A/N: Apologies for the delay, and thanks as ever to those who've reviewed. Going back, moving forward, moving on. Kind of a set-up chapter for what's to come. Enjoy.
XV. Bound
Roman stared at the floor the entire way to the little locker room he and Dean had grabbed earlier today, stony silent and refusing to make eye contact with anyone - including Seth, who followed half a step behind.
Everything still felt kind of surreal, like he'd hallucinated it.
No way Ambrose would just up and walk out on them, would he?
They were brothers.
Yeah, Seth screwed up, but when brothers screwed up, they got their crap out of their systems and they got over it.
That wasn't what happened, and Roman just didn't get it.
"Stay here a minute and cool off," Hunter had said said, a hand in the middle of Roman's chest. They - along with Stephanie McMahon - stood just beyond Gorilla position, in the little alcove behind the steps that led up to the curtain.
It was hushed back there, funeral quiet, and the few guys making their way past did so on eggshells.
Seth stood hunched in on himself, arms folded and his chin down on his chest, thousand-yard staring at the floor.
Stephanie likewise had her arms folded beneath her breasts, but she looked more like a disappointed mother than anything. "Not to say 'I told you so', Seth, but I did say it was a bad idea to air your dirty laundry in front of everybody like that. Now you guys have an even bigger mess on your hands."
Hunter nodded. "This should have been a closed-door thing between you three. They-" he pointed to the arena behind him "-didn't need to see that. You should have come to us."
Seth muttered, "I thought we could handle this ourselves."
Roman pulled in a breath to say something, but stopped himself before a word got out. There'd be a time and place to say what he wanted to to Seth; now wasn't it.
Hunter's gaze flicked away from Roman to Seth. "Well, be that as it may, there's too much money in the three of you together as a unit for me to let things end like this. The Authority still needs you. So I'm going to give Ambrose some time to cool down, and then I'll call him. We'll have a chat. Saturday at the house show, the five of us will sit down in a room together and we'll talk this out like adults." He gave Seth a hard look. "Like we should have done in the first place."
Stephanie brushed a piece of lint off her skirt. "We'll get everything out in the open, you'll all say your piece, and then we'll go forward from there. Until then, it's probably best you all just stay away from each other. No contact, no calls. Just go away and think about what you want to say."
As he'd nodded his understanding, Seth had looked like a little kid who'd been scolded by his mom.
Roman knew the feeling.
He'd always looked up to Triple H - even if he didn't always agree with what The Authority was doing - and it stung a little to have the guy looking at him like an unhappy dad.
The walk to the tiny box of a locker room felt a little like being sent away from the principal's office.
Finally getting there was a big damn relief.
Of course, first thing Roman noticed was that Dean's bags were gone. Seth's weren't in there either, and Roman frowned over him. "Where'd you leave your stuff?"
"My rental," Seth admitted. He pulled his hair back out of his face and flipped it over his shoulders as he sat in one of the two folding chairs. "I didn't want to be bothered."
Roman grabbed the second folding chair, spun it around backward, and straddled it.
Seth stripped off one glove and scrubbed a hand over his face. "I fucked up, Rome," he said, and suddenly he looked young. "I really did."
"We all did," Roman said gruffly. "All three of us."
"I'm gonna try calling him. See if I can find out where the fuck he went."
Roman gestured to the room around them. "Well, his shit's gone, so I'm guessing he took off with Regal already. Good luck getting him to answer his damn phone."
Glaring at the room's open doorway, Seth nodded. "Fuck. Yeah, you're probably right."
"There's no 'probably' about it," Roman said. When Dean shut it off the way he had in the ring, it was usually impossible to get him to start talking. He was like a kid's toy with a yanked battery. "This was a bad idea."
Seth blew out a long sigh. "'Scuse me for wanting to fix things."
"That's not what I meant," Roman said quietly, "and you know it. It was a bad idea to do that out in the ring like that. Should've just been us three in a room somewhere."
"Yeah, well, maybe I didn't trust you two to be alone in a room with me."
Roman didn't have a good answer to that, so he didn't bother. "I think I'm gonna head to stay with my parents this weekend," he said instead. "Take some time to think things through. You ought to go see your mom and dad again."
"I thought I was going to Florida with you," Seth said. He sounded confused. "What's - c'mon, Rome. After the couple weeks we've had, you really wanna be alone right now? I don't."
A rough admission, almost reluctant, but hearing it left Roman a little cold. He shook his head. "That's why I think you should stay with your parents - and why I'm gonna go see mine."
"Rome-"
"Don't," Roman cut him off again. "Listen, I get it. What you've been trying to say. About me and Dean, and about the three of us. I get it. I stuck my fist in out there not to take your side, but because, as corny as it sounds, I believe in The Shield. This." He held up his fist. "All three of us. We're stronger together.
"But that doesn't mean I'm good with everything you said out there. Your so-called sacrifice. Pretty chicken-shit, if you ask me. So was having us do this summit out in front of everybody. I hate to say it, but I agree with Hunter and Stephanie: this was a Shield problem and it should've been a closed-door thing."
Doggedly, Seth shook his head. "We've tried that. How many times did I try to talk to you two behind closed doors over the past couple months? Practically every day. You guys didn't listen. Maybe it was chicken-shit, but it got you two on the same page, didn't it?"
Roman looked pointedly around the room. "You see Dean here? Because I don't. That look like we're on the same page to you?"
"You were."
"For a minute."
