Chapter Text
Seth hummed softly under his breath, patiently rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet as he waited for the door in front of him to open.
For the record, he had done the responsible thing, going to Cody first with the blueprints of the increasingly volatile path Roman might or might not be barreling down. Cody was a stellar husband and a man of immense grace, and Seth would always give him props for the sheer effort of his diplomacy, even if he had understandably looked thoroughly overwhelmed by it all.
Unfortunately for everyone, desperate times didn’t call for grace or understanding, and Seth was the farthest thing from a sit-back-and-hope-it-works-out kind of guy. The least he could do was combat desperation with blunt-force intervention, and thankfully, the primary architect of blunt force was currently on the other side of this very door.
The door unlocked from the inside, and Seth shifted on his feet, teeth bared in a greeting that was half-manic and half-relieved, ready to face his wild best friend and launch into whatever opening line he’d decided on three seconds ago.
“Hello, Seth.”
Seth’s grin short-circuited, glitching into a confused squint, eyes raking over the smaller man standing in the threshold who had somehow manifested in a house he had no business being in, and looking entirely too settled.
“Daniel?” Seth asked, his voice pitching up an octave.
His index finger reached out to prod the man’s shoulder, just to be certain it wasn’t a stress-induced hallucination. Solid muscle met his fingertip, further confusing him.
“Bryan,” the man corrected instantly, eyes dropping with weary exasperation to where Seth was now eagerly squeezing his bicep to confirm he was made of carbon-based matter.
“Right. Bryan.” Seth said, his brain somewhat lagging and struggling to process the visual data of Bryan Danielson well at home enough to be answering Jon Moxley’s front door in the middle of a Friday.
“What uh… what are you doing here?” Seth asked, finally convinced enough to withdraw his probing hand from Bryan’s personal space.
“Who is it, Bryan?” Mox’s gruff voice rolled out from deeper inside the house.
There was a soft shuffle of feet, then the door swung wider. Mox appeared, shirtless in nothing but gray sweatpants slung low on his hips, beard still damp and mussed from a shower, and looking so domestic it was bordering on the supernatural. He caught sight of Seth’s bug-eyed expression, and his head immediately dropped to his chest. The posture of a man deeply inconvenienced by the arrival of the one person who would never let this go.
“Ah, shit,” Mox muttered to the floorboards.
“No…” Seth drawled the word out, his eyes darting impishly from Mox’s bare chest to Bryan’s calm face and back again. His grin returned, growing positively Grinch-like as the pieces of the puzzle clicked into a very scandalous place. “Oh, this is marvelous!”
“Seth…” Mox started, his voice a warning growl that lacked any real bite.
“Jonathan Moxley!” Seth crowed, delighted beyond reason as he shoved his way inside without invitation. He hooked a proprietary arm around Bryan’s neck, dragging the smaller man into a side-hug despite Bryan’s stiff, unsuccessful attempt to squirm away. “Exactly how busy have you been, brother?”
“You see, this is why I never tell you shit,” Mox grumbled, arms crossing tight over his bare chest as his cheeks flushed a spectacular shade of pink in record time.
“Hey, no—I was just messing with you.” Seth released Bryan with a soft laugh, hands lifting in mock surrender.
Bryan shot them both a glare, the one he aimed at Mox much softer and warmer than whatever he had to spare for Seth. He shook his head and retreated into the house, clearly deciding he had better things to do than referee whatever this was.
Seth let the silence settle for half a second before he spoke again.
“I’m happy for you, Mox. Truly,” Seth insisted softly.
The teasing edge had vanished, replaced by a rare moment of genuine warmth. He watched the tension bleed out of Mox’s shoulders, the defensive posture slumping into something more honest. The corner of his mouth twitched upward, almost shy. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Seth bumped their shoulders together. “We should go on a double date or something.”
“Yeah, I already did that with Roman,” Mox said airily, dismissing the suggestion with a lazy wave of his hand.
Mox and Bryan had been a thing long enough to have already gone on a double date with Roman, it seemed. And why the fuck was Roman somehow aware before Seth? What ultimate betrayal was this?
“Roman knows?” Seth hissed, his voice vibrating with a sense of profound betrayal. “He knew before me? Are you serious right now?”
