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Summary
“It was bold of you,” Cody said, in the hotel room, after Raw. “I didn’t expect it.”
Seth watched him and thought about the future, about the ways the two of them would now be tied, which were all of them, all the ones with meaning. “He has to be stopped.”
Series
- Part 1 of a begging to be believed
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Bookmark Notes:
“It was bold of you,” Cody said, in the hotel room, after Raw. “I didn’t expect it.”
Seth watched him and thought about the future, about the ways the two of them would now be tied, which were all of them, all the ones with meaning. “He has to be stopped.”
Cody reached out and Seth forced himself still. You made your bed, Rollins. The fingers traced carefully, lightly, along the muscle of his neck. There was no mark on it; Seth's throat was clear. “Do you want this?”
“I want you to win.”
“That’s not it.”
“I want him to lose.”
Cody smiled. Cracked open. Sometimes there was a glimpse of Cody - the one from the other place, the one that had built the other place. That one was more like Roman than Seth wanted to consider.
They monogrammed the sheets for you.
“Good enough.”
“True love.”
(“Should have put a pup in you,” Roman said, at the Royal Rumble, with his teeth in Seth's neck and only the angles keeping the blood out of the shot. The whole thing was covered with a quick edit. Roman might even have been fined, but it wouldn't have mattered. “All the way back then. Would have kept you in your place. ”
It was a quick bite. Not a matebite. This was sharp and denigrating, an alpha move to put down not a competitor but a bitch out of turn.
I didn't know you hated me like that, Seth thought. He was surprised that it stung.)
Seth was, in fact, that kind of omega. Alphas lost their minds, trying to put him down.
Even the babyfaces.
Even Cody Rhodes.
“You wanted it,” Cody said. Braver, leaning into it. “It wasn’t just me. We were like that, with each other.”
He felt the weight of Cody’s knot behind his teeth. The crisp sensation of Cody’s hand against his cheek. To gain something after losing like that - even if it was just Cody Rhodes losing the veneer of his civility - it was a victory and it was his. He would know forever that Cody Rhodes had been like that , with Seth, because of him.
“Yeah,” Seth said. “We were.”
Seth was, still, as he had told Cody in that ring in February, once an Architect. Nobody could see the future like him. Nobody could make the future like him. He is now a Visionary.
Seth said, “Listen to me. ”
Cody closed his eyes. Opened them. “Really?”
“I picked you,” Seth said. “I wouldn't pick just anyone.”
The way Cody looked at him -
Like a title belt, maybe. Like something more.
“You're going to win,” Seth said. He thought of Roman, alone. Roman with all those bites that were only transactions, only his dominance over his people, who were not people themselves. “You have to.”
“No pressure.”
“None at all. You already agreed to do it, baby. That was the bite.”
“Christ, Seth.” But the warmth flooded his chest, sent soft tendrils through his ribs and arteries, set up behind his wishbone. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” They had not kissed. Not even once. Not even before. He had never even considered it.
“May I?” Cody asked.
Seth tilted his neck, an offering. “You may.”
Cody shook his head, soft and warm and fond; the air smelled like coffee and cinnamon sugar; he took Seth’s cheek in his hand and drew him in and kissed him.
Oh, Seth thought. You smell like me.
He reached up and caught Cody’s hair, traced the fingers of his other hand over the bite he had left, and kissed Cody back.