"What the hell do you want from me, Rome?" Seth suddenly snapped. "I've been running myself ragged for months trying to keep this thing from falling apart. Talking wasn't doing shit. I had to do something - even if that something was to make myself the bad guy to give you two idiots something you could be mad about together. Something you could focus on together. I'm sorry, all right? Walking out on you guys - yeah, that was a shitty thing to do. I know it was. You think I liked it? You think I wanted to leave you two to get your asses kicked last night? You think I wanted to-"
"Give Wyatt another weapon to use against Dean?" Roman suggested quietly.
Seth's mouth shut with a snap.
"You even stop to think about that?" Roman pressed. "What you were doing, leaving Dean to the Wyatts?"
"...fuck."
"Yeah."
"Fuck," Seth said again. He patted down his pockets almost frantically. "Jesus Christ, I just wanted to fix us so we could all take on the Wyatts. I wasn't trying to - fuck. I gotta call him."
"He won't answer," Roman said. Suddenly he felt about ten years older. "Good new is, the Wyatts and Cena all got sent home last night after their big bullshit at the end of Raw, so they ain't here. But, yeah, once Wyatt gets wind of what happened tonight, what do you think he's gonna do?"
Seth jammed his phone to his ear, impatiently pushing strands of blond out of his way. "C'mon, c'mon, c'mon, you stubborn asshole, answer."
Roman stood up to go dig his own phone out of his bag as Seth disconnected and said, "I'm gonna try again."
"Do that." Meanwhile, he straddled his own chair again, phone held in both hands. Instead of trying to call, he slowly tapped out: Wasn't me choosing Seth over you. Was choosing the Shield over running alone. Meant what I said last night. We still need you. Don't do anything stupid. Don't get caught out alone. Let me know you're okay.
He sent the text, and glanced up in time to catch Seth frowning over his own screen as he typed away.
If Dean was with Regal…
Shit, at this point, Roman wasn't even sure which was worse: Regal had had Dean's head spinning as much as Wyatt had, and Roman still wasn't completely convinced Regal was innocent in any of this. Old bastard used to just love twisting Dean around down in Florida, and Dean was falling into it just as hard now as he had back then.
He's changed.
People didn't change - especially not people like that.
Problem was, idiot or not, Dean was a grown-ass man, and one who was gonna do whatever was in his crazy damn head to do.
Getting punched in the mouth tonight and shoved down probably hadn't helped anything - especially since Seth hadn't directed any of that anger Roman's way. Sometimes it was impossible to guess what Dean was thinking, but in this case, Roman didn't have a single doubt Dean had taken all that as yet another sign of 'me-versus-them.'
He hadn't meant to shove Dean on his ass; he'd only meant to cool things off so Seth could finish his spiel. Of course, he hadn't exactly approved of Seth belting Dean in the face - all that bullshit about 'sacrifice' and 'taking one for the team' had left kind of a bad taste in his mouth, and it hadn't exactly gone past him that Seth hadn't really answered why he thought he was making such a great sacrifice.
He'd stuck his fist in because maybe he didn't agree with Seth's methods, he agreed with the message.
They were The Shield, and together, the three of them were stronger than any of them were alone.
But Dean - stubborn asshole - was obviously still stuck on 'Seth and Roman together, and me on the outside.' He wasn't separating the out-of-ring stuff from the in-ring, so the second he'd seen Roman standing with Seth, his face just closed down. And Roman knew, even before it happened, exactly what was coming.
He wished he'd have jumped down to grab Dean by the shoulders, told him 'It's not me choosing Seth over you, dumbass; it's got nothing to do with that. This is me choosing The Shield - us. You. Me. Seth. All three of. Together. I'm choosing that over running alone. It's me choosing you both.'
It wasn't a shock - at all - when his phone chimed with a text a minute later. He read it once, mouth tightening, and then said aloud, "He says, 'Fuck off. Tired of you pushing me around & acting like you're better than me. Fuck off and leave me alone. I'm done.'"
As he read that, Seth's phone buzzed in his hand. Dark eyes narrowed at the screen. "Yeah," he muttered. "Says, 'I don't need people who punch me in the mouth to try to get me to fall in line. So fuck off. I'm done. Don't text me again.' Fucking asshole."
Roman absently pocketed his own phone to avoid the temptation to chuck it into the wall. "Yeah," he admitted. He reached over to the chair and settled a hand on Seth's forearm. "Listen, I'm not saying I'm done just because I want to spend the week alone, all right? I'm not saying that at all. I know we're in a big damn mess, but I still love you. I just - want some time to step back and take a new look at this stuff. Figure out what I want to say when we get together on Saturday."
Some of the tension visibly drained out of Seth's posture. "But we're not done. You and me."
"I'm not." Roman stood and held out a hand. "Are you?"
Seth stumbled over his chair in his haste to step into Roman's embrace. "Of course not. I love you too, Rome. Jesus."
"Good," Roman grunted, lowering his chin onto Seth's shoulder. "'S why I want you to go stay with your parents. That way you're not by yourself. That, and I doubt Wyatt's gonna try to make a run at either of us, but even so, he doesn't know where our parents are, so this should keep us safe enough."
"We can keep an eye on them, too," Seth murmured against the side of Roman's neck. "'S a good idea. I'll keep trying with Dean, too. I know he said 'I'm done,' but it's more-"
"You want to make sure he doesn't disappear." He'd heard the trouble in Seth's voice. Still felt responsible. Didn't blame him, either; he worried about the same thing. But what could they do? "I gotcha. I will, too. If you hear anything, let me know."
"I will," Seth said. "Six a.m. flight tomorrow, right?"
