Post by Kyle Shane on Jan 14, 2019 3:34:26 GMT -5
He's itching as he stands there, fidgeting in the alleyway. His eyes dart with the edgy, inane tic of someone that has a bug crawling behind their eyeball. He licks his sweaty upper lip, teeth bared in a look that is helplessly desperate and yet primally lupine. He's sweating, in spite of the cold. All of these details are catalogued and filed away as secondary, mildly interesting information. There's one detail that stands out. It's the gun he's pointing. It can't possibly be accurate, and it doesn't carry the weight of menace that it should in the hands of a shambling, wasted zombie, but he holds it out with clear intent, and his finger, even shaking, is on the trigger.
"Don't hold out on me like this, Patrick," comes from behind the gun. He's framed by the lights from the sidewalk, almost a corona around him, casting him in shadow.
The street just yards from them is noisy with party, with revelry, with strangers all joining out in the street and braving the cold night air, filing out from bars, wearing glittered hats and their best party bacchanalia, carrying noisemakers. It matters not to them that the snow falls around their upturned faces. It matters not that their partying and cheers cover up the harshly whispered tableau taking place in the alley, the mad, pleading transaction between two men intertwined by job and payment, and by naked, unvarnished need.
"You didn't do what I asked, Nathan," comes from the scrawny, bag of bones, bent figure standing opposite the tweaked gunman. His tone, arch and measured, is a response to the desperation of the gunman. "You were supposed to trail the girl."
"It wasn't my fault! Her and the boyfriend got into some kinda - a thing- on the set of a movie, and she went out there - "
"As I said. You didn't do. What I asked. And so. You get nothing," the rejoinder was clipped, bit off by the thin, wormy lips of the speaker after each break. "I needed Array's movements, and I needed you to do a job right. You failed." Walking in his awkward way, he tried to move past, to the end of the alley and back out to the street level.
A hand, restraining, pushed the bentback man, nearly making him lose balance, would if not for the walkers. As is, the shiny, rheumy eyes and frantic, wolfish lips peeled back in frenzied menace, the menace of someone in desperate need. "Need??"
Need. It is the be all, end all. "I did your job best I could, you always pay me my junk before, I need my fix, Patrick, you gotta give me my fix this time."
"Let go, you cretin, let - "
The gun jumps in the alley, a kiss of fire in the snowy, blustery night. The flat report of a typewriter. The man with the crutches' eyes spring wide as a doe in headlights, he looks down, squeaks out a silent protest from wheezing lungs, holds his hand to his stomach and feels a red, jelly-like spreading mass. His assailant, panicking now, discards the gun. Murmuring over and over, "What do I do, what do I do- " as he looks back and forth in the alley.
And yet the sound of the party just about swallowed the jump of the gun. If any heard, it was engulfed by the "FIVE, FOUR, THREE, TWO..." One... and then, strangers in the street popped bottles of champagne, lovers and first time meeters alike kissed, and the whooping and revelry ratcheted up several notches as a very desperate junkie in the skin of a man fled from a scene.
In the alley, as the parade marched on by, crutches man slid down the wall, burbling and twitching now of his own, his body transforming into a parody of the man his transaction was with, as it's own monkey began to scream for a fix of life-saving elixir, and now he found himself in desperate, life-saving need. It was almost blackly ironic.
He slumped, losing consciousness in the alley, as snowflakes pelted down and began to accumulate on him, in his spreading pool of blood, on top of a card he'd carried in his possession to give to someone. Cold wind flapped it open. "Dear brother, happy new year, I think you'll like my newest lesson -"
The air had a magical feeling as the horde of drunken partygoers filled the wintry Boston air with chords, "And we'll take a cup o' kindness yet, for auld lang syne!"
The snow, falling on the alley, carried these ethereal words and qualities, even as they began burying the card and coating the bloody, slumped man.
I've had a lot of time since Collision Course to think about co-dependency. About mutual need. Honestly, that thought is never far from my mind, as I'm always evaluating why I do what I do, and why I stay in wrestling when I'm given so many outs. Are the headaches worth it? If they're not, and I'm still doing this for the lulz, why am I unable to get it out of my mind when I try to leave it behind? If it is worth it, even when I'm tested, what makes it worth it to me? The easiest, and the one people will tell you, is that I'm addicted to the achievement, but it's empty. If that were the case, then I'd have another out, another reason to leave it behind after Collision Course. A controversial ending is not what I wanted. And now the match finish is under review and a "decision will be made" on Trauma and given how much Gerard Angelo's bitching about conspiracies they may just strip the title from me. So if I wanted out, there's your sign, Kyle. Right? It would be an anti-climactic ending to this run, a dour footnote on something that was marked as quest for grand achievement, and a shitty way to end a title run that ran 380+ days. If I was only in it to check off achievements unlocked, having my final match of the year end in a double reach around with no lube would be such a waste that it wouldn't be worth my time.