Mox shrugged, the picture of innocence if not for the smirk tugging at his lips. “Well, you were sort of busy getting arrested.” Which, well, yes, valid point.
“Speaking of getting arrested—”
“I’m not lending you bail money, Seth,” Mox interjected before the sentence could even land.
“How do you lend me bail money when I’m already standing in your foyer?” Seth asked, one eyebrow arched in disbelief.
Mox at least had the decency to look a little chastised as the logic caught up with him. He rubbed a hand over his jaw. “Force of habit.”
“I’m here to talk about our better… one-third. Roman,” Seth said, his voice dropping the theatricality for something uncharacteristically level.
Mox shifted his weight, a long, weary sigh escaping him that seemed to rattle in his chest. Seth took it as a sign that they were at least both on the same wavelength on the fact that something was shaping up to be very, very wrong.
“Ah,” Mox said next, the single syllable heavy with everything he wasn’t saying out loud. “That.”
“You knew I was arrested, which means you’ve been keeping up,” Seth said, leaning a shoulder against the doorframe. “And I can’t be the only one who sees another descent into madness just over the horizon.”
Again, Cody, bless his golden, overworked heart, was trying his very best. But the man already had a berserk Apex Predator breathing down his neck on one side, and even a stable Randy on a normal day was a goddamn handful. Cody was spread too thin to play therapist to a Roman Reigns who was beginning to hear the siren call of his own ego again.
If the Roman problem was going to be handled, Seth would have to step in personally and drag reinforcements along with him. He was fairly certain that between him and Mox, they could still beat the sense back into Roman the old-fashioned way if it came to it. They’d sat idly by the first time Roman had mutated into the worst version of himself, and Seth was adamant the same mistake not repeat itself.
Mox ran a hand over his face, his fingers catching in the scruff of his beard as he thought. The domestic softness from moments ago vanished, replaced by a calculating stillness.
“What’s the plan?”
…
“Roman! Little brother!” Seth exclaimed, bright and completely unnecessary. Before Roman could even fully register the intruders in his home, Seth lunged forward, engulfing him in a hug that was roughly sixty percent genuine affection and forty percent tactical restraint.
Roman had barely swung his front door open before Seth was on him, which, Seth would admit, was all part of the plan. Catching Roman unawares was a feat rarer than a four-leaf clover and an opportunity best not squandered. A disoriented Roman was a vulnerable Roman, or at least, a Roman whose guard was lowered enough for them to pick through the wreckage of his thought process and ensure no homicidal tendencies were swimming around in his head.
“I’m older than you,” Roman huffed, still mostly confused by the grown-ass Seth Rollins now dangling from around his neck.
“Details,” Seth said, tightening his grip just a fraction for good measure.
“Hello, Roman,” Mox greeted with a deceptively amicable nod, before immediately shoving past the entangled pair and stomping blatantly into the house and straight toward a kitchen that wasn’t his own.
“What are the two of you doing here?” Roman tilted his head down to where Seth’s face was still buried against his neck, muttering the question directly into the crown of Seth’s hair.
His hands moved automatically to pry Seth’s arms from around him, and Seth allowed the eviction to happen, only to immediately loop a single arm back around Roman’s neck, pulling him closer and steering the still-confused man away from the foyer and toward the living room.
“We thought we’d pay our particularly stubborn limb a visit,” Seth said with an airy detachment he hoped Roman wouldn’t catch on to as he subtly scanned the perimeter. “Perhaps have a SHIELD night in.”
Now that he thought about it, the house was eerily silent and devoid of its usual commanding blond.
Usually, Cody would have trotted downstairs by now to shoot them an exasperated look for their latest unannounced invasion.
“Why is it so damn quiet in here? Where’s Cody?” Seth asked, glancing toward the stairs.
“It’s Friday,” Roman responded simply.
Ah. SmackDown. Which meant Cody was in a different city, and they had the house all to themselves, perfect. Perhaps getting Roman drunk and getting him to spew his heart and grudges would give them an actual idea of where this Punk thing was headed. Roman could bury CM Punk six feet under for all Seth cared, so long as he still had his faculties about him and wasn’t planning on attempting another forceful takeover of the company.
“Right! See? We could even catch the show live.” Seth let his hand around Roman’s neck slip, punctuating the sentence with a heavy smack to Roman’s back.
