They had kissed before, once. Back when Jay had first came to the company. It had been quick and dirty, but barely time enough for either of them to get right down to it. Chris hadn't even known Jay was into guys. Not that it mattered at the time. The kiss had been cut short fairly quickly thanks to James. He had been pretty wasted that night.

Jay hadn't seemed like he'd wanted to talk about it the next day and that had been fine with Chris. He hadn't really had the time or inclination to start anything then. Even if it had been nothing but sex. Chris had been too focused on the tag belts and when his time wasn't taken up by wrestling, it was being occupied by James. Not that he and James had ever had anything. James was one of those resolutely straight guys.

He knew well enough where Chris's preferences lay and he embraced it fully, making cracks about queers and constantly pointing guys out he thought Chris might like. Chris did nothing but roll his eyes and tell James to shut the hell up. It was comforting to have James there though, despite the bad queer jokes.

Still, talking with James about gay stuff had always been like chasing chickens: too much running around and ultimately ending in laughter and a drink.

Chris never really minded. He hadn't ever started a conversation about the whole guy fucking thing, that was always James. He seemed to have an insatiable curiosity about the workings of gay sex. And he'd been especially intrigued when Chris had explained just what the prostate did, but that was as far as they'd ever really gotten. James would start inventing ways to make his next conquest get on board with the 'probing' idea and Chris would laugh so hard he quite often hurt himself.

All this meant that James never knew about the kiss. And for a straight guy, James knew far more about Chris's sex life then he should have.

Chris hadn't really thought much about the kiss since it had happened. Jay had been a bit drunk and Chris himself was a few sheets to the wind. They'd been at a bar and Chris had been on his way to the bathroom while Jay had been leaving it. A smile and pleasantries had been exchanged and then Chris was against the wall and Jay was kissing him. Chris hadn't argued. Jay was hot and Chris had already decided he would tap that, given the chance, but just at the point where things would have either gotten interesting or confusing, a loud crash had come from the bar and James had shouted something unintelligible.

Jay broke off like he'd been scolded and threw Chris a muffled apology before retreating. Chris had been baffled but didn't have much time to think about it because James had started singing a fairly bad rendition of an old country song and no one deserved that.

It had taken three hours to get James to sleep and by that time Chris had been exhausted. He'd fallen into bed and his only thought was of smacking James upside the head the next day for making Chris sing him to sleep.

The next day had been full of taping and James' hangover. Chris hadn't really seen Jay and when he had, he'd noticed Jay was a little stand offish. Almost embarrassed. Chris had shrugged it off. Jay was a fine piece of ass, but Chris had been too busy with match details to think about seeing what the kiss had been about.

By the time America's Most Wanted was in the throes of splitting, Chris hadn't thought of the kiss for close to two years. His time and energy had been completely taken over with adjusting to singles competition, putting up with James' pirate jokes and trying to get used to being by himself on the road.

He and Jay still spoke, quite often, but neither mentioned the kiss. This was fine with Chris. He'd always had a bit of a shady area in his head about relationships with workmates anyway and he'd stuck with leaving well enough alone. Besides, he'd heard Jay had a thing going on with Tomko, which had amused James to no end. It was all Chris could do to stop James from telling his sub/dom jokes out loud.

James had found it even funnier when he found out Chris would be traveling with Jay for a while, due to their growing feud. Chris had had to put up with James' ever increasing barrage of jokes, winks and elbow jostling. It got to the point where Chris would flinch whenever James stuck his elbow out.

Still, it gave Chris a chance to go over match strategies, possible backstage segments and play ups to the crowd. He found that though he had always had a lot of respect for Jay, the guy was quite amusing. He was dry and sarcastic, rarely lecherous like James, but still had a healthy amount of filth to his jokes. Their conversations would normally centre around wrestling. They rarely deviated from this format, so it was surprising when they were driving along a back country road on their way to Alabama that Jay mentioned the kiss.

He apologised, in fact, and it took Chris thirty seconds to realise what he was referring to.

"Don't worry about it, man." Chris said. "It's not like I was complaining."

Jay laughed then, and seemed to relax a little bit. Chris hadn't even been aware he was tense.

"Well, I do have it on good authority that my kisses are to be coveted and worshipped whenever possible."

"I'll keep that in mind." Chris grinned at him. "But I wouldn't mind knowing one thing -"

"Why I did it?"

" - Yeah. Like I said, I'm not complaining, but I am curious."

Jay seemed to think for a while. Eventually he said, "Honestly?"

"If you please."

"It was a good idea at the time. I thought, hey, there's that guy from that tag team, he's hot. I'm going to kiss him. And, well. You know what happened then."

Chris chuckled. "How did you know I was even into guys?"

"I didn't. Like I said, I thought it was a good idea at the time. And I knew we were both a bit drunk so I figured you'd be more easy to bullshit if things went wrong. Of course, it wasn't until the next day that I thought you might really kick my ass. Or, I don't know, tell the press. You may have noticed that I kept my distance for a while."

"A little bit, yeah. I just figured you were embarrassed or something. " Chris said, smiling.

"Not embarrassed," Jay said. "I never really get embarrassed about making an ass of myself. If I did, I wouldn't have chosen wrestling as a career choice."

Chris laughed loudly at that. "Touche man, touche."

Jay smiled. "Besides, I never kiss someone I don't like."

"I'm honoured."

"Most people are."

And that was how it went. The ride to Alabama was a little more relaxed and not so full of shop talk. Chris told Jay about James and Jay told Chris about Adam until they arrived at their hotel. They parked up and were in the process of getting their stuff from the trunk when Jay turned to Chris and said:

"Y'know, the next time I kiss you, you should make sure James isn't there. We might get somewhere."

And with that, he grabbed his bags, waved goodbye and headed for the hotel.