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See, Jack's had a really shitty night. He's stuck alone at this hotel in West Palm Beach without Lucha, because it was way too far to drive the bus, and now without his belt, so the only thing he can think to do is sit and stew in the room, furious about how he should have seen Ricochet coming and didn't, mourning the loss of the one thing that had made him feel worth it again. And, on top of all that, his back throbs like nobody's business; he needs ice, and getting some requires leaving his room to hunt down the vending alcove—which he does, reluctantly, grumbling the whole time. Except, approaching the vending alcove, he realizes he was far from the only person to do this when the machine is shaking in the 'new ice production' stage to re-fill the empty stores, and Jack's not even the first in line whenever the cycle completes and the new ice is ready.
Darby, for his part, eyes Jack with what will be, in a few days, an impressive shiner, before he says, "Ice isn't ready yet."
"No shit," Jack replies. "I know how a fucking ice machine works."
"You're testy." Darby frowns. "Bad night?"
"Oh, shut up." Jack lingers near the entryway of the alcove, the little corner set back at the far end of the hall. Somewhere down the corridor, a door opens, then closes, and though Jack waits, no one comes their direction. The footsteps fade en route to the elevators positioned at the center of the building, an intersection dividing the floor in half. "When it's done, just let me get my ice so I can go."
"No can do, Jungle Jack. I was here first."
"I got hit with a fucking golf club," Jack says.
"I got suplexed into a sand trap."
"I lost my belt."
Darby's eyebrows arch high. His paint, the bit that's managed to keep clinging to his skin, is a sweep of white across the apple of his cheek, a few splatters of lingering black on top. "That's emotional pain. Ice won't help with that."
"Dick," Jack sighs. He frowns at the ice maker doing its very best impression of a washing machine with an entire load of athletic shoes thrown in, banging against the wall with reckless abandon. "How long you think it'll take?"
"Dunno." Darby leans up with one shoulder to the wallpaper; he's favoring the other one, which is probably the side he came down harder on through the tables. But Jack doesn't care about that.
Jack nods at him. "For the shoulder you decided to use to break your fall from the balcony seats?"
"You watched, huh."
"No." Shit. Fuck. Abort mission. "Heard people talking about it, is all." He drags his tongue over his bottom lip. "Bet those tables hurt on impact."
Darby levels him with a truly unimpressed glare. "You totally watched."
"Yeah, well, watching you get tossed around after having my belt cheated off me was a bit of a pick-me-up, what can I say?"
"Oh, watching me wrestle is a pick-me-up, huh?"
Jack holds his index finger up as the ice machine continues to sputter and flail against the linoleum like it's fucking possessed. "Pretty sure I said your pain was the good part of all that, so let's be specific here."
"Specific," Darby chuckles. He's got this laugh that rumbles in his chest, a vibrato bass—not that Jack's ever noticed that or anything, because he obviously hasn't. The dude sucks.
"It's kind of important to be," Jack says. Then he sighs, long and resigned, head lolling back to hit the wall behind him. "This is the slowest ice maker known to man."
"You could go back to your room and wait, you know."
Jack frowns. "You'd probably get, like, ten ice buckets to steal it all out from under my nose just to be a douchebag if I did that."
"Kinda your night for getting things stolen from you, isn't it?"
"Well, thanks for pointing that out again. I'd almost forgotten for a moment. Really glad you reminded me so I didn't experience any moments without anger in them."
Darby laughs again. His mouth splits, wide and bright, a flash of his teeth. And then, strangely enough, he sobers. His eyes don't leave Jack's face, but they sort of rove, as though they're taking in the whole of him: haggard and tired and still phenomenally pissed off. "You should've won. It was bullshit what happened to you."
"Oh." In truth, Jack's not entirely sure how to respond to that. He'd expected more of the barbed back and forth; after all, it's easier to slip into that. Feels more natural. Darby's changing the game a bit here, and Jack can't quite work out why. Maybe being AEW world champion has mellowed him somewhat, made him all nostalgic and introspective—but probably not. "I should've expected Ricochet."