It took Roman a second to shift mental gears, but after a second, he nodded. "Mm-hmm. I got a room for tonight, if that's what you're asking. And, yeah, you could stay."
"Did look like it was going to snow pretty bad tonight."
"Then stay." He finally let Seth go - albeit reluctantly. Going to bed alone last night had sucked. "Two conditions, though: one, you don't try to talk me into letting you come home. Two, we don't talk."
Even if he'd missed Seth last night, he'd just have to suck it up: getting away, getting some space, thinking things through - that needed to be his priority this week.
It'd only be three days, anyway.
For his part, Seth moved to stand in the doorway. "Think I can come up with things for us to do that don't involve talking."
No smile, but at least there was some humor in the dark of his eyes.
Roman didn't smile, either, but he said, "Lookin' forward to it, baby."
And with one last worried thought for their missing third teammate, Roman gathered his things and turned to follow Seth out into a frosty cold winter night.
xXx
After the second time he'd awoken screaming, Dean decided forgo sleep altogether in favor of glaring out the window at the snow-choked night while he plotted his escape.
It was quiet.
No music.
Rowan had fallen asleep a while ago, his sheep's mask askew on his face.
Harper drove on without making a sound.
That left Wyatt a ghostly dark reflection in the glass, watching. Dean couldn't exactly make out Wyatt's face, but the pale smear of color told him all he needed to know.
Not that Dean even needed to see the guy to know exactly where he was: Wyatt was sitting hip-to-hip and shoulder-to-shoulder with him, and Dean would never - not under pain of death - admit it, but Wyatt's proximity was actually helping keep the cold from sinking too deep into Dean's bones.
It wasn't exactly freezing in the stinking cab, but it certainly wasn't as warm as Dean liked it.
(Of course, Seth and Roman both complained Dean was only ever warm inside a sauna. Which wasn't exactly true; he'd just grown acclimated to the desert heat of Las Vegas, and anything else just felt cold in comparison.)
He asked to stop and piss half an hour ago, but Wyatt had only offered to get him a bottle - meaning stopping anytime soon was probably out of the question.
Maybe if they stopped for gas-
"If you're thinking about escape, little rabbit," Wyatt suddenly commented right in Dean's ear, "forget about it. We aren't letting you go."
"Fuck off," Dean muttered. Outside, headlights from a passing car made the flying snowflakes look like shooting stars. "You really think nobody's gonna notice I'm gone?"
"You think you're that difficult to impersonate on your phone? 'Fuck off.' 'Fuck you.' 'I don't need any help.' For someone who speaks with such poetry in the ring, you're so limited out of it."
"F-" Dean ground his teeth together around the fuck you that, naturally, wanted to sneak out. "You don't know me."
Wyatt actually chuckled, a wash of sour hot breath sweeping across Dean's face. "Better than you think, but not half as well as I want to." He nuzzled into the side of Dean's neck like some kind of fucking dog, lips finding their way to Dean's pulse point as one chubby hand cupped Dean's chin. "What is it," he asked, teeth oh-so-lightly grazing the skin there, "that has to you so terrified of me, little rabbit? Mm? What do you think I'm plannin' to do to you? Maim and torture you? Murder you? Rape you?"
Trapped as he was between Wyatt, the truck's door, and the seatbelt, there was no way for Dean to get away from Wyatt's touch. He shuddered in a kind of sweeping revulsion.
"I don't aim to hurt you, you know," Wyatt said, placing a soft kiss just below the angle of Dean's jaw. "The only way I will is if you try to hurt my family. Where I'm planning to have you stay while we talk through all this, you shouldn't even be tempted. So, no temptation for you, no need for me to do anything unpleasant to you. I don't want to hurt you, Dean, is my point. I'm not bringing you home to do any of the horrible things to you I bet you're imagining right now. To be honest with you, I'm a little offended you think I would. After all the trouble my boys and I have gone to to bring you home, we're not planning to start chopping off body parts or letting animals eat at you. I told you: we want you beside us. You can't exactly be there fighting if you're missing limbs. We're not savages and we're not stupid.
"But she did say she doesn't mind if I, ah, take my pleasures in you," he went on, the point of his tongue drawing a slow, wet stripe up the side of Dean's cheek. "She just doesn't want me hurtin' you too bad."
Dean jerked away as much as he possibly could. It wasn't much. "Get the fuck off me."
"Oh, now, relax," Wyatt said. Wonder of fucking wonders, he let go. "Maybe, little rabbit, just maybe I don't have to do that. If you listen, if you behave yourself, might just be I don't need to touch you at all. How you're treated once we get home depends a lot on you. The better you are, the better you listen, the less trouble I'll give you. You see how that goes?"
Letting his forehead fall against the cool glass, Dean muttered, "What do you want from me?"
Less a gesture of surrender than one of frustration.
"Listen," Wyatt said, his voice again back at Dean's ear. "I've already told you. It's you. Standing with us. Fighting beside us. You're a powerful monster, and you don't even know it. What you're capable of. That destruction. You're a bomb waiting to go off. All you need is to be shown where to aim so we can tear the whole system down."
"I don't want to tear the system down."
"Yes, you do," Wyatt said. "You and me, man, we're cut from the same cloth. We've had to fight and scratch for everything little scrap of everything we've got. The system stepped all over us and screwed us - shunned us - while it handed all the best things to pretty people like Cena and your boy Reigns. People who turned their backs on us. It was Reigns who pushed you and the skunk apart, wasn't it? I remember you two in Florida. Thick as thieves. But Reigns enters the picture, and man, he's eyeing up your little skunk like a starving man eyeing a steak. And you're just in the way. So he pushes you. He takes until you're the one standing out in the cold with nowhere to go but to some old snake who just wants to twist you around even more. You see that, don't you? You see how it is? People like Cena and Reigns, the system is designed for them. The Authority goes out of its way to protect them. People like us get ground under their feet. So it gets to be a case of kill or be killed.
