Chapter Text
“Roman…”
Roman watched Kenneth freeze in the doorway of his office, one hand still braced on the frame as he glanced back to exchange something low and indiscernible with his secretary. The woman’s heels clicked once in reply before she retreated down the hall, and Kenneth whipped back around to face his uninvited guest.
He had a brown leather shoulder bag hanging from his shoulder, the exact warm tone of his polished oxfords, and his black khakis were paired with a soft charcoal long-sleeved polo. He looked put together, annoyingly so. The ensemble made him look unfairly approachable, certainly the sort of man you wouldn’t mind spilling your secrets to.
Kenneth’s gaze flicked immediately to Pharaoh, who lay sprawled beside Roman on the rug beside the couch, majestic and unsettlingly still, ears relaxed. When Kenneth finally looked back up, his face was a map of a thousand unspoken questions. To his credit, he swallowed every single one, settling on a cautious greeting instead.
“Good morning.” His voice lifted at the end, turning the greeting into an involuntary question.
The uncertainty was understandable. It was barely eight-thirty, far too early for a walk-in, and Roman had effectively occupied the man’s workspace with a high-velocity predator in tow. But Roman didn’t have the luxury of acknowledging social graces this morning.
He leaned forward on the couch, elbows on his knees, hands clasped loosely together. For several silent seconds, he simply studied Kenneth, then answered with deliberate calm.
“You’re late.”
“Consultation starts at nine, actually,” Kenneth said, a faint smile tugging at one corner of his mouth.
He crossed the room, slid the strap of his bag from his shoulder, and set it gently on the low bookshelf in the corner. Roman tracked every movement, eyes never leaving him.
“I’ve been waiting since seven,” Roman countered, one eyebrow lifting in quiet challenge. “So you’re late.”
That, for some reason, seemed to amuse Kenneth and a soft chuckle escaped him. “My apologies. I wasn’t aware we had a session on the books for today?”
No, they hadn’t. But Roman had been parked outside when the receptionist arrived, Pharaoh at his side, and he had turned on every ounce of charm he possessed to convince her that his ‘emergency’ required him to wait inside the sanctum rather than the lobby.
Roman said nothing to the comment, only shifting his attention briefly to Pharaoh before gesturing toward him. “I hope it’s alright I brought Pharaoh?”
“Not at all. He seems friendly enough.” Kenneth waved a hand dismissively before sinking into his armchair. The moment his weight hit the plush fabric, the ‘person’ vanished and the ‘practitioner’ took his place. He shifted, his brow furrowing as he scanned the empty cushion beside Roman.
“Where’s Cody?” Kenneth asked.
Roman fought the sudden urge to stiffen, forcing his fingers to stay splayed and relaxed against his knees. He knew Kenneth was a cartographer of the human psyche and could read even the tiniest microexpression, being the therapist he was. Roman needed something specific from this encounter, something he’d much prefer getting without having his every reaction psychoanalyzed within an inch of his life.
“Cody isn’t here today,” He said easily, avoiding any implicating emotions that might give him away. “So, we’re going to be focusing on me.”
Kenneth’s lips pursed. He ran a hand through his hair, which was noticeably longer than the last time Roman had seen him, the dark strands now brushing the collar of his polo. A shadow of professional conflict crossed his face.
“Um, Roman… I’m primarily a couples therapist,” Kenneth began, and Roman’s expression immediately soured in instant displeasure of its own accord. Kenneth seemed to catch this and thankfully backtracked, holding up a hand. “But… exceptions can be made for urgent matters. Clearly, this qualifies.”
He pulled his phone from his pocket, tapped the timer app, and set it on the side table. Then he reached for the elegant hourglass beside it and flipped it over, letting the first grains of sand begin their slow cascade. Kenneth crossed his legs, leaning back in his chair as he locked his gaze on Roman, his presence suddenly expansive and attentive.
“How may I help you today, Roman?”
“I would like you to write me a prescription for sleeping tablets,” Roman said, precise and to the point.
It was clearly not the opening gambit Kenneth had anticipated, and his professional composure fractured just enough for his tone to falter.
“O-okay,” Kenneth stammered, blinking. “Why?”
Roman made sure the inanity of the question was properly reflected on his face. “Because I can’t sleep.”
“Right,” Kenneth nodded slowly, regaining his footing. “But I meant, why can’t you sleep?”
“Is this entirely necessary for a simple prescription?” Roman asked, the reins of his already frayed composure slipping through his fingers.
All he wanted was a single night of oblivion. He was currently dragging himself through the wreckage of six days without rest, staring at the ceiling until the dark turned grey and then back again. He was so exhausted and thoroughly wiped that at this rate, Punk would probably take him out with a mere puff of air, and Roman had a title match looming that required him to be something other than a walking corpse.
“Well, I can’t just write you a prescription, Roman,” Kenneth said, his voice tilting into his cautious, dealing-with-a-volatile-subject register. He spoke as if Roman had requested weapons-grade plutonium rather than a way to shut his brain off. “It’s imperative I understand the cause of your sudden insomnia—if it truly is insomnia—whether it’s acute, chronic, stress-related, physiological… there are steps to this.”
“You don’t believe me?” Roman asked, the words slipping out before he could school the surprise from his voice.
He was genuinely taken aback by the bureaucratic wall. In his world, when he demanded something, it usually materialized; to have his own exhaustion questioned felt like a personal affront.
Kenneth’s expression softened at the rare crack in Roman’s armor. He sighed, leaning back. “I—I do believe you. But… standard procedure, Roman. You know how it is, my license is tied to my due diligence.”