The force of the blow sent Roman stumbling forward half a step. He regained his balance, his jaw clenching with a sudden, peeved intensity. He turned back to a smirking Seth, his dark eyes narrowing into dangerous slits.
Fortunately, before Roman could set about strangling Seth where he stood, Mox’s voice drifted impatiently from the kitchen, accompanied by the aggressive symphony of cabinets and drawers being manhandled.
“Rome! Where the hell is my mug?!”
“Fuck,” Roman swore, panicked under his breath.
Seth watched, fascinated, as Roman uncharacteristically stiffened, eyes widening for half a second before he most likely remembered Seth’s existence beside him and schooled his face back into something carefully neutral.
“Use another one if you can’t find it!” Roman hollered back, voice steady enough to pass muster, except for the way his fingers immediately fished his phone out of his pocket and began typing something furiously into it, thumbs flying like the fate of the world depended on the next text.
Seth let Roman have his little frantic texting moment, filing it away for later dissection, and instead sauntered into the kitchen, where Mox was in full-on war mode, yanking open drawers and slamming them shut again with increasing annoyance.
The door to the overhead cupboard, which usually housed a very specific, very organized collection of personalized mugs, stood ajar, the hook that usually held Mox’s rugged, matte-black mug glaringly, offensively empty.
“I don’t want to use another one! I want my own fucking mug!” Mox hollered back toward the foyer without looking, his head still buried in the cabinetry. He resumed his frantic search, muttering darkly under his breath, “Asking me to kiss someone else’s mouth while I’m in a nice, stable relationship…”
“You do realize the mugs are washed regularly, right?” Seth pointed out, leaning against the counter.
“Like I fucking care,” Mox shot back hotly.
Seth peered into the cabinet, his eyes instinctively darting to the spot where his own obnoxiously bright, impossible to miss monstrosity of a mug was now currently missing.
His eyes drifted across the otherwise impeccably organized shelf, where Roman’s anal-retentive streak was on full display with name tags lined up in perfect alphabetical order beneath each hook. Seth’s eyes landed on his own name tag, where his hook now housed nothing but thin, mocking air, Mox’s tag equally vacant.
Well, well, well.
“Ro? Where’s my mug?” Seth asked, his voice adopting a deceptively casual lilt as Roman suddenly materialized in the kitchen doorway.
There was a brief, damning silence where Roman simply blinked, mouth opening and closing wordlessly before he apparently decided to commit to what had to be the worst lie Seth had ever heard in almost twenty years of knowing the man.
“We... we had to use the mugs as temporary flower pots,” Roman said, eyes trained unblinkingly on both of them, visibly praying they’d buy the absolute horseshit he was selling, “some of them got broken.”
Boy, did Seth have news for him.
Seth didn’t even have to look at Mox to know they were both wearing the same expression of pure, unadulterated disbelief, except Mox hid his much better. Mox finally abandoned his fruitless search of the drawers, turned fully toward Roman, and crossed his arms over his bare chest in slow scrutiny.
“And you haven’t replaced them yet?” He asked, voice dripping with suspicion.
“I just texted Cody to pick up a new one for Seth,” Roman responded quickly, waving his phone as evidence of his honesty. “I’ll get yours personally the next time I step out,” he added, his tone pivoting into a civility that was entirely too polished to be natural.
“So, where exactly are these mysterious flowers now?” Seth asked, tilting his head.
“Pharaoh was allergic, so they had to get rid of the whole batch,” Mox answered for Roman, his gaze still boring a hole into Roman’s soul.
Apparently, there was domestic lore Seth wasn’t privy to. Awesome.
Roman swallowed thickly under the combined weight of their stares, tapping his phone against his free hand before he spoke again. “I uh… I’m going to call Cody. Make sure he doesn’t forget.” And then he was gone, literally fleeing the kitchen to retreat into the safety of the living room without another word.
The second Roman’s back was turned, Seth and Mox pivoted toward each other, their heads bowing together in a silent, urgent huddle.
“We’re both in agreement that that was total bullshit, right?” Seth whispered immediately.
Mox let out a short, humorless scoff. “Obviously.”
“Not to mention the small fact that it’s only both our mugs that mysteriously died tragic, floral deaths?” Seth added, jerking a thumb back toward the cabinet with narrowed eyes.
