the keys to Seth then started removing his seat belt.
End of Pt IV
Author's Notes: Yes, a Nerf battle/war/fight will be in the next section, I promise.
Iremmy Thank you, I'm glad you're enjoying the story and hope you continue to. You've pretty much supported everything I've written for this site and I appreciate that a lot!
Just A Reader Thank you, I'm glad I could make you laugh. And yeah... I don't think I have Dean being uncool, but apparently, there are some who disagree. In truth, I don't see Dean as "cool." "Cool" implies laid back. Dean is awesome, he is not laid back. And yes, Caleb would get on anyone's nerves. I based him on a kid I used to babysit for. I like kids, but that one drove me up the wall.
Anyone else reading this? If you haven't taken the time to leave a review, I'd really appreciate it if you did. Reviews are the stuff that keeps me going and encourages me to share, rather than just keep this stuff on my hard drive.