The real problem was the Cody-shaped hole in his life. Ever since Cody had decided he needed some sort of Luke Skywalker-worthy training odyssey to settle the score with Randy, Roman had felt like he was missing a vital limb he hadn’t realized he needed to stand upright.
It was an odd, irritating, and utterly humiliating sensation how physically useless he had become. He existed in a perpetual state of leaden fatigue, even though he rarely did anything more strenuous than sprawling pathetically across the expanse of his king-sized bed. He had ignored a dozen calls from Seth and Mox, turning down every invitation to train, eat, or simply be, choosing instead to wallow in a silence that felt increasingly deafening. Even Pharaoh was starting to reflect the gloom, the dog opting to lie heavily across the foot of the bed, watching Roman with soulful, judgmental eyes until Roman forced himself up to handle the bare minimum required of the day.
What Roman actually wanted, if he were being dangerously sincere, was to drive over to Dustin’s house, kick the door down, and deliver a speech so heartfelt and extensive that Cody would have no choice but to come home. He wanted to drag Cody back, plant him firmly on their bed, and use the man as a pillow for an entire week.
But he had promised to give Cody his three weeks of space. Roman was many things, but a liar and a man who went back on his word were neither of them. So, he was left with the option to either suck it up until WrestleMania, which was laughable because he had a title match he fully intended to win and could not afford to show up looking like an exhausted husk, or find a chemical way to knock himself out.
And if Kenneth wasn’t going to hand over the prescription, Roman was seriously contemplating running headfirst into a hard surface to trigger unconsciousness as a last resort.
“The bed is too cold,” Roman said finally, pivoting away from the truth.
All the aching, Cody-shaped details churning inside him would only give Kenneth more ammo to latch onto. The man would start drawing metaphors about emotional voids, and Pharaoh joining him on the mattress for “comfort transference,” or some other nonsense Roman was far too drained to endure.
“And what does Cody think about… the bed being too cold?” Kenneth asked, patient as ever.
Alas, the rigmarole was inevitable. Roman saw the telltale scrunch of intrigue in the furrow of Kenneth’s brow, and could almost see the dream of a swiftly handwritten prescription fluttering away, dissolving into the ether.
“You know what,” he muttered, pushing to his feet with more effort than he cared to admit. The room tilted for half a second before righting itself, and he frowned. “I’m just going to wait until Monday. It’ll be much easier to glare a prescription out of the wimps in Medical.”
On the floor beside the couch, Pharaoh immediately rose, head cocked in quiet intrigue as the husky studied Kenneth with the same calm assessment he gave most strangers. Steel-blue eyes flicked from the therapist’s face to the door and back again, ears pricked, as if deciding whether this sudden burst of energy required intervention.
Roman offered Kenneth a small, tight smile packed with all the manufactured warmth he could dredge up from his core. It wasn’t much, a flickering ember at best, but he hoped Kenneth would take the hint. He snapped his fingers twice as he crossed the room, and Pharaoh fell into step at his heel without hesitation, both of them in silent agreement that the session had officially ended.
“Roman, wait…!”
Roman was inches from the handle when Kenneth suddenly materialized in his path, moving with a shocking, desperate fluidity to press his back against the wood and splay his arms out to block the exit.
Roman blinked, his sleep-deprived brain struggling to process the speed. He let his head twist back, gauging the distance from the armchair to the door. It was an impressive sprint for a man who spent his life sitting in quiet rooms listening to people cry.
On any other normal, well-rested day, when Cody was still firmly stitched into the fabric of his daily life and not off chasing some spiritual retreat to achieve cold-hearted nirvana, Roman would have simply removed Kenneth from his path without a second thought.
Kenneth wasn’t a small man by any means. Not as big as Roman obviously, but big enough that anything physical would require effort, plus he had actual muscles, which Roman would have again, easily surpassed if he hadn’t spent the last almost week basically bedrotting. Which meant he was probably going to need to talk his way out of whatever this was.
“A hobby,” Kenneth blurted out before Roman could channel his latent, silver-tongued politician.
“What?” Roman asked, the word arriving with a noticeable delay.
“You need something other than Cody and your job to get you through your days,” Kenneth continued, his gaze darting warily down to Pharaoh, who was now conducting a thorough, silent evaluation of whether his blocking the exit posed any threat.
Kenneth offered the dog a cautious half-smile, then lifted his eyes back to Roman. “It’s touching that the two of you are so codependent and in love, but in my highly professional opinion, it’s… frankly, it’s unhealthy.”
“He’s on SmackDown, and I’m on Raw,” Roman said, frowning in petulant disagreement.
It wasn’t as if they were joined at the hip every waking second. Cody, ever the golden brand ambassador, had a calendar overflowing with company-mandated appearances and charity galas. Roman, by contrast, had long since perfected the art of refusing to be displaced from the comfort of his home unless it was absolutely necessary. Cody was a company man through and through, and would readily embark on a three-month retreat to a mountain peak if he thought it served the ‘honor of the business,’ or something equally nonsensical.
“Which is good, yes,” Kenneth conceded, “but you two still spend way too much time absorbed in each other that now that it’s not an option, the outside world seems bleak and inhospitable.” He paused, letting the words settle. “You need a hobby.”
Roman had a hobby. His hobby was spending time with Cody; watching him train, listening to him ramble about legacy and redemption arcs, stealing the last bite of whatever he was eating, falling asleep to the steady rhythm of his breathing...
But as he stood there, staring at Kenneth, desperate and imploring, he realized that was exactly the problem. Now that Cody was temporarily unavailable, said hobby had become a glaring problem.
