"So, did you have a good birthday?" Mike asks as Ricardo wanders into the kitchen late Friday night, his hair messy and his eyes bright. He smirks when the man jumps slightly, turning defensively towards him. "Hey, sorry, man, thought you would've known I was out here." He's relaxing, drinking some of the leftover wine that Morrison and Taya had brought over, enjoying the general quiet of the house. Sara's been out for hours, her teething apparently easing up enough that she can sleep, and AJ had passed out not long afterwards. "Haven't seen much of you today." He grins behind his glass and raises an eyebrow as Ricardo turns about as red as the liquor.
"Uh, yeah, I guess not," he sighs, grabbing a bottle of water from the fridge and settling in across from Mike, sipping at the cool liquid. He licks his lips and glances up for a moment before looking back down.
Mike takes pity on him and stops mortifying him. "Are you happy, Ricardo?"
His eyes are clear when he looks up. "Yeah, I am, Mike."
"Then that's all I needed to know, man." He stands up, claps Ricardo on the shoulder and takes a chair closer to him, propping his feet up on the table in a way that he never could if AJ was nearby. "I'm glad you're going to be living closer to us soon. It'll be fun. Maybe we can have sleepovers."
Ricardo laughs, runs his thumb over the brim of his bottle. "Um, it won't just be me. Alicia's decided to move with me." He smiles sheepishly, drinking more of the water while Mike, mindful of the people sleeping overhead, makes a choked little noise of happiness.
"AJ's going to lose her mind when you tell her," he says with a wide grin. "She misses Alicia, well I think she misses a lot of people."
Ricardo nods. "I understand that. It's hard to get back into the swing of life without WWE."
Mike nods. Sips from his wine, leans back in the chair. "Speaking of all of that. How's Alberto?"
"No clue," Ricardo murmurs. "Outside of his and Paige getting married in May, I know very little. I've been keeping busy. He, uh, came and saw me when I was sick, but beyond that, we haven't really talked."
"I wonder how he'll take you moving," Mike muses, pondering how he would react if John just up and moved somewhere. Pretty shitty, actually, he thinks, leaning over and pouring some wine into a nearby unused glass, pressing it into Ricardo's hands.
Ricardo shrugs, stares at the deep red, swirling it around with a look on his face like he's about to refuse, before lifting it up and drinking it down quickly. Mike pours him a second, finishing the bottle in his own glass, before lifting it. They clink their wine glasses together, a wordless kind of toast passing before them, before taking a drink.
-x
"I can't believe you went to Raw," Mike huffs on Tuesday, staring out over the arena Smackdown's being held in, his arms crossed petulantly over his chest as his phone sits on the chair before him, speaker phone relaying his conversation loud and proud to anyone in the vicinity who cares enough to listen. "You couldn't drive a little further to go to Smackdown? I'm your best friend!"
"And I see you plenty, but I have other friends on Raw I wanted to hang out with too," John says patiently, his voice crackling a little over the speaker.
"Plenty," Mike scoffs, his eyes narrowing as he stares down at Natalya and Nikki Bella brawling into the crowd during their "Once or twice a month maybe between our schedules."
"When I'm lucky, that is," John teases him, then changes his tune when Mike doesn't say anything for a few moments. "Mike? Hey, man, I was just joking-"
"Hang on," Mike interrupts him, trying to see down towards the ramp, where someone had run out, brandishing a steel pipe and... "Oh, shit, Maryse. John, I gotta go." He scrambles to hang up the phone, taking it with him and stuffing it into the folds of his clothes as he runs into the back, down a flight of stairs and through halls until he arrives at the gorilla position, racing down the ramp to reach Maryse, keep her from doing anymore damage, getting herself into trouble. She's fighting him, screeching in French, and it's all he can do to keep her away as the match comes to an end, Natalya defeating Nikki because of what Maryse just did.
He finally drags her backstage and she pants and lets out a few more angry French words before slumping, some of the fight leaving her. "Stupid Nikki Bella," she mumbles.
He pats her hand, brushes some of the hair out of her face. "Look, I need to get out there, but you stay back here... relax, ok? I'll be fine without you tonight." She doesn't look thrilled with it but she lets him go and he exhales roughly, shaking himself loose before walking out to the ring. He does his best to last as long as he can, but eventually Cena eliminates him. He lays there and stares up at the lights, gritting his teeth against the memories of Elimination Chamber matching up all too well with tonight. "Son of a bitch," he grouses, his mood plummeting to match Maryse's.
They stare at each other for a moment before quietly heading to the locker room to shower, change, and leave, wanting nothing more than to put the stench of this night behind them, to return home. Mike wants to hug his wife, kiss his daughter, collapse into bed and not think about anything that's happened the last hour. Maryse has already changed into jeans and a simple blouse by the time he's out of the shower, and she stares up at him, a moody look on her face. "We need to do something," she says, her accent thick.
"Like?" he wonders.
"Like..." She exhales roughly. Runs her fingers through her damp hair. "Wrestlemania."
He stares at her. His lips twitch up in an almost evil fashion. "Yeah. We definitely do."