"Like you growin' up," he went on. "Junkie whore of a mother. Daddy in jail. Nobody gave a damn about you, even when you showed up beat up at school, or when you didn't have anything to wear but ripped up dirty clothes, or when you didn't have any food to eat."
Nastily startled, Dean looked around. Wyatt's face was mostly shadowed under the brim of his hat. "The fuck do you know about any of that?"
Wyatt reached over and gently cupped Dean's cheek again, a soft touch like he was holding an egg. "She told me. She knows, little rabbit. She knows exactly who you are. Here." He tapped Dean's temple. "And here." Two fingers dead-center of Dean's chest. "We're not the same, you and I, but we came up the same way. But unlike you, I had her to show me the way. To show me where to hit back at the people who'd try to grind me down. That's what I want to show you. I don't want to ruin you or rip you apart or whatever awful thing you're imagining. I want to show you a better way."
Dean looked back out at the frozen nightscape, blurring by in purples and navies and thick white. "You want to use me."
"Yeah, I do," Wyatt said. A bare whisper against the shell of Dean's ear. "I want to use that monster you got in you - your urge to destroy - to start tearing down the machine. I want you to use me as the light to guide your way. That's all."
Suddenly uncertain what to say, Dean chose not to say anything.
Wyatt pressed one more kiss into Dean's cheek before letting go. "You'll see," he said. "You might not believe it now, but we'll show you. She will. You'll see."
And Dean could only sit there, silently, in that old cab that smelled like dirty socks and unwashed bodies, and keep watching the night rush by.
xXx
After a few days spent in his family's boisterous, but unobtrusive company in sunny Pensacola, Roman was glad to head off to Salt Lake City early Saturday morning.
It had been nice to sit down and talk things out with his dad.
A former WWE Superstar and tag champ himself, his dad knew all about the pitfalls of being on a team with somebody he was close to. Granted, it was Roman's uncle, but still, they were family, and they were just as close in the ring as they were out of it.
"The most important thing we learned," his dad said, lounging back in his old recliner, "is that what goes on in the ring is business. It's a job. It's what you do. What you do outside the ring is who you are. As the end of the day, wrestling doesn't last. You love it while you're doing it. It's a passion. But it's still a job. A job isn't worth losing somebody you love over." He offered a placid smile. "If they matter to you more than your career, you have to find a way to keep that separate. Otherwise, you don't last. That's why so many teams fail."
"What if we're not all on the same page?" Roman had asked from the couch. He'd propped both bare feet up on the coffee table, completely ignoring his mother's rule about that.
His dad had shrugged one heavy shoulder. "If you don't matter to them as much as they do to you, if they're putting their careers ahead of you, then there's not much you can do about that. Sometimes these things can be fixed, but sometimes you just have to know when to cut your losses."
Roman gathered his hair behind his neck and let it fall. "What would you do?"
"See what there's left to salvage," his dad said, "and go from there. If that means nothing, then it's nothing. If there's something - even if it's just two you, and that's what you two want - then salvage it. What do you want to do?"
"I don't know," Roman admitted. "That. See what's left to fix. I mean, I know I'm gonna be fine no matter what, but I'm not ready to give up on it just yet. The Shield made me in the WWE. We still got legs."
The old man had just smiled, and Roman felt like - finally - he'd gotten one right.
He'd texted Seth back and forth, too (and was relieved that Seth was safe and out of trouble), and he'd tried to get hold of Dean (only to get more of the same types of texts: 'We're done. Leave me alone.'), but for the most part, he'd spent a lot of time on his own trying to figure out what he wanted to say during this meeting.
Talking really wasn't his thing.
He was more of the speak with your fists kind of cat.
Always had been.
But after exchanging some real good texts with Seth and some shitty ones with Dean between Wednesday and Friday night, Roman felt pretty ready to sit down and start ironing things out.
It was freezing cold in Salt Lake - the dry sort of crystalline cold that made his nose hairs freeze - but, for a change, it wasn't snowing. (He already missed Florida, where it had been a mild eighty all three days.) The sun had begun to set on a clear evening, and the moon had just made itself visible over the edges of the mountains.
He'd no more than stepped around to unload his bags out of the trunk when his phone rang in his pocket.
Cursing, he switched his keys to his other hand and dug his phone out. "Yeah?" he asked without bothering to check the caller ID.
"Hey," Seth greeted him. "You here yet? Hunter wants a meeting as soon as you're here."
"Yeah, I just pulled in. I'm out in the parking lot. Where are you?"
"I'll meet you by the back door."
"Dean here?" Roman asked.
"No," Seth said. "Hunter just said I was supposed to grab you and meet him in his office. Oh, hey, I see you. Right behind you."
Roman glanced over his shoulder. Seth was standing in a yellow rectangle of light in the middle of a heavy fire door, waving. "All right," Roman said, waving back. "Be there in a sec."
He disconnected the call and grabbed his things.
On his way in, he looked down the row of parked vehicles, and caught himself glaring at the beat-up old truck about halfway down the lot from where he'd parked.
Wyatts were here.
Seth apparently guessed what he was looking at, because the moment Roman approached, he said, "Yeah, they're here somewhere. Weren't supposed to be." He held the door open and let Roman roll his suitcase ahead of him into the building. "They were supposed to be in New York this weekend. Cena and Batista were supposed to team up against Wyatt and I think Randy Orton, but I guess Hunter wanted Wyatt here for some reason."