He sighed, combing his fingers through his beard as the scant list of alternatives scrolled through his exhausted mind. “What kind of hobby?”
Kenneth finally let his frame sag, his shoulders dropping as the blockade ended. Now that Roman no longer looked like he was about to sprint into the hallway, Kenneth felt safe enough to breathe.
“I have no idea,” Kenneth admitted, blinking thoughtfully. “What do you actually like to do?”
Roman liked football.
Not just because he had played it once upon a time—though yes, that was part of it, but because there was something deeply satisfying about controlled violence. It relaxed him in a way nothing else quite did, which was a sentiment he certainly wouldn’t be sharing with Kenneth, his wonderful, very devoted therapist. The man’s peace of mind was fragile enough as it was.
It had been a long while since Roman had actually sat down with the intention of watching a game. He still tracked drafts, scores, and the little intricacies that floated across his feed, but dedicating all his focus to simply consuming three hours of live football felt like another lifetime.
He could have gone straight home to the privacy of his own television and his own couch, Pharaoh at his feet. But the house was a mausoleum right now, quiet and full of Cody-shaped absences. Plus, he had a sinking suspicion that if he went back there, he’d flip the game on, stare at it for ten minutes, then turn it off and crawl back into bed to wallow.
So at ten-thirty on this bright, relentlessly sunny morning, Roman and Pharaoh found themselves in a random breakfast bar a few blocks from Kenneth’s office.
The place smelled of maple syrup, strong coffee, and the faint grease of too many skillets. A handful of early patrons, mostly retirees and off-shift workers, were already shouting obscenities at the massive screen mounted above the bar.
If Roman were being completely honest, he was far more entertained by the local theater of the patrons than he was by the tactical nuances of the game on screen.
There was a particular gruff, well-aged man who had become Roman’s primary source of silent amusement. Gruffy sat perched on a stool, shoulders straining against a faded flannel shirt, salt-and-pepper beard bristling every time the quarterback underthrew a pass. Next to him was a companion of similar vintage—Glasses. Glasses seemed entirely indifferent to the gridiron violence, his spectacles perched low on his nose, scribbling steadily in a small notebook as if the game were merely background noise for whatever deeper thoughts occupied him.
The dynamic was mesmerizing. Gruffy would bellow unforgivable slurs at the television at every fumbled pass or missed tackle, his face turning a dangerous shade of mahogany. Yet, the moment he turned to the man beside him, his features would soften with an incremental, surprising tenderness as they exchanged light conversation. It was a rhythmic cycle of rage and affection, rinse and repeat. Roman watched, chin propped in his palm, while Pharaoh delicately worked his way through a side of scrambled eggs and a beef patty.
Roman hadn’t even decided if he was hungry yet. He’d simply ordered the spread for the dog to placate the young woman with a blinding, relentless smile who kept appearing at his elbow to ask if he was ready to order.
At the bar, Gruffy had launched into a full-throated, friendly argument with the other four patrons about modern passing techniques with the vitriol usually reserved for war crimes, comparing them unfavorably to the “iron-man” football of Gruffy’s youth. Roman found himself entranced by the sheer passion of it, and judging by the names the man was touting, Gruffy had lived long enough to earn the right to complain about everything. Roman wondered briefly why a man with such solidified opinions didn’t just stay home to yell at his own walls, but he was grateful for the distraction all the same.
Roman was still drifting in this comfortable trance of people-watching when a figure slid smoothly into the empty booth opposite him, long legs stretching out beneath the table to kick his, and fully snapping his attention away from Gruffy’s gesticulations.
“Of all the dive bars in all the world, and you and your mutt walk into mine,” Drew McIntyre tsked, voice thick with his unmistakable Scottish lilt. He shook his head slowly, the picture of mock-reproach, as though Roman had personally orchestrated the single greatest mistake of the morning.
Truly, Roman was starting to feel the same way.
“Are you stalking me, Reigns?” Drew continued. He leaned forward, mirroring Roman’s head-in-palm posture, a mischievous glint dancing in his eyes.
Roman let out a long, regretful sigh, silently cursing the Roman of an hour ago who had stubbornly refused to simply drive home to a quiet couch and a space guaranteed to be Drew McIntyre-free.
“I just want to watch the game,” Roman said, his voice flat. He was far too exhausted for the psychological gymnastics required to deal with a Scotsman at nearly eleven in the morning.
Drew tilted his head, his eyes raking over Roman in a slow appraisal. “You look like shit,” he settled on. He said it with as much kindness as Drew was capable of—which was to say, none at all.
Roman shrugged one shoulder, letting his gaze drift briefly to Pharaoh, who remained blissfully absorbed in his breakfast to acknowledge the six-foot-five instigator sitting three feet away. “If it helps, I feel that way too.”
Drew nodded slowly, his eyes scanning the television and the still-shouting patrons before returning to Roman.
“What’s your team?” he asked at last.
Roman furrowed his brows, the question catching him off guard. “Aren’t you Scottish?”
Drew’s expression shifted into theatrical offense, eyebrows shooting up as if Roman had insulted his lineage. Roman mentally backtracked, trying to find the landmine he’d just stepped on.
“So Scottish people can’t watch football?” Drew’s eyes narrowed into dangerous slits. “That’s a bit racist, isn’t it?”
“It’s a question,” Roman replied, unsure what else to say.
He hadn’t meant that people from Scotland were incapable of understanding the sport; it was an honest query born of a desire to understand why Drew was currently haunting a suburban American sports bar. Besides, Drew had always struck him as more of a golf enthusiast than an American gridiron.
