Disclaimer: The author is in no way, shape, or form in any form of association with World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), any of the wrestlers mentioned in this story, or anything else. I just wrote the thing. Please enjoy.

There's always a thing about silence that makes you stop, makes you think, and silence is the only thing that fills Dean's house right now. Silence is both an up side and a down side about living in the desert. When things got quiet, it's like you suddenly find yourself in a vacuum; no sound able to find its way to you.

It's a Wednesday night and Dean is attempting to enjoy a day off, something he can't even begin to comprehend having. Recently, it feels like work is the only thing that keeps him sane. He needs to be moving 24/7 or at least preoccupied to keep himself safe. However, he had already gone on his before-dark run and the sun had set long ago. Even Dean – as self-destructive as he can be – knows you shouldn't run in the desert at night.

The television is playing on mute as he lies on the couch, eyes focused on the plaster of the ceiling because they refuse to close. The various flashes and colors on the structure above feel too stimulating for his mind but he doesn't have the motivation to actually get up to turn off the TV. The remote is long gone, having been lost when he moved.

In Dean's head, he can practically hear the ticking clock that would always sound in the thick silence of night when nothing else stirred, but he doesn't have a clock. The most he actually has in the house is a few pieces of necessary furniture, the currently-flashing television, and a house phone that hardly ever rang.

Dean turns his head now to look over at where the phone hangs, corded and old, from a garage sale he went to when he was still a teenager. He can't believe it still works. Hell, maybe it doesn't. He doesn't think he's heard that phone ring in months.

Almost to taunt him, though, it starts to ring in front of his very eyes. It makes that shrill noise you associate with old phones; the noise that makes you cringe from the inside out. It takes two full rings of this shrill noise for Dean to realize that, no, this is not some weird hallucination or dream, your phone is ringing, dumbass.

In his best attempt of getting quickly off the couch, his limbs defy him, sending him sprawling to the floor before he makes it to his feet. He feels lucky, not for the first time, that he doesn't have an answering machine. Without an answering machine, the phone will ring forever – or until the other party hangs up – which allows for Dean to catch the phone.

"Hello?" He answers, his voice lower and raspier than normal. Somewhere in his mind, he makes the connection that he probably had almost been asleep. Damn phone call. Who was calling so late, anyway?

"Mr. Dean Ambrose?" A voice responds, sounding too professional for Dean's taste. It catches him off guard, filling his mind with a list of all the possibilities that could be warranting the call. There's no way this is another ticket, right? He made the payment on the last one just the previous Friday. Unless he forgot about one. That's just what he needs; his past coming back to bite him in the ass. "Hello?"

"Yeah," Dean answers finally, clearing his head of all the worries that it had been filling with. "Yeah, this is Dean Ambrose. May I ask who's calling?" It's a legitimate question, alright? It's not like many people actually have the number to his house. Most people just go through Roman to deliver a message to Dean, seeing as Dean had given up on trying to have a cell phone when he kept losing it. The only people who actively tried or had once upon a time actively tried to contact Dean (therefore, the only people who actually have Dean's number) were Sami, Roman, and one other individual Dean has been training himself not to think about. Everyone else would just have to deal with talking to Dean in person.

The speaker on the other line replies, "This is Tampa General Hospital. We're actually calling on the behalf of..." There's a brief rustling of paper that Dean can make out before the voice continue, "Mr. Seth Rollins. He has you listed in his file as his emergency contact."

The name is enough to send a shudder rippling through Dean, but the chill that accompanies it is unexpected. "Hospital?" Dean repeats, the tone of his voice conflicted. Seth? "He alright?" The words aren't coming to him in an elegant manner, but he's glad that they're making sense enough. He hasn't heard much about Seth for months now; he has been doing his best to keep that little weasel out of his head. Now, here's a hospital calling him on Seth's behalf.

"He experienced a fall on his way out from his rehabilitation center. He hit his head on the way down. Several people told us that he was disoriented and he didn't manage to stay awake, but he's stablized." Dean lets out a slow breath that he hadn't realized he had been holding. "It's nothing life-threatening, of course. We just think it would be better for him to have someone he trusts here when he wakes up again. Waking up in the hospital isn't exactly a pleasant expereince."

Someone he trusts. Oh, that's just golden. This hospital obviously doesn't have a clue of the past that he and Seth share, but that isn't exactly something that they would have a novel about, is it?

Before he can respond, the voice rings through the other line again, "Would you be able to make it here as soon as possible?"

As soon as possible. The question in itself is meant to be innocent, Dean is sure, but it leaves Dean feeling obligated. Each day that passes, Dean works on minding his own damn business. Each day is another challenge for Dean to stop caring about Seth. Now, the real test presents itself. Seth is waltzing right back into his life, in the hospital, and Dean is his emergency contact. This is where Dean's reaction will really matter.