"Great," Roman muttered, eyeing the near-empty stretch of hallway ahead of him. Down at the far end, a few divas were wandering around, but aside from that, the place was a ghost town. "I was really hoping we could avoid those assholes until we had time to work all this shit out."
"Well, I saw the card for tonight earlier," Seth said, falling into step beside Roman. "It's me and you against Harper and Rowan. Wyatt's got Cena. Dean's not on the card."
Roman glanced over sharply at that. "What?"
"Yeah." Seth led the way to a door three-quarters of the way down the hall. He nudged it open with his hip, revealing a small locker room that looked about like every other small locker room The Shield had occupied in the last year. "I don't know what's going on. Hunter didn't say, but I'm guessing this meeting's got something to do with that." He grabbed a hair tie out of his open suitcase and pulled his hair back off his face. He was in street clothes: a long-sleeved tee shirt and skinny jeans.
Looked good, Roman thought as he stashed his things, and he took a second to cross the little room to reel Seth in. "Hi."
Seth's arms snaked around him. "Hey."
They kissed, slow and easy, right there, like no time at all had passed.
One thing, at least, that was still okay, and it made something in Roman's chest relax.
Seth looked okay. Seemed a little nervous when he finally stepped back, but that might have been more about the meeting than anything.
Still, Roman said, "You okay?"
"I missed you," Seth said, squinting off out the door. "But, yeah. I didn't do much but sleep."
"I missed you, too," Roman admitted. "Any more nightmares?"
"Nah, not really." It didn't sound like a lie. Dark eyes made their way over to Roman's. "We gotta go."
Roman tossed his winter coat onto a chair, flattened out his tee shirt, and turned to follow.
Three tense minutes later, Seth stopped abruptly just inside an open office door; Roman, not really paying attention, ran right into him, smacking his chin on the back of his head.
"Ow," he muttered, frowning. "Seth, what the-?"
"Hunter," Seth said, totally ignoring him, "what the fuck are they doing here?"
Roman craned to look over Seth's shoulder.
Standard commandeered arena office: painted cinder block and bland tile. White board off to the right. Cheap metal desk in front of the board.
Hunter in a polo shirt and slacks behind it.
Across the desk, in his rocking chair - does he carry that damn thing everywhere? - sat Bray Wyatt. Wyatt had on his usual brown fedora, a pristine white pair of pants, and a bright red Hawaiian shirt. He was looking serenely at Hunter, who sat with blunt hands folded over the bare desktop.
Harper and Rowan stood right behind Wyatt's chair, glowering like a couple of hairy gargoyles.
Hunter glanced toward the door, eyebrows lifting. "Guys. There you are. Come in. Close the door."
Seth inched into the room, hugging the wall immediately to his left, while Roman stepped in and closed the door, only to step to Seth's left and nudge Seth to stand back against it - that way if shit went down, Roman was between Seth and the Wyatts, and Seth could escape out the door.
"What are they doing here, Hunter?" he asked gruffly, eyeing the Wyatts.
"It's fine," Hunter said, holding up a hand. "Just - you guys stay over there. These guys are gonna stay right where they are. This'll just take a few minutes, and you can all go get ready for your matches. All right?"
"Fine by us," Wyatt drawled. He continued to rock away, just as calm as could be. "We have no quarrel here."
"The hell you don't," Roman grunted. "You guys-"
"Hey!" Hunter cut him off, voice echoing off the walls. Some damn King of Kings stuff right there. "No. We're not doing this. As of right now-" he added, turning to eye the Wyatts "-this little war between you guys is done. You'll have some matches at house shows over the next couple weeks, but everything stays in the ring. You want to beat on each other, fine - but out there. Once you leave the arena, it's done. You don't talk to each other. You leave each other the hell alone. Am I understood?"
Seth folded his arms over his chest, eyebrows pulled low. "Where's Dean, Hunter? Shouldn't he be here?"
"He's suspended," Hunter said brusquely. "Indefinitely. So, once I send these three away, you two need to sit down with me and we need to decide where we go from here."
Roman and Seth exchanged a quick, startled look. "Wait, what?" Seth asked quickly. "What do you mean he's suspended?"
"He made some threatening comments toward myself and my wife," Hunter said, an angry flush creeping up the sides of his neck. "Until he can learn to show some respect, he's done. If he has to sit home for a week, a month, or until his contract runs out, I don't care. But that's between him and me. It doesn't have any bearing on you two, and it doesn't have any bearing on this." He jerked his head at the Wyatts. "So just can for right now, and soon as we're all done, the three of us will talk."
Bewildered and spun for a huge loop, Roman sagged back against the wall. Well, there went knowing what the hell he was gonna say tonight.
Suspended.
Of course, Wyatt started laughing. His chair squeaked softly - eek, eek - like it was chuckling along with him. It was all Roman could do not to spear them both.
"Shut the fuck up, Wyatt," Seth muttered from Roman's side.
"Oh, now," Wyatt said, grinning his madman's grin. "There's no need for that kind of talk-"
"All of you stop," Hunter cut in. "Wyatt, you listen to me. You're getting your match with John Cena at WrestleMania. But here's the thing: that's conditioned on you leaving these two alone. Like I said, if you meet in the ring, you can beat the hell out of each other. Once that bell rings and the match is over, that's it. If I see you so much as blink in their direction, I'm pulling your match. Are we understood?"