“Yes, I’m Scottish, and I watch football,” Drew shot back, eyes still narrowed in mock indignation. “Your point?”
“Forty-Niners,” Roman answered, keeping his tone flat.
He was in no mood to sustain a lecture on international relations or endure a string of creative Scottish insults. He hoped that by providing a direct answer, the man would get bored and vanish, and Roman could retreat into the fragile illusion of peace he’d been nursing all morning.
“They’re shit,” Drew replied immediately, with the confidence of someone stating an unarguable universal truth.
Roman let out a short huff of laughter despite himself, eyes drifting back to the screen where a replay of a dropped pass was looping. “I know what you’re trying to do, Drew. I should just tell you now, I’m not in the mood.”
Roman felt the weight of Drew’s stare drilling into the side of his skull. He did his absolute best to remain anchored to the television, hoping that if he offered zero resistance, Drew would eventually tire of the silence and drift away in search of more reactive prey.
About fifteen minutes of relative, prickly peace passed. Roman had just begun to actually sink into the rhythm of the game when Drew’s voice wrenched his attention back to him.
“Do you like free cake?”
Drew was leaning back, his eyes fixed on the screen as if the question were a natural extension of the play-by-play. When he sensed Roman’s head pivot toward him, he turned, a wolfish grin spreading across his face.
“Yeah…?” Roman answered, the word dripping with suspicion. The question was weird enough on its own; the fact that it was coming from Drew McIntyre made it borderline suspicious.
“Do you want free cake?” Drew pressed, his eyebrows dancing in a silent challenge.
Roman allowed the full spectrum of his confusion to bleed into his expression, watching Drew’s smile sharpen at the sight. Roman’s lips worked wordlessly for a moment, his sleep-deprived brain trying to find the certain to be hidden razor blade in the offer.
“And what body part am I going to have to sacrifice for this?” He asked.
He hadn’t even realized this establishment served dessert, not that he actually had a craving for sweets. But the prospect of something sweet and effortless appearing in front of him suddenly sounded like the best offer he’d had all week.
“Just your wedding ring,” Drew said sweetly.
Roman let out a laugh; a loud, hollow sound that had no humor in it. “I beg your pardon?”
“Don’t you trust me?” Drew batted his eyelashes with a daintiness that was terrifying on a man of his stature.
“Fuck no,” Roman responded instantly. “Last time you stole my wedding ring.”
Whether Drew was Seth’s boyfriend or not was irrelevant; the man was a brilliant red flag flapping proudly in the wind. As a certified red flag himself, Roman possessed a refined internal radar for these things. The last time Drew had been anywhere near Cody, he’d made off with Cody's ring, and Seth had essentially been hired as a recovery agent to pry the thing from Drew’s cold, infuriated hands. Roman would have to be the most certifiably insane person on the planet to hand it over willingly a second time.
“Cody’s wedding ring,” Drew corrected, raising a prim finger.
“Semantics,” Roman snapped, his eyes unflinching.
“Come on, Roman, I’m right here,” Drew said with an airy, dismissive shrug. “Where could I possibly go that you or… Emperor, here… couldn’t chase me down?” He gestured vaguely at the dog sitting, sentry at Roman’s feet.
“Pharaoh,” Roman corrected, his irritation bubbling over.
Drew’s smile grew sharp and white, delighted to have finally elicited a genuine reaction. “Semantics,” he echoed, throwing Roman’s own word back at him.
The sensible, logical choice would have been to tell Drew to fuck off and keep the ring exactly where it belonged. But Roman was bored and hollowed out by exhaustion. Besides, if Drew tried to make a break for the exit, Pharaoh was well-fed and more than capable of handling the logistics of a pursuit while Roman watched from the booth.
There was also the undeniable fact that curiosity was Roman’s Achilles’ heel. It was, after all, how he’d ended up with a husband in the first place—a husband currently off chasing redemption arcs and leaving Roman with profound insomnia, but a husband he loved with a fierce, quiet intensity nonetheless.
He exhaled through his nose, smothering his internal warning bells with the same ruthless efficiency he used on opponents in the ring, and gently worked the wedding band loose from its permanent resting place on his finger, dropping it into Drew’s waiting palm.
Drew closed his fingers around it with a huge sigh, as though he were about to embark on a terrible quest of great personal hardship. Then he slid out of the booth, dropped to one knee on the sticky tile floor, and scooted forward until he was directly in front of Roman.
“Now, I do hope you’re as good an actor as you are an arsehole,” Drew muttered under his breath, reaching out and yanking Roman’s left hand into position.
“What are you doing?” Roman asked, genuine concern finally breaking through his lethargy as he stared at Drew’s crouched form.
His question was instantly drowned out by Drew’s voice, which erupted in a loud, ecstatic, and entirely fraudulent bellow: “Guys, he said yes!”
Drew slipped the ring back onto Roman’s finger with a flourish, then surged to his feet and hauled Roman up into a bone-crushing hug that knocked the air from his lungs.
Roman blinked, his vision obscured by Drew’s shoulder, as the entire bar erupted into a deafening roar of cheers, the kitchen staff spilling out through the swinging doors with flour-dusted aprons and wide grins.
Pharaoh jumped to his feet, startled into alertness by the sudden shift in volume. The dog scanned the room, ears pinned back, but when he realized it was a collective burst of human celebration rather than an assault, he settled back down, though his tail remained still.
Roman, however, did not feel settled. He felt like he had just walked into a trap of his own making. The patrons had completely abandoned the football game, the arguments about passing techniques long forgotten. They sauntered over in a tide of loud enthusiasm to congratulate the “happy couple.”