“Punk’s too,” Mox murmured, jerking his chin toward the third glaringly empty spot. “His space is empty as well.”
Seth’s eyes snapped back to the shelf, and sure enough, right next to the empty space for ‘Rollins,’ the name tag for ‘Punk’ sat over a patch of faint, undisturbed dust. It was almost poetic, Roman’s obsessive attention to detail being the very thing to screw him over.
After the silent confirmation, Seth let his eyes settle back on Mox, eyebrows raised in full told-you-so formation.
Dragging Mox along hadn’t been much of a hardship, but the man had spent the entire drive over here arguing that Roman—according to the last time Mox had seen him—seemed to be in proper working order. It was a bit fulfilling to know Seth wasn’t just being paranoid, even though it would have been a hell of a lot preferable to the slow, familiar spiral they were currently watching unfold.
“Fuck,” Mox said, scrubbing a hand down his beard as the realization sank in. “It’s starting again.”
“Told you so,” Seth said, elbowing him lightly in the ribs.
“Change of plans, Roman,” Seth announced loudly, abandoning Mox in the kitchen to instead stroll into the living room where Roman was hunched over his phone, thumbs flying across the screen at the speed of light.
By the way, wasn’t Roman supposed to call Cody? What was with all the sudden shadiness Roman seemed to be displaying?
“We’re going out,” Seth announced, bright and decisive, watching Roman twist around to face him with confusion etched deep into every line of his face. “SHIELD’s night out. No negotiations.”
“What happened to watching SmackDown live?” Roman asked, brows furrowed.
“That would’ve worked perfectly fine if we had mugs to drink out of,” Mox drawled as he strolled out of the kitchen to join them, still eyeing Roman like he expected a tiny alien to pop out of his chest and confess to piloting the meat suit.
Roman threw his hands up in a rare display of exasperated resignation. “For God’s sake, there are thousands of mugs in this house—”
“I’m not about to go around kissing people I don’t even like,” Mox shot back, cutting him off before he could even land the thought.
“Normal, unlabeled mugs, Jon!” Roman tried again, his voice rising a dangerous octave.
“Oh, so now you want me kissing all the prissy strangers who’ve ever set foot in your house? Indirectly swapping spit with every corporate suit Cody invites over for brunch?” Mox’s nose wrinkled in genuine disgust, a look that pushed Roman toward a visible, trembling exhaustion.
“Where the hell would we even go?” Roman asked, the fight bleeding out of him simply because he lacked the energy to sustain a three-way argument with a madman and Seth Rollins.
“Preferably somewhere with mugs,” Mox added, clearly trying to poke at the raw nerve of Roman’s dwindling patience.
And it worked too. Seth watched the muscle in Roman’s jaw clench hard enough to crack walnuts, a muted flash of anger tightening the muscle beneath his beard. His temperament was already far more reduced from his usual stoic baseline. If he was this easily irritated by Mox’s deliberate antics, then they needed to move fast.
Seth took the lag in conversation to assess Roman, who looked more wired than normal, and let an idea bubble in his head.
“Might I suggest Chen’s? How about we pay the old man a surprise?” Seth offered, letting the suggestion hang in the air. “I mean, he hasn’t seen all three of us at once since we were brown-nosed snots.” He let the suggestion hang in the air for a taut moment.
Roman finally sighed, a hand scrubbing at his brow. “Gimme fifteen minutes, I’ll go get changed.”
Seth let his scheming smile bloom fully as Roman turned on his heel and started up the stairs, footsteps heavy and resigned.
Cody briefly halted the futile pacing of the full length of his locker room as the door opened and Damian peeked his head through the narrow gap.
“Finally, Damian.” Cody threw his hands up exasperatedly as Damian sheepishly stepped all the way in and closed the door behind him with a soft click.
“Sorry, sorry,” Damian muttered, gravitating toward the couch.
Cody’s eyes tracked him across the room until he settled in beside Sami, the man’s gaze immediately zeroing in on the generous spread of catered food on the coffee table.