Wyatt rocked and rocked away. It was hard to tell if he was smiling now, hidden as his mouth was behind his beard, but he looked like he was finding something really funny. It was how his eyes were kind of narrow at the corners. "Little man in a big chair," he said softly. "What makes you think I need an arena full of people there to witness me destroying John Cena? My ego is nowhere near as big as yours. I'd like the world to witness me doing it, but if I have to send him to the sweet by and by in a dark parking lot with no one but my boys around to see it, I will. You mark my word, Hunter. Your threats don't scare me a bit.
"Having said that," he added before the furious-looking Hunter could get a word in edgewise, "I meant what I said. We have no quarrel left with those two. We've already broken the bonds of their so-call 'unbreakable brotherhood.' And isn't interesting how the one little hound who had the spine to walk away is the one suspended? It's almost like he dared decide he didn't want to toe the Authority's line, and now he's being punished for it."
Roman felt himself tensing, his whole body like a clenched fist. "You better stay away from him. So help me God, Wyatt, I find out you've gone anywhere near him, and you'll be a pile of hair and that ugly-ass shirt on the floor."
No doubt about Wyatt's smile this time. "He's in no danger from me," he said. "I'd have like to have had a chance to personally congratulate him on having the wherewithal to break away from the herd, but the stricken looks on your faces right now is more than enough. I got what I was after."
Behind him, Harper and Rowan remained completely still, either one of them so much as blinking.
Blank, both of them, as blank as Rowan's creepy, ever-present lamb's mask.
Over the course of the next few months, Roman would replay that conversation over and over in his head to try to remember if the Wyatts had given away any clue they had already taken Dean down to their compound, but no matter how many times he went over it, he could never remember.
He'd say I should have known, but the reality - the hell of it - was that Wyatt's illusion was just that damn good.
Roman never suspected a damn thing.
Not until it was way too late.
Hunter said, "Well, it goes without saying, Wyatt, but even if Ambrose is suspended, I still want you to stay the hell away from him, too. You really think I can't stop you from taking your shot at Cena? There are three of you. I got a whole roster full of guys who'd be happy to line up to take a crack at you. So just do everybody a favor and go hide in your little swampy corners and leave everybody alone. Focus on Cena."
"Oh, we aim to," Wyatt said. Again, no doubt he was grinning under all that hair. "And, as I've said twice now, we have no fight left with these two boys, or their erstwhile teammate. We'll leave them be as long as they extend us the same courtesy. Accept their defeat gracefully."
Seth twitched like someone had slapped him. "The only reason you won-"
"Enough!" Hunter said over him. The flush had crept all the way up to the top of his head, which looked bright red under the short bristles of his buzzcut. "Seth, enough. It's done, I said. They'll leave you alone. You leave them alone. Save this crap for the ring. Leave it there."
"Oh, believe me, I will," Seth muttered darkly, throwing Rowan and Harper a nasty look.
"Good," Hunter said. "If we're all agreed, then, Wyatts, you can go. Reigns and Rollins, you wait."
Roman edged to the back corner of the room, dragging Seth along by one arm, as Wyatt and his two boys all got up - Rowan picking up the damn rocking chair - and headed out.
In the doorway, though, Wyatt paused and turned to sweep his fedora off as he bowed. "It was a pleasure, boys," he said. "We'll have to do this again sometime soon."
Hunter swiveled in his chair and pointed. "Go!"
Wyatt straightened and put his hat back on.
His mocking laughter drifted into the room for several seconds after he left.
Once again, Roman tensed up like a fist, and he found himself fighting real hard not to punch a hole in the wall.
Hunter got up and closed the door, exhaling noisily as he did. "Have a seat you two," he said, gesturing at the two chairs that the Wyatts had probably shoved aside to make room for the rocker. Roman grabbed them both and set them back in front of the desk.
"Suspended?" he asked, sitting.
"Yeah," Seth added, crossing one leg over the opposite knee. "What the hell did he say?"
Hunter laced his hands together on the desktop again. Forbidding. A pissed-off principal. "Nothing I'm going to repeat," he said, shaking his head. "Suffice it to say, he's going to have a lot of groveling to do if he's ever going to get his job back. You guys going to be able to drop this thing with the Wyatts?"
"Will they?" Seth asked.
"From the sounds of things I think so," Hunter replied. "If they don't, you tell me. I'll send their asses back to the swamp so fast it'll make their heads spin. They won't get within a mile of John Cena - or anyone else - again. But you guys gotta hold up your end. You can go as hard as you want in the ring, like I said, but when the match is done, that's it."
Roman couldn't help a small smile. "We get to get some of our own back, in other words."
"Between the bells," Hunter nodded.
Seth smiled that oddly dark smile again. "We'll take it."
"Good." Hunter sat back in his chair. "Well, now that that's settled, let's talk about what we're going to go with you two going forward. I don't think it's in anybody's best interest if we add a new third person to the Shield."
"No," Roman and Seth said together.
Whatever Dean had done wrong, there was no throwing a new third person in the mix.
"Didn't think so," the boss-man said. "So I have an idea. It's a little out there. You might not like it at first, but hear me out. I made Ambrose send the US title back. It's been vacated. And we're not really doing much with the Intercontinental title right now, either. So I'm thinking what if each of you goes after one of those? You could still tag together when we - the Authority - need you to, but what about that? You two maybe starting your singles careers."
"Going after titles," Seth said.
"Going after titles," Hunter echoed, "at Wrestlemania."
Roman looked at Seth, eyebrows climbing somewhere into his hairline. His own title match at Wrestlemania? "Hell yes," he said. Excitement swept aside all the bullshit from the past couple weeks. "Count me in."