Roman was subjected to a barrage of hearty, rib-cracking back slaps from the men and, once the kitchen staff trooped out to investigate the noise, a series of maternal, suffocating hugs from a group of women who seemed moved to tears by the “proposal.”
The entire ordeal was, frankly, a claustrophobic nightmare of unsolicited physical contact. Roman felt the walls of the dive bar closing in, his personal bubble popped by a dozen enthusiastic strangers. The noise and warmth pressed against him from every side, threatening to smother the last scraps of his already threadbare composure. But before he could find the words to protest, the nice lady who had served Pharaoh his breakfast earlier reappeared, triumphantly hoisting an impressively tall chocolate cake on a platter. She set it down on their table with a flourish, candles already flickering, the rich scent of cocoa and vanilla cutting through the syrupy air of the place.
“You two are just the most precious things I’ve ever seen!” a woman from the kitchen gushed.
Before Roman could flinch, she reached up, her small hands lifting to squish Roman and Drew’s heads together. It was a logistical marvel, considering she was nearly two feet shorter than the titans she was currently maneuvering like dolls. “How long have you been together?”
Roman cut his eyes toward Drew, lifting a heavy, pointed eyebrow. This was Drew’s production; he might as well handle the script.
“About five years now,” Drew said without wasting a single second. His arm snaked around Roman’s neck possessively as he leaned his head lovingly against Roman’s shoulder. Roman had to summon every ounce of his willpower to stay in character rather than throwing him through the nearest window.
“We met at work, where we absolutely hated each other,” Drew continued, shooting Roman a look so full of heart-eyes it bordered on obscene. “Basically tormented each other for months before realizing there was something other than hatred there.” He finished with a soft sigh that made half the women in the crowd melt on the spot.
Gruffy huffed at the statement, his eyes sliding sideways to Glasses with a great deal of unexpected softness. “All the best ones start that way,” he rumbled.
Glasses offered a small, knowing smile, and the realization hit Roman that the two of them were a mirror of the very lie Drew was spinning.
“What about you, handsome?” The meddlesome kitchen lady turned her investigative prowess on Roman, bumping her hip against his with a wry little grin. “When did you realize this big loon was exactly your type?”
Roman let his gaze trail over the gathered patrons in front of them, eagerly awaiting some very love-sick meet-cute story that Roman absolutely did not have to offer. And he sure as hell would not be slotting Drew in Cody’s place even for imaginary purposes.
“Well… look at him,” Roman settled on, twisting his head so he could aim what he hoped passed for fond resignation. “With a face like that, who wouldn’t have him as a type?”
The women in the crowd collectively dissolved into a chorus of coos and sighs. One of them actually dabbed at the corner of her eye with a napkin.
“Roman likes to pretend he’s made of stone,” Drew added with a soft tap to Roman's chest. “He’s a massive softy once you get past the growling, which is one of my favorite things about him.”
Glasses chimed in then, offering a similar anecdote about Gruffy that had the older man huffing in petulant denial while the entire group cackled. The conversation spiraled toward very concerning territory, with Drew launching into a list of ‘sweet’ attributes Roman was reasonably certain he didn’t possess, when Roman decided he had reached his limit. He twisted around, sliced a generous forkful of cake, and shoved it straight into Drew’s mouth, smearing frosting messily across the corner of his lips.
“That’s quite enough out of you, honey,” Roman said, his voice dripping with mock-cheer.
The sight of Drew sputtering, eyes wide, chocolate smeared across his mouth, pulled a genuine burst of laughter from deep in Roman’s chest. Drew narrowed his eyes in mock betrayal, but the effect was ruined by the way he had to lick frosting off his own lip.
“Kiss him!” The meddlesome kitchen lady exclaimed again, clapping her hands like a delighted seal.
The laughter died instantly, and both Drew and Roman froze, their expressions morphing into identical masks of wide-eyed panic.
“Aw, come on, we don’t care,” One patron added immediately, possibly thinking that was the problem here, which it was not. “Samson and Jonah here have treated us to more than enough PDA to last us a lifetime.” He gestured toward Gruffy and Glasses, who at least had the decency to blush.
“Kiss! Kiss! Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!” The entire gathering began to chant, stomping their feet and clapping in rhythm.
Roman cursed the version of himself from two minutes ago, whose uncontrollable curiosity had landed him in this exact nightmare.
“Okay, okay…” Drew muttered, shooting Roman a quick apologetic glance before leaning in and planting a chaste, almost comically polite kiss on his lips.
The crowd erupted in immediate protest, filled with boos, groans, and demands for “a real one.” The meddlesome kitchen lady was already mid-argument with the waitress, pinching her fingers in the air to demonstrate the exact disappointing centimeter of distance between their mouths, when Roman decided he had had enough and yanked Drew into a proper kiss by his shirt collar.
Drew froze for half a heartbeat before melting into it, one hand coming up to grip Roman’s jaw as their tongues slid together in a messy, sugar-sweet collision.
When they finally broke apart, Roman felt an immediate, frantic need for a black coffee strong enough to scour his mouth clean. Not because Drew was bad—God, no. If anything, the realization that he tasted like minted candies and possessed a startling, radiating warmth was a complication Roman hadn’t invited.
He needed caffeine. He needed a priest to exorcise the taste that was so inherently not-Cody from his soul. He needed a long session in a confessional to beg absolution for every single sin he had just committed in front of twenty enthusiastic strangers and one very unimpressed husky, and he needed to account for the strange, traitorous spike in his pulse.