"Yeah, you should've," Darby agrees, "but that doesn't make it not bullshit."
"Does it hurt?" Jack asks.
Darby blinks at him, eyes narrowing. "What, my shoulder?"
"Being nice to me."
A beat, and then Darby smiles again. This one spreads slower, but further, and his gaze still doesn't shift. "Not as much as it should, surprisingly."
Trying to find his bearings, Jack says, "I saw the sand bit. It was your own fault, you know—you went out onto the green and taunted him."
"Seemed like a waste of some perfectly even grass. It needed some rough-housing to mess it up."
"You could have just left some divots."
Darby scoffs, loud. "Didn't I? Pac's head made a solid one in there."
"I think launching your opponent into the hazard is against the rules," Jack says. "If not a disqualification, then easily a stroke penalty."
A beat, and Darby laughs again, but this one is much lower. "I don't think they can show stroke penalties uncensored on network television."
"Pervert."
"You said it, all I did was repeat it. Isn't that, like, an actual term? That people use? So my point still stands."
"I think you and I have very different perceptions of what happens during most golf games."
Jack wishes Darby would look away—not because he doesn't like the attention, but because Darby's got a stare that threatens to bore holes through you, like he can see all the damn things you've tried so long to hide. Considering how many things Jack's been hiding, he chafes at being the subject of the scrutiny. Of all people to start figuring him out, Jack really doesn't know if it should be Darby. That's dangerous on a number of levels.
"Don't," Jack says.
Darby's head tilts sideways. "Don't what?"
"Don't look at me like that."
Oh, that's amusement blossoming across Darby's face, and Jack doesn't trust it one bit. "Wasn't aware I was looking at you like anything."
Thankfully, the ice machine finally tunes into Jack's plight and stops its thudding. The face emits a hum, somewhat high-pitched, and then it grows still. The front light turns on blue: ICE READY.
Jack jerks his chin towards it. "You can get your ice now."
"You can get yours first," Darby replies, impossibly neutral. "After all, you did lose your belt."
"Thought you said emotional pain didn't count."
Darby shrugs. "For the driver you took to the back, then."
"I think it was an iron, actually," Jack says, but he steps up and jams his empty ice bucket beneath the clear plastic nozzle, hitting the lit blue button to fill it. The filling is about as loud as the creating had been, full of the machine's claw-like feet chattering against the tiles. He's grateful the damn thing is so noisy he can't hear is own thoughts; heaven knows what his brain is going to do with this. He doesn't need any of this. He's in pain. He doesn't need to add more.
When the machine stills, he tugs his bucket free. "Okay, well… good luck, I guess. Next week."
He's out the door and rounding the corner into the hall when Darby calls, "Hey, Jack."
Jack pauses, turning on one heel. Darby motions for the bucket, eyebrows doing that high arch thing again, where they nearly reach the edge of that ridiculous face tattoo. Jack sometimes forgets about it when Darby's got the paint on top, but smudged visible, the lines are stark against his skin.
"Took that shot between your shoulder blades," Darby says.
"What's your point?"
Darby's tongue pokes into the corner of his lips, pink. "Hard place to reach by yourself. Want help?"
Jack stares at him. His heart leaps up into his throat, the most ridiculous of responses, and he spends a few seconds fighting the damn thing back down; he knows enough to understand this doesn't mean anything, but that really does little to stop his thoughts from barreling down the pathway anyway, heedless of all the hazards. And Darby's expression gives nothing away, a blank slate Jack finds infuriating given everything, though that won't do anything to halt this trainwreck, either.
Jack purses his lips, then releases them, slow. "Okay."
"Wait for me?" Darby asks—again, it's so casual, so damn casual. Jack's bones are going to rattle clean out of his skin at this rate. "Head to my room?"
Jack barks out a rather choked laugh. "Okay," he repeats. "Sure."
