"Are you kidding, bro?" Matt Cardona asks, staring incredulously at Dolph Ziggler. "You cannot be serious."
Dolph shrugs. "For once, I am. Come on, kid, it'll be fun. Besides, it's not like I planned on doing this, my ridiculous brother signed me up before I even knew what he was doing."
"But why does that involve me?" Matt all but whines and Dolph smirks at him.
"Because," he says. "When I saw that Ryan had volunteered me, I followed suit and volunteered you!"
Matt buries his face in his hands and exhales. "Sometimes, bro, I really wonder why I married you."
"Because you wuuuuuv me," ZIggler says, tugging at Zack's hand. "Now move, we can't leave the kids waiting, now can we?"
Ok, so caroling in a sick kid's ward at the hospital wasn't Zack's first, second, third, fourth or fifth idea for how to spend the week leading up to Christmas. He's not great at singing, he only remembers a few carols as it is, but there is something about standing up there, watching the kids staring back at them, distracted, if only for a few moments, as he, Dolph, and a handful of other people drop all pretenses and just belt out these weird, obnoxious holiday songs as loud as they can. Where Zack fails vocally, he makes up for it in showmanship, going out of his way to put a show on for these kids, and it shows as the kids giggle and clap especially for him and Ziggler.
Once they're done, Dolph reaches out, takes Matt's hand and squeezes it, leading him back out of the hospital. "See," he says. "That wasn't so bad. They genuinely seemed to love you."
Matt nods, squeezing his hand back. "Yeah, well. Kids make it easy, I guess. But next time, warn a guy, maybe, huh?"
Dolph shrugs, smirking over at Matt. "Yeah, maybe," he says in a tone of voice that says absolutely not.
Matt rolls his eyes and tugs Dolph in, shutting him up with a kiss. "That's your Christmas gift, you know. You get nothing else."
"What?!" Dolph gasps. "That's not fair! All the hard work I put into making sure you have a fantastic gift to open up every year, and you do me like this?"
Matt smirks at him. "Yeah, bro. I guess you'd better make sure to be extra good so Santa will want to bother bringing you something."
Dolph huffs. "Yeah, well, he'd better. I've been a delight this year." He crosses his arms over his chest and pouts.
"Whatever you say, bro," Matt says fondly, dragging Dolph the rest of the way to their car, reflecting on the nicely sized gift he hasn't quite gotten under the tree yet and grinning widely as Dolph continues to fuss and needle Matt about it the rest of the way home.