"Fuck," Dean whispers, having the briefest moment of wanting to apologize for his language, but he doesn't. The decision has to be made and he needs to make it now. "I'm-I'm out of state," Dean is stammering out and really, it should have been left at that. It should have been a quick, smooth refusal. Instead, however, his mouth continues, "But I'll be as soon as I can." Then, before he could change his mind, he hangs up.

The thing is, when Dean tells someone that he'll be there as soon as he can, he means it literally. That's why once the phone is hung up, he is dashing off to find his shoes, his wallet, and his keys. There had been multiple occasions before where Dean said he would be there as soon as he could be and he had gotten where he needed to be in half the time the other party had expected. However, since Seth is currently quite literally a country away, Dean doubts he'll be able to achieve the same means, but that doesn't mean he won't try his damnedest. Seth needs him and one thing that Dean will always confess is he will never lever a brother hurt and alone. No matter the pain they have caused before or the chaos that they are bound to bring again, Dean will always be there for them.

It's within moments after finding his keys that Dean is set out the door, not even bothering to change his clothes. Within the next hour, he has a ticket for the next flight towards Tampa with nothing but the clothes on his back and the wallet and keys in his pocket. The flight has one layover in Atlanta and then – after asking someone to Google how long it would take for him to drive to Tampa from there (much longer than the layover and the flight, Dean finds) – he's on the plane to Tampa. He arrives at nearly 10AM the next morning and he hadn't slept a blink on the plane like he would normally be able to. When he hauls down a cab – you'll never get him to admit to stealing a cab from someone by lying about one of his family member's being in the ICU – his next stop is finally the hospital.

He manages to arrive at Tampa General Hospital around 10:30 and is immediately getting directions as to where Seth is located among these many halls and rooms. The nurse who acts as Dean's guide is a young woman, who looks like she got maybe two hours of sleep the previous night, maximum. He's as quiet and obedient as he can be, if only to make the stress lighter on her.

"He's woken up a few times already, which is good. He's too groggy from the medications we've given him for the pain to realize that there's no one he knows around. Though, we're sure it'll be nice for him to see a familiar face when he wakes up again." Dean can only nod along with everything she's saying, his heart nearly beating out of his chest at the mere thought of seeing Seth again. "We thought you might have been out of state with the area code that your number had, but you're the only contact that he has listed. We tried to see if there was anyone in his phone, but it has a passcode. Was there anyone else that we could have called?"

That would drop everything for him? Dean wants to ask as he looks over at her. His eyes search her face for a moment before he shakes his head. Sure, there are other people she could have called, who might have been there faster than Dean, but that would have been a small possibility. Roman, as much as he cares about his brothers, has a family. The Authority also have families of their own and a business that they're running. Dean? The only people he had ever really had in his life were Roman and Seth; the list normally shortened to only Roman nowadays.

The nurse gives a small smile, filled with a sad understanding, and Dean has to wonder if maybe she only has her job, kind of like he does. He doesn't ask and she doesn't tell, but she is soon opening the door to Seth's room. "He's in here. Do me a favor and if he wakes up, press that button right beside his bed for me, okay?"

"Yes ma'am," Dean assents before he's entering the hospital room.

The first thing Dean allows himself to do upon his arrival into the room is to look, but not immediately at Seth. His eyes trace along the bottom of the bed and along the floors until they roam over the white walls. His gaze makes its way to the ceiling before coming back down again, finding the chair that was at Seth's bedside empty. Part of him is surprised that no one else was here, despite the nurse saying they had no one else to call. Surely the rehabilitation center called Hunter upon Seth's fall and yet there is not a single person from the Authority here. Not that the fact in itself is shocking at all; Dean always knew that those monkey-suit wearing idiots didn't care about anyone but themselves. For Seth's sake, Dean honstly had hoped, though.

His eyes finally slide over to the body that is on the bed as he sits down, glad the sight isn't horrifying. There's some discoloration around his eyes and a bandage over his forehead where Dean assumes he had struck whatever it is he fall onto. Otherwise, though, Seth looks... normal; peaceful, even. The peaceful look doesn't soothe the furious beating of Dean's heart, however.

The need to speak is working its way into Dean's throat and burning through every ounce of self-control that he thought he had. The desire is strong enough to even burn through the fear that the slightest noise would wake the other up; the fear that Dean doesn't know how he is going to be able to talk to the other when brown eyes were opened and trained on him.

"E-Everyone is always telling me that I'm the klutz," Dean starts out, not giving himself time to back out, just like he had done on the phone, "but you definitely seem to be giving me a run for my money, Rollins." His voice is throaty again, rough from the lack of use. "First your knee, now you hit your head... Just damn, Seth. We can't leave you alone for a second, can we?"

Dean is giving a short chuckle that is almost too low, a wave of emotions rocking through him as he thinks about how much it must hurt Seth not to be in action. He can't even begin to imagine it. He turns his head to speak again, his eyes training on the face of the other male. He's startled at the sight of brown eyes looking back at him.

