Disclaimer: I don't own anyone.
Rated: M
Warning(s): Slash, Threesome, Alleged Suicide, Self-Harm, BDSM, etc.
Seth slept fitfully that night. Dean never came back to bed, and somewhere along the line, Seth realized that he had never expected him too. When the first rays of dawn cut through the cheap hotel blinds, he was out of bed and dressing sluggishly. It seemed a marvel to him that his body would refuse to relax enough to let him have a few winks of sleep, but would protest so violently the next morning. Dressed in loose white shorts and a blue-grey tank top, he grabbed his phone and water bottle and took off.
Dean was asleep on the couch. There was a cup of water on the coffee table, which looked to have only been touched once or twice. Seth carefully made his way over to him, pulling a thin blanket over Dean's frame. He looked weak and frail, so unlike the 'lunatic fringe' that the WWE had come to know and love. In his current position, Seth had an excellent view of the one thing he didn't want to see - the dark, ugly scars on Dean's wrists. And it was that shock to the system that reminded him that this was for the best.
Placing a kiss on Dean's forehead, he took off. He needed to get as far away as possible in order to make this call. He couldn't risk running into someone familiar from the hotel, or seeing a familiar face as he walked along the streets. His travels ended up taking him to Seropedica, Brazil, which was less than fifty-two kilometers from Rio. Once there, he found an outdoor cafe and took a seat, waiving the waiter over. He was handed a menu, which he only gave a cursory glance. After three months, he knew the cuisine.
"I'll have a glass of Cajuína." That was a drink made of blended cashew apples. "And a bowl of Moqueca." That was a seafood stew - he'd had it before, and it was very tasty.
"Right away, sir." He took the menu back, and went off to get the food that Seth had requested.
Seth sat in comfortable silence for several moments, pondering whether or not he would call Hunter. It wasn't really a question, not anymore, but he liked to tell himself that it was. It made him feel better to think that he had some kind of control over the situation. He looked around at the beautiful scenery, thinking blandly about how this should have been a relaxing vacation - and now, because of this, everything had gone to hell. Suddenly, he felt sick, and the scent of food wafting over from the main building of the cafe didn't help.
Taking out his phone, he hesitated. The minute that he dialed, and Hunter answered, everything became real. However, as it turned out, he wouldn't have to. The phone began ringing, and he answered, "Hello?"
"Seth, just the man that I was hoping to reach." He hadn't needed to look at the Caller ID to know that it was Hunter. "Have you thought anymore about what I proposed to you?"
"I have." The food arrived, and he thanked the waiter with a deft nod of the head.
Hunter didn't take too kindly to his evasive answer. "Care to share your decision?"
"I've decided to take you up on it." Seth said, taking a swig of his drink to wash the nasty taste out of his mouth. "Not that I've been given much of a choice, either way. But my answer is yes."
"I had hoped that you would say that." Papers shuffled on the other end of the line. "Because your flight leaves in five hours."
"Five hours? What?" He dropped the glass, barely hearing as it shattered on the pavement. Someone began swearing in fluent Portuguese.
"What was it that you didn't understand? You leave in five hours, with a direct flight back to HQ. You have to officially sign a termination waiver for your former contract, and sign your new contract…" Hunter trailed.
While he knew on some level that he really shouldn't be surprised, it had never occurred to him that he'd be leaving everything behind so soon. He had even already packed. He hadn't even attempted to hide his suitcase - Dean could just walk back and find it at the foot of the bed, all ready to go at a moments notice. Hunter continued on, ranting off a list of everything that needed to be done before Seth could officially become a member of Evolution. Seth felt like his stomach had hit the floor.
"What about Dean and Roman?" But he had to make a clean break, and in order to do that, he couldn't be thinking about them. He had to just keep on fighting for himself.
"Oh, you didn't know?" Hunter seemed vaguely surprised. "Roman's been back in the states for a week, now."
Seth felt like he had been struck across the face. "What? And why didn't you tell me this?"
"He's competing at the next pay-per-view for the WWE World Heavyweight Title. If you were watching the show on TV and following the storylines as I would expect you to, you would have already known."
He pushed Roman to the back of his mind, trying not to be hurt by his dropping off the face of the earth and then suddenly just cutting all ties completely. After all, it would be hypocritical of him. "Dean, then?"
"I imagine that he'll be furious with you." Hunter sounded like he was smiling, the damn bastard. "It will make for a very entertaining storyline, to say the least."
"Is that all we are to you? Storylines?" Seth could feel his voice rising as his temper flared, and he forced himself to calm down.
There was silence on the other end of the line for quite awhile, then, "You're flight leaves in five hours."
Seth wanted to tear him a new one, to recant what he had said and tear up that fucking contract that had gotten all of them into this mess. But the click, followed by the flat, low beep of the dial tone, told him that Hunter had hung up on him. He tossed the phone down with such ferocity that it bounced off of the table and fell to the concrete below with a sickening crack. He didn't need to pick it up to know that he'd cracked the screen. Beautiful. And the stupid thing wasn't even a year old, yet.
A few minutes passed, and then, he picked the phone up off of the floor. It was then that he noticed the broken glass and the drink which was slowly seeping into the off-white concrete. He offered an apologetic smile to the cafe owner, who was glaring at him unforgivingly. That was one add-on to the bill that he hadn't been expecting to foot. When he went to pay, he added in a hefty tip for the waiter for dealing with the unpleasantness of having to clean up the mess, and, in addition, enough money to buy five of those glasses…
"I'm very sorry about the glass, sir." He apologized again, but could tell that it was falling on deaf ears. "I just received some rather… disconcerting news, and I guess I didn't take it too well."