Drew, for his part, was staring back at him with an expression Roman couldn’t quite decipher. His mouth was slightly parted, his usual mask of snark momentarily displaced by something raw and unreadable. The spell was only broken by the raucous hooting and hollering of their audience. The “proposal” had passed muster, the skeptics were silenced, and the place was now a sea of celebratory chaos.
Drew recovered first, pasting on a charming smile to address a nearby patron. Suddenly, he leaned in, pulling Roman into a tight, performative hug, but as his face pressed into the crook of Roman’s neck, his voice dropped to a lethal whisper.
“If you tell Seth about this, you’re dead.”
The threat was the most comforting thing Roman had heard all morning, grounded in at least some semblance of familiarity. Roman tightened his arms around Drew’s shoulders, completing the picture for their audience.
“If Cody finds out about this,” he countered, just as sweetly, “you’re deader.”
With their “engagement” solidified in the public eye, the tension in the room ebbed into a strange, communal peace. The crowd pulled up extra chairs and stools until Roman’s booth became the center of an impromptu gathering. What followed was an unexpected marathon of storytelling. Roman and Drew, the unlikely duo, found themselves acting as ambassadors to the sprawling, violent world of professional wrestling.
Gruffy, who hadn’t seen a frame of the product since “the Wild Samoans were the best thing on TV,” lit up like a kid on Christmas when Roman casually mentioned that those same Samoans were actually his father and uncle. The old man’s jaw dropped so hard his glasses nearly slipped off his nose, and he spent the next ten minutes demanding every detail while his partner, Samson, smiled quietly beside him and took meticulous notes in that little notebook.
The cake, far too large for two people, got sliced and shared at Roman’s insistence until every patron had a piece. By the time the last crumbs were scraped from paper plates, it was a whopping two-fifteen in the afternoon. Roman realized with a start that he had somehow spent nearly four hours simply eating, talking, and—for brief intervals—forgetting the hollow ache in his chest. He had found a strange, unexpected fulfillment in eating too-sweet chocolate and spinning wrestling tales for strangers who had never once tuned into the show.
The breakfast bar gradually emptied as the morning crowd gave way to the lunch rush, people filing out with final congratulations and well-wishes. Before they left, Glasses, whom Roman had come to realize was Samson, pulled Roman aside into a quiet corner and offered gentle, surprisingly insightful spousal advice. Across the room, Gruffy was doing the same to Drew, though his advice appeared to be punctuated by the occasional, heavy-handed smack to Drew’s shoulder. Roman watched his repeated winces and felt a quiet rush of gratitude that he had drawn the kinder half of the duo.
Once the crowd had successfully dispersed, Drew walked Roman and Pharaoh out to the parking lot in a companionable silence. He hovered by the driver’s side window, watching as Roman clicked his seatbelt into place and Pharaoh settled into the passenger seat with the dignity of a sphinx. Roman reached into the back and retrieved the takeaway bag, holding it out through the window.
“You don’t want to keep it?” Drew asked, looking genuinely surprised by the offering.
“Cody’s… not home,” Roman said, the words feeling heavy on his tongue. “And I’ve had more than enough indulgence for one day.”
It was a confusing realization that Drew McIntyre, of all people, was the first person he was admitting this to. He’d have to unpack the implications of that later, likely during the long, silent hours tonight when he’d be staring at the ceiling of a Cody-less bedroom.
“You can give it to Seth,” Roman added, wiggling the bag until Drew finally took it.
To his credit, Drew accepted the cake without a single prying question about where Cody had gone or why he’d had to leave. That small mercy loosened something tight and hunched in Roman’s chest. Instead of walking away, Drew stayed leaning against the car door, watching him carefully.
“Would you like to go get a manicure?” Drew asked, wiggling his own fingers in demonstration.
“A manicure?” Roman repeated, the word sounding absurd in his own ears.
Drew shrugged. “Seth.” He said it like the single name explained everything. Which, honestly, it did. “I promise there’ll be no kissing this time.” He lifted both hands in solemn assurance.
Roman looked at his dashboard. He had already cleaned the house twenty times over in the last six days. Returning to an empty house would only lead to another round of pointless scrubbing before he melted into the couch or the bed and spent the rest of the afternoon wallowing at the ceiling.
Fuck it.
“Do they offer canine services too?” he asked, tilting his head toward Pharaoh, who perked up at the mention of his own importance.
Drew let out a sharp bark of laughter, nodding in genuine amusement. “I’ll drive, you just follow,” he said, tapping the roof of Roman’s car twice before turning toward his own vehicle.
Roman leaned in closer, elbows braced on the padded armrests of the manicure station, watching with quiet fascination as the nail artist replicated the intricate details of his logo atop each matte-black fingernail.
Drew had taken the unbidden liberty of showing the nail artist a high-resolution photo of Roman’s logo. Now, that iconic shield was being replicated in painstaking, microscopic accuracy. The work was nothing short of meticulous, the dull red pattern emerging stroke by careful stroke, sharp and unmistakable even at thumbnail size. His cuticles had been trimmed and buffed to perfection, the black base coat gleaming like polished obsidian under the warm salon lights.
Roman had to admit, the level of craftsmanship was staggering. This was his first time ever getting his nails done, and while he wouldn’t go so far as to say he loved the sensation of wet paint on his person, he certainly didn’t hate the visual impact.
To his left, Drew lounged in the matching pedicure chair, glossy blue polish catching the light as he blew gently across his fingertips every few seconds to keep them from smudging. The way he kept sliding them back into the glowing lamp with immense confidence gave Roman the feeling he’d actually done this countless times before.
