I need you.  Those three little words that weren’t exactly what he wanted from Adam, but was as close as he was going to get.  And as usual, when Adam asked him for something, Adam got his way.

As usual.  Fuck, as always.  He’d forgotten to factor that in, the little tidbit of knowledge he’d gained from hanging around with Adam since before either of them had been old enough to shave.  Whenever he went with Adam, Adam was the one to take the prettiest girl home, to land himself in the main event, to get married to a lovely girl and move to a tropical paradise.

Jason, meanwhile, was the one who was left sitting at the bar when closing time rolled around.  He was the one who fell into the iced over lake and was too fucking sick to even show up to work.  He was the one who moved to Florida, aka tropical paradise lite.  He was the one left sleeping alone in roach-ridden hotel rooms while Adam was pushed to the stars.

It’d be so much easier if Adam meant to do it, or if he even knew he was doing it.  But he was so fucking innocently sincere, so sweet-tempered.  He still checked in with Jason backstage, though their angles didn’t intersect too much anymore.  He called him when both of them were home, just to see how he was doing.  The dumb fuck even dropped careful hints with the bookers, suggestions that maybe he could add Jason into this feud or that, despite the fact that it was a damned good way to get accused of ‘backstage politics’.  Adam shouldn’t be up top, for the simple fact that he didn’t know how to watch his back.  As always, Jason had to watch it for him.

Yeah, like he had anything else to do these days.

Jason rolled on to his back and studied the dark watermarks on the ceiling above his head.  He could hear the steady, rhythmic thump of the headboard against the other side of the wall.  Once upon a time he’d have been sleeping in a comparatively luxury suite in the Red Roof Inn, or something like that, but the company was down-sizing.  God forbid Vince have to sell the second Bentley.

Ungrateful.  He was damned lucky to still have a job.  And even if he was working the same matches over and over again, pouring his heart into it for some obscure reason even he couldn’t work out… well, that was okay.  And if he had to watch decent guys work their asses off night after night, family guys who worked the shows, popped a few Tylenol and went to bed get skimmed over in favor of kids who never paid even a cent of dues waltz in from nowhere and get pushed with all the subtlety of a wrecking crew… well, that was okay, too.  And if he felt like each match was a little touch of cyanide, killing him nice and slow…

Some days he understood better than others exactly why Jeff did what he did.  Your body was worth nothing in this business; better to treat it as such.  Better to burn up flashpaper quick than sputter out and die, your body betraying you the second  you thought you’d fixed it.

Some nights, it was all too easy to forget.  He saw Adam less and less, the reminder of why he still bothered to get up in the morning slipping away.  Some nights like tonight.

The bump of knuckles against his stomach, a casual touch, and Jason glanced over.  The man stretched out beside him wasn’t even close to what he really wanted.  Where Adam was tall and skinny, the man beside him was shorter and lean.  Where Adam was pale and blond, the man next to him was tawny and tan.  This one’s eyes saw too much, a clear mind hidden behind a deceptive cover.

Rob’s hand felt heavy and too warm against his stomach.  Jason had the irrational urge to jerk away snarling, biting and flinching like something half-tamed.  He settled for ignoring it, simmering under the surface, resenting the touch.  “What?”

Slow, easy, calm, like a wave lapping steadily at rock.  Zen Buddhists had nothing on Rob van Dam.  “You okay?”

“Does it matter?”  Jason let acid slip into the words, let them bite and sting for him.

Rob just blinked at him, then managed the faintest trace of an infuriating smile.  “Yeah.”

“That was a rhetorical question.”

“Oh.”  Rob shrugged, never breaking eye contact or that easy, warm smile.  “My bad.”

Next door, the woman’s soft moaning rose to a fever-pitch.  She shrieked like she wanted to rattle the fixtures, the sound as clear as if she had been in the same room.  The weight of Rob’s hand eased.  The tip of one finger traced an imaginary line on Jason’s stomach, a light touch that seemed to sizzle down Jason’s spine.  He shivered, then rolled away from the touch to sit on the edge of the bed.  His back felt rigid, clarity in posture.  Touch at your own risk.

“We could have gone to my hotel,” Rob murmured.  There was a gentling quality to his voice, like offering his fingers for an animal to sniff.

Jason sighed and bent to rest his elbows on his knees.  It made it easier to scrub at his eyes that way.  “It’s more likely that someone might notice the smell of pot in a Marriot than in a no-tell motel.”

Funny how he could almost heard Rob shrug again.  The weight on the bed behind him shifted a moment before a hand settled on his shoulder.  “I meant that they’re gonna keep you up.”

With a sniff, Jason let his hands drop and stared fixedly at the wall.  “Yeah, maybe.”

“You sleeping much?”

“You can’t be that interested in my sleeping habits.”

“Maybe I am.”

“Maybe you’re just worried that I’m going to kill myself in the ring and you’d have to go fuck a Hardy.”

“Dude.  Ew.  I’ve got better taste.”  But the hand on his shoulder squeezed once, firmly, before moving away.

Jason had the sudden, awful urge to turn towards him again.  He sat still, instead, and continued his intimate study of the wall as he listened to something rustling behind him.  Rob was humming something that sounded suspiciously like Ricky Martin.  His life was getting distinctly bizarre.

When Rob returned, it was to sit on the bed beside him.  The bed bent under his weight, almost sending Jason sprawling into his lap.  Rob didn’t seem to notice, holding out a small round clay pipe painted in psychedelic patterns.  The smell of pot was sickly sweet in the closed and musty room.

Jason closed his eyes and took it, breathing the smoke in deep.  It was easy to swallow by now, going down his throat without a hitch.  He held his breath until his lungs burned and he could see spots behind his eyes.

And so it went, back and forth between them without a word exchanged.  Rob seemed almost meditative as he smoked, attention focused either deeply inwards or somewhere too far away to see.  Once in a while, his mouth would turn up in a very small smile.

After what felt like a very long while, the bowl came up empty.  Rob, still smiling that same cat smile, slipped it into the baggie it had come from and set that on top of the nightstand.  Jason let himself stretch out across the bed.  Melting.  Foggy.  Wonderful.

A gentle, skimming touch across his throat made him open his eyes again, wondering when exactly he’d closed them.  It was hard to focus on the face above him.  Rob.  Lucky, calm, easy fucking bastard Rob kneeling above him with the oddest expression on his face.

Something skittered in the walls, a soft scratching that seemed horribly loud.  Visions of radioactive cockroaches danced in his head, the echo of too many B-movies as a child.  Watching them with Adam, cloudy headed and up too late, blue lights flickering on the walls of their dorms.

Jason moaned low in his throat and closed his eyes.

Gentle hands coaxed him into tilting his face up.  Somehow he’d gotten turned around, his head on the pillows.  He spared a distracted thought to exactly how that had happened before the weight at his side shifted and a warm mouth was brushing his.

“Mmm,” he said, the sound buzzing on his lips.  “The cockroaches-”  A firmer kiss then, and he broke it only to murmur, a reminder that felt like a knife in his gut, “Rob.  Rob…”

And then there was only the taste of smoke being traded between their lips and the distinct feeling that he was drowning in a salty-sweet fog, the warm trace of hands used on him with a near unnerving concentration, the echo of his own voice along the walls.

When it was over, he could almost hear a soft voice in his ear, saying the same thing over and over, the dim comfort of being rocked slowly, petted and soothed.  He could taste salt in his mouth.

I need you, Jay.

He had forgotten tonight.  But away from the cockroaches and the taste of smoke and the pressure of hands on his skin, he would remember in the morning.

He didn’t really want to remember anymore.