"Me too," Seth said, grinning. He sounded about as excited as Roman felt. "That sounds amazing, Hunter. Holy crap. But who gets which?"
"Well," Hunter said, shrugging, "Big E has the Intercontinental title right now, and I think he'd match up well against Roman. And if you do the US title, Seth, you can pick your opponent. If you want to wrestle El Torito or Hornswoggle, I don't care. Or you can challenge yourself, if you want. It's up to you. I just want those titles to add to the heavyweight title. That way, assuming Road Dogg and Billy win the tag titles back, we'll have them all."
Seth mirrored Hunter's posture, leaning back in his chair. "Nothing wrong with that."
"Would we still be the Shield, though?" Roman asked.
Hunter actually grimaced. "I mean, you could, but to be honest, I think the Shield is done. I think you two would be better off starting to build your own identities. You're the two guys we want to build the future of this company on, anyway. You always were. You'll still wrestle together when we need you to, like I said, but I really think the time is right to put the Shield to bed and introduce the WWE Universe to Roman Reigns and Seth Rollins."
There was a pause before Seth said, "So, what, new ring gear, new music - is…? I mean, is that what we're talking about here?"
"Yeah," Hunter said. "To be debuted at Wrestlemania. That gives us a little time to try some stuff out."
Seth still looked lit-up happy. "That'd be great."
Roman frowned down at the floor, the excitement he'd felt earlier fading. "So just like that? You just - the last eighteen months, and that's it? From 'Believe in the Shield' to, what, 'Every man for himself'?"
"Oh, come on, Rome," Seth said. "It's not like that. You didn't think we'd be The Shield forever, did you? You can't tell me you haven't been itching to move up. How much further was there to go with the three of us? We beat practically everybody. What else was there left for us to do? Besides that, it's not every man for himself. We'll still wrestle together. Maybe not as often, but we're working for the same side here."
"True," Roman said, somewhat mollified. "Guess I just thought it was a decision we all three would make when the time came."
It was Hunter who answered, "Well, lest you forget, it was Ambrose who made the decision for you Tuesday night. He walked. So there you have it."
"Yeah, that's true, too," Roman admitted. He looked a question Seth's way. "So you're cool with this?"
"Yeah," Seth said. Still grinning: a kid on Christmas morning staring at a whole mountain of presents. "Look, no, I'm not happy this is how it's coming about, but maybe it happened like this for a reason. And, hey, who knows? Maybe if Dean gets his shit together, what's to say we can reform The Shield down the line? Maybe it's just over for now." He reached over to clap Roman's shoulder. "Look, you're getting a title shot. We are getting title shots. At Wrestlemania. We're on our way, man. That's what matters right now."
It was hard, Roman found, not to be sucked in by Seth's boyish enthusiasm. Even more difficult to resist the urge to lean in and kiss him.
If Hunter hadn't been in the room, he would have done it.
As it was, he grinned himself, pushing past the unease, and let the excitement settle back in.
"We're on our way, then," he said.
"Yeah," Hunter said, smiling himself, "you guys really are. I'm proud of you."
At that, Seth and Roman both sat up straighter: a couple of star students getting praise from a favorite teacher.
A couple of gullible idiots, Roman would think later.
Both of them.
xXx
As he led his boys away from Hunter's makeshift office, Bray couldn't help chuckling. "I don't think that could have gone any better if we'd scripted it," he said. "Hunter'll dangle some shiny bright object in front of 'em, and they won't notice us at all."
Luke said, "When are you gonna go see him?"
Rabbit, Abigail hummed happily, all sunshine and summer warmth. Little rabbit safe in his den.
Indeed he was.
Bray shook his head. "Oh, not for at least a week," he said. "He needs some time to think things through. The flock will keep an eye on him until then. Make sure he doesn't hurt himself. In the meantime…"
"John Cena." As ever, Erick's voice was muffled by his mask. "What will we do Monday?"
"That's the question, isn't it?" Bray mused. "We'll have to think about it. For now, we have our battles to prepare for tonight, and we need to make ready. So. Let's go do that."
Humming, he led his odd little family onward.
xXx
A short while later, hasty blowjobs and a lot of frantic kisses exchanged on the floor of their little locker room, Roman finally pulled himself to his feet and reached for a towel to start wiping himself off.
Wasn't exactly how he wanted their first time after the whole mess with the Wyatts last week go to - he'd been envisioning taking his time in a hotel bed - but he was relieved enough to have Seth back to halfway normal to keep his disappointment to himself.
Seth, still sprawled out on the floor with his head pillowed on his gym bag, swiped a hand over his sweaty, flushed face and said, "So we're good, right? With all this. I know it's not how we wanted it to be, but - I mean, we're good?"
"I'm not hating the idea of a title shot," Roman admitted as he gently swiped a towel over his groin. "Just wish I knew what the hell Ambrose's malfunction was."
"Yeah." Seth sat up and turned to dig for his own towel. "What do you think he said?"
"I don't know," Roman said. He decided he was clean enough - he was just gonna get sweaty in the ring again anyway - so he discarded his towel and reached for his underwear. "Must have been something really bad, though. You see how red Hunter's head got? Dude looked sunburned."