But that isn't it, and despite what Gerard Angelo's saying, it ain't all about salving my ego, either. I'd be lying if I didn't say my ego plays a part in what I do. Fuck it, on some level, everything we do is ego. But why do I keep returning? If I didn't blow off counselling so much I probably would have mapped out an answer, but I know my addictive personality. I am dependent on this. I need to keep coming back to it. Even if I find it's less satisfying. And I will always find a fed needs me just as much as I need it. It's not one-sided, what I get out of this. No one has my will. No one has my determination to stick it out, despite the dissatisfaction. No one has the "I'll either walk out with my head held high or be carried out on my damn shield" mentality that I do. People that say they do, don't. So companies largely respond to that. They see that spark that won't let me quit. And sometimes they play nice with it, give me opportunities and give me enough challenges to feed that spark. And sometimes they give me a never ending grind that wears me down to the bone. Either way, they get what they can use out of me. And I get what I need from them. Co-dependency.
So I guess that's why people say that I'm given favoritism, huh?
That's why Gerard Angelo has to cry about the fact that "Waaaah if it was ANYONE ELSE, they would have taken the title!" Hell, Justin Michaels has been paired on my team - this'll be the third time now, and him and Angelo sing the same tune so much that they should have been the team this week, would have been if they hadn't had to go matchy-matchy on teams between challengers and champions. Michaels ALSO says that it clearly points to favoritism because, gosh, I've held the title longer than Billy Sadistic or Whitey Ford or a laundry list of other people who haven't been relevant in 5 years that I'm supposed to give a shit about. It's not a case in his mind if I'm just that good. They call it favoritism, when they don't see that the company often times is taking more than it gives me. Taking my effort, taking my drive, taking my passion and taking it for God damn granted. While Pure Class Wrestling may never, ever acknowledge it, they take the golden eggs from this goose and demand he lays another one on the next cycle, and would he maybe lay a few more this time around? Do I get reverence out of it? Some, sure. But do they cater to my every whim? Do they hand me opportunities? Do they turn a blind eye and let me get away with doing anything I wanted?
Or do they need me, more than they have ever needed any one of you? Do they see that I'm more reliable than the Gerard Angelo's of this world can ever be?
Think about that and get back to me when you can stutter out a response. I'll wait.
"I'm waiting," she said, her eyes flashing, as she crossed her arms over her chest. "I'll wait all day if I have to,"
This young girl, younger in face than she seems, older in road miles travelled translated into years on the soul than anyone in the room. She has steel in her spine. The PA's don't want to cross her. She's flown from freaking Boston for this. The assistant closest to the sound stage is trying to shield her, shepherd her back perhaps to catering, but the lithe young mocha skinned girl gives a thousand yard glare to the tall boy dressed as someone we know. And he knows that she sees him. And he knows that she knows. More than a few sympathetic looks turn his way.
"Can we get a cut?" he asks, the sweaty desperation staining his top lip matching that we'd see out of an assailant in an alley, a weeks' time and 500 miles bodyslide up north. The director groans, throws his hands up, and shouts for a cut. A bell rings, and people begin criss-crossing the set, bustling to the innumerable things that go into the production of a feature.
He's a tall boy, he is, and his broad, affable face is now pinched in consternation, his brow thundered, his eyes, well a little darkened from their usual surfer brah puppy. His hair is frosted into spikey blades, and he's wearing, to him, what is a ridiculous set costume, but to her it looks like home. He reads the expression of longing on her face and it stokes fires of anger he's tried not to let out. He can't. There was that one time after her show, but it was due to stress, and the complications of her ex, and the pressures of re-shooting a feature film that was already dangerously over-budget. She understood. I mean, when they talked it over, with a mediator afterwards, she had understood and she had committed to doing what she could to reduce the stressors, including cutting ties with persona that made him uncomfortable. So it was with relationships. Give and take. Mutual assistance, based on communicating and giving your partners needs. Right?
Need. She was looking at who he was playing with such softness, such faraway yearning in her eyes, that he could see it, and so he needed to get into the trailer and get out of this costume so he could face her as himself. He beckoned her follow him. She did. When they exited the sound stage and crossed a wet, rainy back lot, he opened a door to a small trailer, held his arms wide, and placed a hand on a vase with a beautiful poinsettia plant. "Merry Christmas, luv."