Pharaoh, meanwhile, was living a life Roman suspected he would now expect to maintain, tucked on a plush dog bed tucked beside Roman’s station. The husky had endured a flawless nail trim without so much as a twitch, and now he lay sprawled in absolute bliss, one paw resting in the technician’s lap while she massaged moisturizing lotion between his pads. His tongue lolled happily to the side, eyes half-lidded, the occasional contented sigh rumbling through his chest.
It was, overall, a remarkable pivot from the morning’s gloom. Roman had the distinct feeling he’d be returning here, though perhaps he’d dial the polish back to something subtler next time. The service was stellar, and he was already mentally scheduling a trip to drag Cody down here for some mandatory pampering.
“You want to know what kissing you today made me realize?” Drew asked suddenly, his voice cutting through the hum of the salon’s ambient lo-fi track.
The woman attending to Drew’s nails was just then brushing on a final clear topcoat, making the glossy blue shine like wet ink.
“I didn’t realize we were planning to acknowledge what happened this morning,” Roman said, raising a skeptical brow.
“Of course, we’re acknowledging it. It was a quality kiss,” Drew said, tossing the compliment out with the same casual indifference he might use to describe a decent pair of shoes. “Not better than Seth’s—obviously—but for what it’s worth, you’re a remarkable kisser, Reigns. I can finally see the mechanical appeal. I see why Cody fell for the hype.”
Roman wasn’t entirely sure how to process that. In his preferred version of reality, that moment would have been buried in a shallow grave and forgotten by nightfall. But Drew seemed not only intent on discussing it but entirely comfortable doing so, which left Roman in a state of profound, jet-lagged confusion.
“Do you… always walk around with minted candies?” He asked instead, mostly because the question had been gnawing at the back of his mind since the bar.
“Yeah, I do,” Drew answered without hesitation, flexing his freshly coated fingers. “Got some in the car if you want one later.”
Roman gave a small nod of assent. Well. It looked like he’d be taking home mint candies today.
“What did kissing me make you realize?” he asked, steering them back to the original topic before he could overthink it.
“That I’m going to marry Seth,” Drew turned his head fully this time, meeting Roman’s eyes with a small, surprisingly soft smirk, entirely devoid of the usual venom that sharpened his smiles. “Obviously not this afternoon, but somewhere down the line. It’s like I kissed you and realized I couldn’t imagine doing that with anyone else who wasn’t him.” Drew paused, his eyes drifting back to the UV light. “Plus, you smell incredibly nice, it was very distracting—”
Roman’s brows knit together in a look of mild, exhausted distress.
“What is that face? Do you not get compliments?” Drew asked, sounding genuinely offended on Roman’s behalf.
“Not about how I smell,” Roman muttered, a touch exasperated.
Drew tsked in theatrical disappointment before turning his attention back to his nails as the technician finished the coat. “Well, that’s a failure on Cody’s part, then, because you do smell nice.”
“What is happening right now?” Roman couldn’t help but ask aloud, the words slipping out before he could stop them.
The morning had started with him dragging himself into a therapist’s office out of sheer exhaustion. Then Drew had intercepted his mourning period at a breakfast joint, turned a potentially disastrous encounter into an oddly enjoyable morning, and then successfully maneuvered him into a mani-pedi session where they were now discussing feelings and fragrance, while Roman got his nails painted by a stranger.
There was a split second where Roman genuinely wondered if he was dreaming. If his sleep-deprived brain had conjured up this version of Drew and stuffed him full of uncharacteristic sweetness. Because the Drew ‘I hate everyone’ McIntyre, he knew, had never once come across as… spongy.
This overly sweet and sappy version was doing strange, uncomfortable things to Roman’s equilibrium that he didn’t know how to handle.
Drew must have caught the whirlwind on Roman’s face, because he turned back with an exhausted, borderline fed-up expression. “What is it you want, Roman? Yes, I might not jump for joy every time your name comes up, but does that warrant a toxic throwdown right here in the middle of the mani-pedi parlor?”
Roman narrowed his eyes, the low hum of the salon’s UV lamps and the faint citrus scent of nail polish suddenly feeling sharper. “Okay, I’ve dated Seth before. We had our moments, but I never went this spectacularly insane.”
“No, that only happened when you got with Cody,” Drew replied, matter-of-fact. “I can’t help it that Seth is my Cody.”
Roman opened his mouth to retort, but the words died on his tongue. Because truly, how could he dispute that?
He had done a thousand things he never imagined he would do because of Cody. He had reinvented his entire philosophy of power and dismantled his own emotional fortresses, all because Cody Rhodes had looked him in the eye and dared to stay. And he would keep doing those soft, ridiculous, heart-on-his-sleeve things for the rest of his life if it kept that man smiling.
Yes, Roman was a sap. Another item on the ever-growing list of frighteningly soft discoveries he had made the moment Cody Rhodes stepped into his world and refused to leave.
Perhaps Drew had a point. Which, now that Roman thought about it…
“If I find out this entire day was some sort of staged intervention orchestrated by Seth, Drew,” Roman said, voice dropping into a low, dangerous register, “I swear I will ruin my cuticles on your face.”
The artist working on Roman’s nails did not appreciate the threat one bit. She rapped him sharply across the knuckles with the handle of her brush, the sting immediate and surprisingly effective. Roman winced, shooting her a hard glare that did absolutely nothing to cower her.