Sami had already been camped out for the better part of twenty minutes, legs crossed, fingers drumming a quiet rhythm on his knee while he waited for proceedings to begin. And yes, this was, by all definitions, a tactical summit for a dire intervention that desperately needed staging. It was one thing when your love life got hopelessly entangled with your place of work; it was an entirely bigger problem when your significant other came attached to a sprawling family tree that tended to turn the entire locker room into a powder keg on a good day.
Thankfully, Cody could comfortably share that particular burden with not only Sami but also Damian. Though Damian didn’t seem to have any pressing issues with Jimmy at the moment, considering he was more interested in systematically vaporizing the spread in front of him than in discussing a counter-intercept, should their respective Samoans decide that violence sounded a hell of a lot more fulfilling than peaceful existence.
“Thank you all for coming,” Cody started, trying not to focus too obviously on the way Damian was singlehandedly dismantling a plate of wings. “As we’re all aware, we may or may not have a problem on our hands.”
“We all watched Raw, Cody,” Sami interjected, his voice tight. “I think it’s safe to say it’s officially a problem.”
Damian’s hand shot into the air, fingers clutching a cocktail napkin. Cody let out a sigh that felt like it originated in his toes, pinching the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger.
“Damian, you really don’t need to raise your hand. This isn’t a classroom.”
“Yeah, sorry.” Damian dropped his arm, cheeks faintly flushed as he licked barbecue sauce from his thumb. “I guess I’m just wondering, if this is a Bloodline intervention, why the hell is John Cena here?” He gestured across the room toward the corner where Cena sat silently in the sole armchair, arms loosely crossed, looking mostly amused by the entire circus unfolding around him. “I mean, Randy isn’t Bloodline, he’s just…”
“Insane?” John offered, his smile bright and terrifyingly serene.
“I didn’t know if I was allowed to say it out loud,” Damian admitted with a shrug before returning to his snack.
“You’re not, actually,” John said, his eyes twinkling. “But anyway, Randy doesn’t know I’m here, so if we could hurry this along before he catches my scent, I’d appreciate it.”
Cody rubbed the bridge of his nose, trying to find a center that was rapidly retreating. “I had both Seth and LA Knight accost me on Friday,” he said, attempting to steer the ship back on track. “And I’m rational enough to admit they had some valid concerns amidst their own... unique personal predilections. This Bloodline reunion thing is definitely going to be an issue.”
“Do we actually know that there’s going to be a Bloodline reunion?” Damian asked around a mouthful of stuffed meat skewer, chewing thoughtfully. “I mean, Monday could have just been a classic ‘fuck around, find out’ moment, right?”
“As a former member of the Bloodline myself, I can tell you that they work too well together not to,” Sami said, leaning forward. “Despite the frequent screaming matches and the constant butting heads, they get things done better, faster, and with ten times the efficiency when the three of them are in the same orbit.”
“Not to mention the mutual Punk dislike,” John chirped in, voice dry as desert sand.
Punk. The name alone was starting to shape up as the bane of Cody’s entire existence, which was a staggering feat, considering he was still nursing tender ribs from where Randy had blindsided him without provocation two weeks earlier.
Roman had fought Bron and Bronson; he had fought Seth, who had betrayed him and systematically dismantled his support system by taking Paul Heyman. Hell, even Seth, armed with their long, storied, blood-soaked history, piled on top of an ambitious Bron who had actually hospitalized Roman, hadn’t been enough to push the man past the edge into full snapping territory.
What was worse, Jey had been tangled up in that same feud, and even he hadn’t felt the need to channel his more unhinged side in retaliation against all the injustice he and Roman had faced at the hands of The Vision. But somehow, in the span of two short weeks, CM Punk had managed to do what five different people hadn’t accomplished in nearly six months.
It was almost impressive, really, if Cody weren’t the one who would ultimately have to tolerate the inconvenience of a heartless, calculated Roman, he might have applauded.
“So what are we doing?” Cody asked, one hand rubbing at the headache already throbbing behind his temples while the other gestured wildly around the room. “Do we approach them head-on or investigate? Wait and see?”
“Oh, you definitely do not want to approach them head-on,” John said sagely, leaning back. “That’s the fastest way for everything to be misconstrued as an interrogation.”
Cody’s phone buzzed sharply on the table beside Damian’s ever-expanding mountain of demolished food, applaudable, considering he was the only one paying the damn thing any mind. He huffed, reaching over to possibly silence it, only to find a text from Roman, or quite possibly, a digital cry for help or maybe even a coded manifesto—waiting for him.
