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They paid for their meals and headed back to their cars. As Seth and Roman were driving back to the next town, Seth's phone rang, and a quick check showed that it was Dean. "Crap, it's Dean."

Roman winced, "Don't say anything about Jericho until we've read the book."

Seth nodded, "'Sup, man?"

"Where've you guys been?" Dean said. "I've been trying to call you all night."

"We decided to grab some dinner with a few of the boys and we must've both turned our phones off," Seth said honestly. "What's up?"

"Nightly check in? We've been doing this for over a year now?" Dean said, sounding a little annoyed. They'd started doing nightly check-ins after renewing their friendship. Dean would call or check on them to make sure that they were okay, and making sure they took any meds they were prescribed, something neither Roman or Seth were very good at remembering at the end of the night.

"Oh. Sorry, man, long night," Seth said, shaking his head. With Jericho's revelations, a lot of routine things had slipped his mind.

"S'okay. I know you're probably tired. Ask Roman how his shoulder is doing.

"His shoulder?" Then Seth remembered that Roman had hit the ring post shoulder first a little too hard the other night on SmackDown.

He glanced over at Roman, "Dean wants to know how your shoulder's doing."

Roman rolled the aforementioned shoulder and shrugged, "Feels okay."

"Uce says that his shoulder feels fine," Seth reported.

"Thank fuck, that hit looked so bad. Tell him to be sure to put his heating thing on it anyway, just in case," Dean said. "Okay, how about you? How's your knee?"

"It's fine," Seth said, which was true, but even if his knee had been screaming, he wasn't going to tell Dean; not , after hearing what Jericho had initially thought about him and Roman. For the first time, maybe ever, he found himself really listening to his brother's voice. Dean sounded tired, and since he was working with Kevin, who could be a little stiff on the best days, he was probably sore.

"Are you okay?" He found himself asking before he could stop himself.

"Me?" Dean sounded surprised by the question, which just made Seth feel worse. "I'm fine. You know me, ten feet tall and bulletproof. Why?"

"You, uh, you just sounded tired. And I know Kevin can be kind of stiff, even on a good day."

"Yeah, but I gave him as good back. He's a good guy, by the way," Dean said. "Anyway, back to you. You take that new pill your headache doctor gave you?" Seth's doctor had prescribed him a new daily medication to help his migraines.

"Yup, took it this morning, it's really been helping," Seth replied. It felt strange to have this conversation with Dean when he really wanted to scream, 'Why didn't you tell us?! Why don't you trust us to help you?!' at Dean, which would've gotten them nowhere.

"Great," Dean sounded relieved, "I'm glad you asked him about it, Seth."

It was sad that it had never occurred to Seth how stressful taking care of them must be for Dean. Dean never complained, not even when Seth's migraines kept him up all night or when Roman's allergy meds made him hallucinate or made him over aggressive. Looking at Roman, who was listening to the conversation, Seth knew he was thinking the same thing: things were going to change in their little family.

"Hey, Dean," Roman called from the driver's seat, not taking his eyes off the road, "I started that new allergy medication and so far it's been working pretty good, not even a nightmare."

"Oh, that's great, Ro," Dean said, happily, and then Seth heard him stifle a yawn. "Anything else you guys need?"

"Yeah, but it can wait until tomorrow," Roman said. "You sound beat, Dimples, go to bed. We'll deal with the rest tomorrow, okay?"

"Okay," Dean sounded a little confused and slightly hurt, but he said goodbye and hung up.

"Great. Now we've hurt his feelings," Seth sighed, putting his phone in his pocket.

Roman sighed, "I know, I'll make it up to him. It's just, if I had to listen to him much more, I was going to go off about his diabetes and that would've been worse."

Seth sighed, "What're we going to do?"

"Well, we're going to read the book Jericho gave us and figure out how to talk to him about this. Bottom line, there are going to be some changes."

"Like what?"

"Like you and I taking responsibility for our meds, especially when we're on different tours. Dean shouldn't have to call us to be sure, we're grown men for God's sake."

Seth nodded, "I know, but it makes him happy for some odd reason."

Roman nodded, "I'm not saying that he can't help us, especially when your migraines hit, but he shouldn't be staying up after a show just to check in on us. You and I both heard how tired he was, him staying up to check on us is ridiculous."

"Yeah, I know," Seth said. "But I'm afraid that if we confront him about the diabetes and say we'll take care of our own meds and don't need him to call and check on us, he's going to assume that we're abandoning him and he won't hear what we have to say."

Roman sighed, "You're right." The biggest thing people wouldn't believe about Dean was how sensitive he was, the guy cried during scary movies, for heaven's sake. Roman could just picture the devastated look on his friend's face if that all got dumped on him at once. It would seem like a complete confirmation of his worst fears. No, they couldn't do that to Dean.

"Okay, we'll talk to him about the diabetes first, that's more important than anything else. Then, we'll ease into the meds thing later." He bit his lip. "Do you think Renee knows?"

Seth frowned, "If we didn't know, she probably doesn't either. I know Renee and I know that she would not keep quiet about something like this and she wouldn't let Dean keep quiet about it."

"Okay, do you think we should tell her what's going on? I mean, if Dean won't listen to us, he'll listen to her."

"I don't know. I don't want him to think that we're all ganging up on him. Plus, that's really something he should tell her. If we can't get him to listen to us, we'll tell her."

"Which brings up the big problem: How are we going to talk to him about this?"

That was the biggest question of all. How did they confront Dean about this? Dean was one of the toughest people either of them had ever met, but he was extremely skittish when the focus was on him.

Just confronting him wouldn't work, Dean would get defensive and both of them were aware of how quickly Dean could turn a conversation around and talk in circles until you didn't remember what the conversation was about. They'd both fallen prey to that more than once in the time they'd known Dean.

They discussed at length on how to confront Dean without making him feel threatened, but neither could come up with a solution that would solve the problem.

They spent the rest of the trip reading the book Jericho had given them. Seth discovered that the book was available in eBook format and he could get it on his phone and read it aloud. By the time they got to the next town, both were feeling pretty confident that they would be able to handle things if Dean had a 'fluke' as Jericho had put it, but they still hadn't decided on how to confront Dean or how or if they should tell Hunter and Stephanie.

The universe would solve those problems for them.

TBC