Sure, except now things are decidedly less comfortable. Standing here waiting for Darby's ice bucket to fill lasts a lifetime, and Jack isn't sure what he should be doing, so he ends up awkwardly loitering in the hall to wait. He's got nothing on him other than his room key, not even his phone, so he has no possibility of a believable distraction. It's just him, waiting for a man he tried to murder several times to get his ice, so they can go to Darby's room together, as though that's a thing sane people offer or do.
Darby, of course, appears to pick up on none of the undercurrents, which Jack can't decide is good or bad. He simply meets Jack in the corridor with a nonchalant one-shoulder shrug and says, "A'ight, follow me."
"Right," Jack murmurs, stomach full of bees. He complies with the direction.
Turns out, Darby's room isn't that far from Jack's, on the other side of the hotel, same floor. All the doors look the same, although a few have trays sitting outside—likely other members of the roster needing to carb-load after the broadcast. Darby swipes in and kicks the door open with one foot after jamming the keycard between his teeth like a heathen, and Jack assumes he's meant to continue in behind.
"Sit," Darby says, which is the second-worst thing he could say (the worst being make yourself at home), and at the very least contains something Jack can do without losing his mind here. Jack slips his shoes off and slides onto the bed. Darby's suitcase is against the wall, open; the contents are somewhat strewn around the sides, heaps of fabric he'd clearly shucked off without refolding. It's jarringly intimate to be here, and Jack's lungs are gumming up with the implications. But he sits on the comforter holding his ice bucket until Darby's knees send a ripple through the mattress and the guy grabs for the plastic container. He's grabbed towels from the bathroom, at least.
Then he gives zero warning before he's rucking Jack's shirt up from behind, and Jack yelps—Darby's fingers are cold.
"Yeah, shit," Darby comments, apparently evaluating Jack's battle wound. "Gonna have a bruise as big as your skull back here in a few days. Still achin'?"
"Quite a bit," Jack mumbles. He can't get his voice louder. This is a lot.
Darby hums in lieu of a response, and a moment later, Jack's got towel-wrapped ice jammed between his shoulder blades. The shock of the freeze sends a full-body shudder through his muscles. His phone is back in his own room, and Lucha has probably sent over a text response to see how Jack's doing, and Jack doesn't know how he's going to explain that he ended up in his once bitter rival's room for aftercare, because that's crazy talk. Lucha's never gonna believe this. Jack hardly even believes this, and it's the damnedest thing, but Darby's pretty gentle—and thorough—with the ice. Bit by bit, Jack's body unclenches as he gets used to the temperature shift. He's lucky Darby had the television on, whatever random cable channel the hotel has ported to everyone, one of the many crime scene investigation shows, complete with yellow police tape.
Fitting for Jack's night. Crime scene, do not cross: miserable piece of shit lost his title due to golf-related fuckery.
He's lost in thought when Darby leans forward, and it seems he's also paying attention to the re-run, because that's where his gaze is trained when his chin settles onto Jack's shoulder and Jack's soul threatens to leave his physical form.
"I think it was an inside job," he says.
Jack's teeth are clattering against each other hard enough to chip the enamel. "Ricochet?"
"No, this murder on the show. I think it was one of the other cops."
Jack has no idea how to reply to that, so he croaks out, "Uh," and leaves it eloquently hanging between them.
"Your heart's going fast," Darby comments, like he's discussing the weather and not Jack's total and complete spiral here. He must be able to feel it through the damn ice, which speaks volumes about how near a freak-out Jack's mental state currently is. He shifts, one knee sliding past Jack's hip on the bed, and holy shit.
"Fuck off," Jack whispers, so far beyond rattled there's no word in the English language for it.
"Why's your heart going so fast, Jack?" Darby asks, with the most infuriating lilt to his tone betraying the amusement.