The message consisted of a nonsensical string of unrelated emojis, a deluge of tears, three scoops of ice cream, a stack of pancakes, and several high-category tornadoes, all directing him with no small amount of dramatic flair to please pick up a new Seth mug from the merch shop before he came home.
Cody stared at the screen for a long second, thumb hovering.
“We could make it a general thing,” Damian was saying around another mouthful, sausage skewer flinging wildly about in his uncertainty. “All of us against… not necessarily against, but, y’know—we’re present, they walk in, and we share our thoughts.” He settled on the phrasing at last, looking proud of himself.
“Are you insane?” Sami blanched, eyes wide. “Three of them versus us? You expect to win an argument against three people who can finish each other’s sentences without batting an eyelash?”
“So divide and conquer?” Cody asked, frowning as his phone buzzed again with another text from Roman. This one reiterated the absolute necessity of the Seth mug, now in all caps and followed by three more crying emojis for emphasis.
Cody was becoming concerned enough to wonder if Roman was having a literal stroke or if Seth had finally driven him over the edge of a cliff. He was half-tempted to dial the number and perform a wellness check, but John had already started speaking.
“—each find out from them,” John finished as Cody blinked up from his phone, catching the tail end of the suggestion. “Individually. You’ll get more honesty that way.”
“As subtly as we can, please,” Sami added quickly. “If they figure out what we’re doing, it’s going to be even worse than having them walk straight into a three-person interrogation session.”
“Fine,” Cody sighed, locking the phone and tossing it back onto the table. “And how do we share intel?”
“Definitely not via text,” Damian said immediately. “Jimmy reads mine.”
“Another meeting, perhaps? Somewhere neutral?” John suggested.
“Done. I know just the place,” Cody said, a location clicking into place.
Chen would definitely be coming in handy sooner than expected.
“Are we done?” Sami asked, pushing himself off the sofa. “I kind of have a ‘thing’ tonight that requires me to be significantly less stressed than I currently am.”
“Yeah,” Cody nodded, his expression softening. “Thank you, guys. Truly. For showing up for this.”
“Are you kidding? Thank you for taking charge of this entire circus,” Sami said, making a wide circle in the air to encompass their makeshift war room. His eyes darted to Damian, who was currently performing the impressive feat of trying to shove four sausages into his mouth at once. “…Damian. Really?”
Damian hummed around his mouthful, stood with a nod to Cody, and still managed to eye the remaining tray with undisguised longing.
“Take it,” Cody said, a faint, tired amusement tugging at the corner of his mouth as he gestured to the platter.
“Y’sho?” Damian asked, his speech heavily hampered by the sausage-to-mouth ratio.
Oh, there was absolutely no way Cody would be able to stomach anything anyway, not with his scheduled one-on-one with Randy looming tonight. If the man decided to beat him up again, he would much rather spare himself the added indignity of barfing up finger food in the middle of it all.
“Yeah, just—” The words were barely out of Cody’s mouth before Damian hoisted the entire tray in one arm and made a beeline for the door, moving with speed in case Cody suddenly changed his mind.
Sami sighed for the umpteenth time, shaking his head at Damian’s retreating back before following him out into the hall.
“So,” John said, his joints letting out a veteran’s grunt as he stood up, coming to a stop in front of Cody, arms crossed loosely over his chest.
Cody rubbed his throbbing temple again, his eyes squinted shut against the mounting pressure behind his skull. “Any parting advice, John?”
“Nothing that won’t possibly need to be thrown out the window the second you look him in the eye,” John said wearily.
Cody nodded slowly, his teeth catching on his lower lip. He was currently multitasking facing Randy, Seth’s mug, and the impending shadow of a reunion he wasn’t sure the locker room could survive.
“He doesn’t hate you, Cody,” John added, the words laced with something almost remorseful. “He’s just… desperate.”
That, Cody understood that better than anyone. The raw, driving want, the way the championship could twist people and drag out the ugliest, most ruthless versions of themselves. He had once had to fight John when the man was absolutely corrupted by the title. Hell, corrupted was exactly how he had first found Roman.
“Well,” Cody said quietly, resolve settling in where uncertainty had been, “so am I.”