Drew, meanwhile, was laughing his Scottish little heart out, shoulders shaking with the effort, his accent thickening with genuine amusement. “No, Seth doesn’t know,” he managed once the laughter had tapered enough for words. “See, the original plan was to provoke you. But then I saw you in that booth, and you looked so utterly, cosmically miserable that my latent sympathy actually kicked in.”
On any other day, those words coming from Drew McIntyre would have triggered several instinctive, violent defense mechanisms in Roman. He didn’t do sympathy, and he certainly didn’t accept it from a man who had tried to take his head off on multiple continents.
But today was a day of anomalies. Today, he was sitting in a plush chair with Pharaoh snoring softly beside him and glossy blue polish drying on Drew’s nails. Drew didn’t sound like he had intended it as a barb; it was just a blunt observation of a man who recognized the specific brand of exhaustion Roman had been experiencing, and a painfully accurate one at that.
Still, Roman had his dignity—or what was left of it—to uphold.
“Seth better not hear a syllable about today,” he sniffed, though the threat carried only about one-third of his usual venom.
“Hey! Don’t you go threatening me, Reigns. Drew shot back, wagging one very manicured blue finger in warning, eyebrow cocked. “Fake engagement and matching mani-pedis or not, I can still whoop your sorry arse.”
Roman snorted. “Boy, would I love to see you try.”
The artist wrapped up Roman’s first hand and moved to the second, allowing him a moment to inspect the work. The renditions of his logo were nearly perfect; a dull, matte red that stood out against the black. He curled his fingers inward, appraising the sharp, clean lines with a satisfied grunt. It was impressively elegant, and remarkably… Cody-adjacent in its vanity.
“Ask your husband how it turned out for him,” Drew said, keeping their half-hearted exchange of threats and barbs alive.
Roman finally lifted his gaze from his curled fingers to Drew, a shit-eating grin sliding into place. “I will ask him how it felt to beat the shit out of you three different times.”
…
It was nearing nine-thirty by the time Roman pulled into his driveway. In the backseat, Pharaoh was effectively a rug, conked out and dead to the world after a day of unadulterated pampering.
The day had begun as the bleak, hollowed-out stretch of time that Roman had grown too familiar with since Cody left. Yet, it had taken a turn so sharp that he felt the phantom need to pinch himself to ensure he wasn’t caught in a fever dream. It was a staggering, almost offensive realization, but he owed his current sense of peace to Drew McIntyre.
Lunch had stretched into dinner, both of them lingering over plates of food neither had planned to finish. Then came the utterly dramatic bowling alley detour, where they spent three full games griping loudly about how every gutter ball was clearly the fault of their fresh manicures. The entire day had been nothing but aimless messing around, and it was possibly the most fulfilled Roman had felt since Cody had left.
Drew was… a walking contradiction. The man who once seemed allergic to anything remotely kind had spent the afternoon coaxing Roman out of his fog with fake proposals, shared cake, blue nail polish, and surprisingly gentle honesty. If anyone else had told Roman this story, he would have called them a bold-faced liar. Yet here he was, living proof that he and Drew were far more alike than either of them had ever cared to admit.
Roman shut the engine off and sat for a moment, letting the quiet settle. He caught his own reflection in the rearview mirror and let out a low, disbelieving chuckle at the man staring back. With one final glance at the matte-black and crimson logos on his hands resting on the wheel, he stepped out into the night.
He rounded the car and pulled open the back door, Pharaoh merely cracking one soulful eye, peering at Roman holding the door, and then promptly squeezing it shut again, feigning a deep, impenetrable slumber.
“I’m not carrying you, just so you know,” Roman muttered, narrowing his eyes at the dramatic husky.
Pharaoh, a master of the long con, remained motionless, his breathing rhythmic and entirely fake. Roman was personally prepared to stand on the driveway all night out of pure, stubborn principle, but a jaw-splitting yawn threatened to unhinge his head.
He cursed Cody silently for spoiling the dog into a state of royal entitlement, then reached in, scooped the massive animal up with a soft grunt, and kicked the door shut with his heel. Pharaoh remained perfectly limp the entire way to the house, the picture of perfect royalty.
The moment they crossed the threshold, however, Pharaoh’s ears perked, and his eyes flew open, the exhaustion immediately vanishing. Pharaoh sprang from Roman’s arms, landing on all four thoroughly moisturized paws and trotted off with an alert, annoying spring in his step. Roman stood in the foyer, half-tempted to toss the dog back outside on principle alone.
Ignoring the traitorous hound as he went off to do whatever mysterious things he did when no one was watching, Roman climbed the stairs, undoing the buckle of his belt and tugging his shirt over his head on the way up. In the bedroom, he stripped the rest of the way down and was just stepping into a pair of Cody’s pajama pants as a poor substitute for the man himself, when his phone buzzed on the nightstand.
It was a text from an unsaved number.
Got your number from Seth, so you can rest assured I’m not stalking you. What would you say to a wine-tasting tomorrow, ‘fiancé’? Btw, if Seth asks, I sent you a strongly worded message about my unquenchable hatred for you. Can’t have people thinking we’re some sort of friends now.
Roman flopped onto the bed, the mattress rising to meet him. He felt the phantom weight of Cody’s absence, but for once, the bed didn’t feel quite so cold. His thumbs moved sluggishly over the screen as he typed back.
Certainly not. We are not friends. I have standards to maintain. What time is this wine tasting?
The phone buzzed almost instantly, and Roman barely had the strength to squint at the screen.
12:15.
Roman caught the words just long enough for them to register before the comfortable pull of sleep dragged him under. He let the phone slip from his hand, surrendering to the heavy, blissful pull of a sleep he hadn’t had in six days.