Perhaps it would have been a smart idea to ask the nurse when they had last given Seth the medications she mentioned, because looking at Seth now, he looks more coherent than Dean would have bargained for him to be. The look on Seth's face didn't speak of confusion, but rather of knowledge, understanding. Seth knows what's going on. That just makes it all the more terrifying for Dean.

Seth's lips move and it's on just the slightest of delays that his words hit Dean's ears. "We never changed our emergency contact information." The comment ignores everything that Dean had been saying before and the Lunatic Fringe doesn't think he could be more thankful.

Dean clears his throat, "Yeah. I gathered that." It's the best he can give right now and he can only hope Seth understands.

"Were you at home?" Seth asks now, because he had always been the one to immediately start gathering information. Dean shrugs, looking at the floor now. "You were," Seth notes, based on nothing more than Dean's silence; Seth had always been the best at reading his silences. "You came all the way here from Nevada."

"They said you were hurt and they didn't have any other numbers to call," Dean expresses in a huff. The second half of the information he had only gathered when he arrived, but Seth doesn't need to know that. "What was I supposed to do? Leave you here alone?" His eyes slide and match Seth's gaze once more.

"That's what any sane person would do." The words rock through Dean for a moment before settling again. Nothing he hasn't heard before. "After everything I did to you, shouldn't you be wishing death on me or something?"

If there's one thing that Dean hates more than anything, it's when Seth talks like that. Like despite everything they had been through for years prior to the incident, Dean couldn't possibly not want him to go die somewhere. This isn't even the first time the topic has come up either. There have been several conversations like this after Seth's betrayal, when one of them would get too drunk to talk themselves out of calling the other. The conversations had happened, they just continue to act like they hadn't.

"At one time," Dean begins, slowly, wanting to make sure each word was enunciated, "you were the biggest thing in my life, Seth Rollins. You were the only thing that mattered." The tone of his voice is hinting more at this being a reminder than anything, because Seth should already know this. "Just because you're not the only thing anymore doesn't mean you don't still matter to me."

The words seem to come as a surprise to Seth, who is just staring at Dean like he's grown a second head. Dean rubs momentarily at his neck, if only to make sure that he hasn't. This shouldn't be anything new to Seth, but maybe he had just hit his head harder than they originally thought. Slowly, Seth nods before a grimace comes over his face, the movement stopping. "Fuck, my head actually hurts."

"Yeah, that tends to happen when you hit it on something," Dean comments easily before he's hitting the button the nurse had instructed him to press when Seth woke up. Seth probably needed something, anyway.

Everything goes quiet when the nurse enters the room to check Seth over. She checks all his vitals first, then asks him how his head is feeling. She asks where it hurts and promises to be back with pain medication and water for him. She even asks Dean if he wanted water, coffee, anything. Dean agrees to a coffee and when she leaves the room, the silence continues to stretch on.

Dean's leg begins to shake from the tension of the quiet before Seth finally speaks again. "Do you plan on staying?"

It's a legitimate question to ask, Dean allows, but it isn't one that he had really thought over just yet. He had really just arrived, after all. The inquiry forces him to think about it now and Dean permits himself a few moments to mull over it. Is he going to stay; until Seth gets out of the hospital, maybe until his head is fully healed? "I don't know," Dean finally responds, "I can if you want me to. Or I can give them Hunter's number for them to call him. I'm sure you want Daddy around more than me."

It doesn't come out as bitter as Dean expects it to. After all, he would be able to understand it. If Dean found himself in a situation like this, he is sure he would feel more comfortable with Roman around than he would Seth. Seth, however, scowls at what Dean says. He looks away to train his expression, just like he always used to when he was mad and Dean kept trying to get him to laugh; back when things were okay between them.

"Believe it or not, I would rather have you around."

Those words are something Dean didn't think he would ever hear again, but he doesn't allow them to throw him off. He simply gives a nod of acceptance at the answer. "Then I guess I'm sticking around. You're not... planning on having me jumped or anything, right? Hospitals frown upon that stuff, I learned."

Seth laughs at that, but it quiets when another pained expression crosses his face. "No, I think you're the only person who's actually going to show up, even if they did somehow find a way to call Hunter or Steph." The bittersweet smile that crosses his face is something Dean suspects wasn't meant for his eyes. He looks away out of respect. "Even after everything I've done to you, you're the only one who will ever be there for me no matter what."

The nurse makes it back into the room, with the pain medication and water for Seth, the coffee for Dean. Dean takes the styrofoam cup as the nurse props Seth's bed up a little more to allow him to take the medication. The warmth of the cup floods through Dean as Seth's last words ring through his head. He sips at the coffee and looks at his former Shield-mate as he takes the medication given to him, a bitter smile of his own crossing his lips. I'll always be there for you, Seth, no matter what, a voice in Dean's head promises, but it will always hurt knowing you will never be there for me again.

I won't even lie and say I'll try to be back writing on a regular basis, as so much of my life is in shambles. Every now and again, something random will be posted though.

Love you guys!

~Ash