Jack tries to figure out how best to respond to this without giving everything away, but never ends up getting the chance, because Darby moves again, his hand sliding across Jack's collarbone to grip Jack's chin and turn his face to the side. Whatever Jack thinks will happen next is definitely not Darby pressing their mouths together, and, because apparently Darby doesn't believing in going slow in literally any aspect of his absurd life, he's immediately got Jack's lips coaxed apart. He steals his way in as though he knows the invitation exists. There's not a goddamn thing Jack can do except kiss Darby back, dizzy and punch-drunk and still not entirely sure he hasn't hallucinated this entire evening after taking a pitching wedge to the back of his head. He just… hovers, somewhere beyond the pain of the bruise and the shock of the ice and the bitter frustration at losing his belt, as Darby takes him apart with a precision and determination they should study in a lab. God fucking damn, it's been a long time since Jack's been kissed like this—so genuinely, so eagerly, with an enthusiasm he doesn't once think about failing to match.
And when they eventually break apart, with Jack's lips tingling swollen and plush, Jack huffs out a laugh he's got no hope of swallowing down. "Is this what you do when icing somebody's aches and pains? Stick your tongue in their mouth?"
Darby grins, ridiculously bright. "Only the lucky few."
It's too much, being the light behind that expression. Jack pulls his face away to stare at the opposing wall and the way the carpet sits poorly angled against the edge. "Fuck."
He can't go very far, given Darby's still holding the towel against his back, but Jack suspects the ice is melting with speed now. Darby chuckles and pulls his hand away, removing the cold from Jack's throbbing nerves. "Think it's only fair you give this back, y'know."
"The ice?" Jack twists around to level Darby with a look. "Or the kissing?"
Another terribly wide grin. They should be illegal or something. "Your choice."
"You're very sure of yourself," Jack says.
"Well," Darby says, and leans in, and Jack isn't even aware of leaning in with him, "your tongue was in my mouth, too."
Jack's stomach is very, very tight, and Darby's eyes are very, very blue. He barely registers the bruising on his back now. "You're ridiculous."
"You're into it."
Their mouths are brushing, feather-light. Jack's choking on the rapid-fire thunder of his heart, though it's a great deal more excited than afraid at this point, a much preferred shift. "Thought you wanted ice for where you went through several tables."
"Mm," Darby hums. "Or maybe I want to get my hand down your pants. And your hand down my pants. To celebrate golf and all that shit."
"Once again, I don't believe you've ever watched a single golf match."
"Eh, pretty boring, isn't it? That's what everyone says, anyway."
Jack exhales. "You gonna yell 'fore'?"
"Four what?" Darby asks.
"No, fore, it's—it's not the number, it's what you yell when your ball goes wild and threatens to knock somebody sideways."
Darby's eyes flutter closed, lashes dark against his cheeks. "Should I have yelled fore?"
"Kinda knocked me sideways," Jack admits.
There's that grin again, sharp edges and all. Darby's on much more solid ground here, because he knows exactly what he did. "Sorry for the wild ball. Let me grab yours to make up for it."
"That was in no way sexy."
Darby chuckles. "It was kinda sexy. Give me some credit. C'mon, Jack. You gonna kiss me again and get this started or what?"
"Does it help with the bruises?" Jack murmurs, even though he's obviously not going anywhere, and has already shifted substantially further in, giving away his whole damn objective.
"Prolly not, but I guarantee we'll both forget we've even got 'em by the end."
Jack's hands tremble against the blankets. "Might as well give it a try. Maybe I'll even forget I lost the belt."
"That's the spirit," Darby agrees, and grabs the sides of Jack's face with both hands, delivering another of his impossible-to-deny, open-mouthed kisses against Jack's mouth as they fall backwards together onto the pillows and the sopping wet towel left to soak into the comforter.
(Jack doesn't exactly forget he lost the belt, but it sure as hell doesn't bother him much once Darby's fingers guide him off the edge, with Darby eagerly inhaling every single one of Jack's breathy little groans, so… he thinks he ended up under par by the 18th green anyway, slick with salt and tangled up around a very pleasant warmth.)
(He still vows revenge on Ricochet, though.)