"Yes, well, you would do well not to receive your 'disconcerting' news in my cafe in the future." His said sharply, taking Seth's money and shoving it into the register angrily.
Seth tried to fight back the disgusted, angry look that wanted to take over his face, and succeeded… somewhat. "Will do, sir. Will do."
Dean wasn't in the hotel room when Seth returned, and Seth tried not to let this fact bother him. Dean was his own man, and was certainly old enough and wise enough to take care of himself. Seth just wished that he would have a chance to tell Dean goodbye before he went off to the airport. Even if it was abandoning him, in a way, he didn't want it to seem as heartless and callous as that term suggested. All this time, he continued to assure himself that this was all for the greater good. They would all be made better because of it.
Upon reaching the hotel, however, he found that he was unbearably lonely. He didn't realize how overbearing the silence could be when there was no-one to share it with. Going back into the bedroom, he plopped down onto the bed and traced the fingers of his good hand over the course material of his suitcase. On a whim, he decided to try and call Roman. It was, perhaps, not the smartest idea he'd ever had… but something inside of him just needed to know why Roman had left them. Why he'd broken the Shield.
He dialed the number and was more than a little surprised when Roman answered, "Hello?"
"Roman?" He was sure that his shock was reflected in his tone.
"What do you want, Seth?" His tone was caught somewhere between exasperation and defeat, like he wouldn't have answered if he'd bothered to look at the Caller ID.
"What do I want? What do I want? You've got a hell of a lot of nerve, asking me something like that when you're the one that walked out on us! Maybe I just wanted to ask why?" Seth hollered into his cracked phone.
"And maybe the reason I left without letting either of you know is because I didn't want to answer that question." He said this slowly, deliberately, as if he were talking to a small child.
Seth had to fight to force his voice to become neutral once more. "Do you have any idea what you've done to Dean? To us?"
"I have to get ready for my match, Seth." Roman cut him off. And then the line went dead.
What the hell was going on? Why was Roman being so evasive about answering his questions? It just didn't seem like him. But then, remembering the scars on Roman's wrists, the way that he'd flinched away from their confrontation… he realized that, maybe, he didn't know Roman as well as he thought he did. Tossing the phone aside, he let this sink in for a moment. Maybe they'd all rushed into things, head over heels, without really taking the time to learn anything about each other. They just figured that they'd learn it along the way.
Seth looked at his watch. Just under three hours until he'd be leaving, and the airport was about thirty minutes up the road. He always liked to get there a little early, just to make sure that everything was in order, and especially when he wasn't the one who had done the final preparations for the flight. He found himself peering out the door, hoping to see Dean hovering just outside of the doorway. Once again, he felt a tightening in his throat at the prospect of just leaving without a word to Dean… but now, it didn't seem he had a choice.
Getting up off of the bed, he checked that he had all of his things. Once he was sure of this, he pulled the handle up on the suitcase and started it rolling toward the front door. Leaving his keycard in the little envelope by the door, he exited the hotel room for the final time and made a beeline for the elevators. It occurred to him that there was a small chance that he might run into Dean on the way out, but the idea was disproven before it could even happen. Soon, this would all be a distant, fading memory. He hoped.
Dean wandered back to the hotel room late that night, about an hour and a half after Seth's flight departed to return him to the states. He'd been walking around the streets of Rio, taking in the scenery like any other tourist… but the vibrant colors and lively streets had all faded into a pale shade of grey. He'd fallen into a slump that was similar to the depression that he'd felt when they'd first lost Seth, but this was somehow different at the same time.
He didn't like keeping things from Seth… and he'd been keeping the mother of all secrets bottled up inside for the last few weeks. He knew that Roman intended to return to the states… and Roman had asked him to come with. It would be like the old days, with Roman as the dom and Dean as the sub. The days that he so missed. The balance had been perfect between them, and it was almost like they could anticipate each other's movements and finish each other's sentences. It was cheesy and romantic and Dean always felt whole.
But he'd turned him down. It hadn't broken the bond that they shared, not by a long shot. Dean knew full-well that the offer was still open, regardless of when he wanted to make good on it. But he also recognized that Roman needed to get out, get away, or else the weight of everything that had happened would come crashing down on him and might very well end him. They'd staged the three-way fight as a way to get Roman out. But it was killing him to be keeping such a heavy secret from Seth.
The reason that he'd decided to stay behind was Seth, and Seth's mental and physical well-being. His whole entire world seemed to be crashing down around him and Dean was the one constant pillar that remained strong - he couldn't, in good conscience, take that away from him. The emotional turmoil was slowly eating away at him. He loved Roman and wanted to be with him, but he loved Seth too… but he was quickly becoming aware of the fact that it was a friendship kind of love… not a romantic love.
So when he returned to the hotel room, he was surprised to find it abandoned. Even more so when he discovered the extra keycard in the holder and all of Seth's belongings missing from the bedroom. "Seth?"
But Seth wasn't there. More than a little frantic, the lunatic fringe pulled out his cell phone and dialed the first number he could think of: Roman Reigns. His call was met with a groggy, "Hello?"
"He's gone, Roman. He's gone."