"Yeah, he looked pretty pissed," Seth said. "'Course, the shit Dean was saying to us this week, I guess I'm not all that surprised." He sighed. "You know, I love the hell outta that guy - like a brother - but this is the same kinda shit he pulled when Regal was fucking with him the first time. I told him, I said, 'You do this to me again, I'm done.' As sorry as I am to see this Shield stuff over, if that's how he's gonna be…"
"Yeah, but it didn't help he had Wyatt all up in his head this time, too," Roman felt compelled to point out. "I'm sure that didn't help." Why he felt the need to keep defending a guy who'd been acting like an asshole all week, he had no idea. But he did. "I might give it a few days and try again."
Seth gave him a measured look before shrugging. "If you wanna keep bashing your head on that rock, be my guess. Just don't complain to me if you get a concussion." He held up a hand. "It's better if you let him come to you, Rome, is what I'm saying. When I say I'm done, I don't mean I wouldn't talk to him again. I'm just saying I'm done running after him. Trying to drag him back in where he doesn't want to be. If he comes back and he's sorry, then we'll talk. But until then I'm not going to keep putting myself out there if he's just gonna be a dick. You can if you want. Not to be an asshole or anything, but if it's really done with the Wyatts and we don't have anything to worry about there, then I got more important things to worry about with my career. You know? That's what I want to focus on. That, and beating the shit out of Harper and Rowan tonight - and every night we get to take them on."
Roman let all that settle a long moment before he nodded. He pulled his hair back up into a loose tail, and hunkered down to pull his ring fest and cargo pants out of his suitcase. "You're right," he said, running fingers over the vest's ribs. "We need to pound some Wyatt faces into the canvas tonight. That's how we get them back for all this bullshit. And Dean… Shit, there's not much we can do about him, is there?"
There really wasn't, was the hell of it.
And Seth shook his head. "No."
"Yeah," Roman muttered. "All right, well, you're right." Still crouched, he yanked his undershirt on. "So what do we do for ring gear, then?"
"Whatever you want," Seth said. "I don't know about you, but I kinda wanna look like a superhero."
Roman snorted. "No such thing, Seth."
Seth caught his eye. "Sure about that?"
xXx
Dean had no idea where the fuck he was.
Just some fucking windowless box of a shack somewhere.
Good-sized, for all that he couldn't move around much in it.
The chain connected to a steel ankle-cuff gave him just enough slack to reach the makeshift toilet - a fucking hole in the ground - and the filthy thin mattress he'd been sleeping on for now three days.
(He knew it was three days because he could see daylight and dark through a crack in one of the walls.)
He could also, by stretching out on his stomach, just reach the food and jug of water someone shoved through a doggie door flap once every day.
Whoever it was used some kind of a long stick to push everything in, so even when he laid in the dirt watching, he couldn't see who it was.
He could never hear footsteps as he they left, and they never answered when he called out.
He had no idea where the fuck he was.
The snow had been a distant memory by the time they crossed into Georgia.
Rowan had been driving then, and Harper had moved to doze in the rear passenger seat while Wyatt sat quietly up front, his hat pulled so low Dean hadn't been able to tell if he was sleeping or not.
He wasn't talking, was the thing, so Dean actually didn't care either way.
They stopped for gas somewhere in south Georgia, and it was there Wyatt forced a bottle of water on Dean, eventually having Harper pour it into Dean's mouth while Wyatt himself pinched Dean's nostrils shut.
Whatever was in the water made Dean pass out into black abyss so deep there were no dreams.
He'd remained unconscious for the rest of the drive to wherever the fuck this was, and he'd finally swam awake in this dark, cool casket of a place, naked and with an ankle tethered to a heavy metal bar that spanned the width of the shack's ceiling. Once he'd drank enough water to chase away a lingering headache, he'd managed to jump up onto the bar the way he would to do a chin-up, but the damn thing hadn't budged an inch. Looked like it was attached to something outside the shack, actually, and whatever it was was solid.
The fucking cuff around his ankle - a hinged piece of metal - had begun to chafe almost immediately.
He'd spent a good couple hours trying to yank the lock off or even undo the hinge, but with no tools besides his hands, that had been useless. All he'd succeeded in doing was splitting a couple of his fingernails and chafing the fuck out of his ankle - prompting him to tear off a piece of the nasty ratty army surplus blanket and slip it into the narrow gap between metal and his bare skin to avoid actually cutting himself.
Last thing he needed was some kind of fucking infection out there.
He had no idea where the fuck this was.
He was pretty sure they were drugging the water.
Or something.
Over the course of the first day, as he'd thirstily guzzled water out of the jug, he'd found himself feeling really calm.
Escape was still uppermost on his mind, but a certain laziness had him stretching out on his back staring up at the ceiling most of that day.
The next morning, he'd felt more energetic - if headachy again - and he'd tried once more to break the chain off the D-Ring locking it to the bar.
But over the course of the day as he'd drank more water, he'd gotten lazy all over again, lassitude washing over him until he'd lain down in the middle of the of the damn mattress, brain churning sluggishly over thoughts of where the fuck Wyatt was and why he wasn't down here blabbing away.
What the fuck tying Dean up like some disobedient dog was supposed to accomplish.
Even if - even if - they were drugging him, it still didn't change the fact he was going to rip Wyatt's diseased fucking head off at the shoulders when he got the chance.
But, yeah, yeah, they had to be slipping him something.
No way he was getting so fucking calm in the middle of the day on his own.
And besides, how the fuck else could he be seeing the little girl in the white dress from his dreams standing in the corner of the room watching him right now?
xXx
A/N: Regal's back next chapter. More on Dean and the Wyatts. Unbelievably, we're almost done.
(By the way, fairly often I post fic snips and what have you for this and my other stuff at my tumblr - akingandhisfool -dot- tumblr - dot- com. So if you're interested, ya can find me there. Thanks for reading.)