She brushed aside from that, turning to eye him, and said, "Is it true?" She held up a smart phone like a tabloid emblazoned "J'accuse". Even if he couldn't read it's darkened screen, he ill liked the portents.
"Someone leaked a story to your friend and mine, Elizabeth Harper, late of the Globe, now with her own celebrity blog site. More clickbait. More shocking headlines. Here's a shocking headline," she opens her phone with a swipe of her finger, and it's glow in the trailer illuminates a cold, angry face. "Actor Alastair Joyner, seen here, in club in Miami with underage party-goer, there's snapshots of you touching her, Alastair, what the fuck."
He tries to come with a quick defense, a thought she was 18 mate, a she was fast and loose, a I was drunk, I'm sorry forgive me, but for the life of him he can't think of anything except now his brow is darkening, his face flushes, and he purses his lips, stubbornly leaning back against the cabinet, and he folds his arms and says "So. It's not alright when it isn't your boyfriend doin' it to you, is it? Maybe should have been an MIT college party? Or is that the only time it's acceptable for someone to have some fun with an underage girl?"
She can't believe the darkness she's hearing in her light, happy, boisterous Australian boy (hadn't wanted to believe the pictures, either) and for just a second she's on the backfoot, her mind whirling, denying, because no, Kyle never did that to me, not at the party and not when we lived together, he saved my life, and we never - and then the rage sparks again on her face. Her nerve comes back.
"Alastair. I've put up with a lot of shit from a lot of men in the last eight years but I have never seen someone go that low."
"Nah, babe, it's just not what you're willing to admit." His voice was brittle. He had known he'd done a wrong thing, but he had the ever pricklish needs. And perhaps it was the distance between them, but they weren't getting satisfied. He turns his gaze down at his shoes. "It's not like you care, anyway. Life's fallin' apart. You and me on different schedules all the time. Never talk to one another. This movie may never get finished, and now this comes out? In a blog? Who sent the story to that lady?"
Who indeed, she wondered, but then she brushed it off and jabbed a finger in his shoulder. "You could have talked to me. You could always have -"
"NO I COULDN'T!" he explodes, and there goes the flare of that temper, the one that caused the... incident between them. "Can't talk to ya about anythin, you don't want to stop going down the same behaviors."
She looked at him there and then, in his familiar tights, with his familiar haircut. And she saw him sadly as the imitation he was. Maybe it felt forced because he was playing a role, a Tyler Zane to the real thing, and because she had met him on this movie playing a part she was so familiar with it was so easy to fall in with him. Maybe she had been lonely, and she filled a void she had with an easy replacement of something she needed. Needs. They're a tricky, sticky thing. But even if he was familiar because, in his role, he was almost in the character, he wasn't quite it.
"I came all the way here to talk with you about this, Alastair, because I wanted to hear it from your lips. But all you've given me is just cheap little excuses."
"Oh, yeah, this is good," he rolls his eyes heavenward. Anyone in the lot can hear the row inside the trailer. "You're gonna get holier than thou with me for not talking, for me pushing you away. You're the bloody one with a problem, lady."
"My only problem is that I didn't listen to warning signs back in fucking Boston, Alastair. That was my mistake, and mine alone."
He gets between her and the door to the trailer, grabbing her wrist. "If ye walk out that bloody door, it's over, Array. I am not going to let you go out there on that set spreading blab about some bloody celeb rumor blog, and hurt my career."
"i don't give a damn about your career, Alastair, and if you don't let go of my wrist I'm going to hurt you." She goes to leave.
With the intense, angry strength of a flailing man, he pins her arm. Her vision reddens. She is acutely aware that this could be an entry on a celebrity news blog in it's own right, model turned off-Broadway actress assaulted in the trailer of her boyfriend. He squeezes, pressed against her, using his size to overpower her. Her grasping hands skitter for a second, bumping over multiple items on the counter of the little bar by the wall, before her hands grasp on the glass vase containing the Christmas poinsettia.
She brings it in and it shatters across his face. His arms uncoil from her wrist and he's stopped bulling up against her chest. He falls back, squealing as blood comes between his fingers. Glass is embedded in the flesh. "MY FACE!" he yelps.
"Don't ever come near me, Alastair... I know you like restraining orders, so you're going to be the next one served. I mean it." There is so much she wants to say in those parting moments, regrets that she chose convenience and familiarity instead of sticking with her heart, sorrow that good times that they had had turned toxic. And maybe he was right, she had fault in not letting things go. But she also knew that this, none of this is what she wanted. And in every way, he was a parody, a pale imitation of a man he couldn't play. All of that she wanted to say, but the hardest words to say in a relationship are the communications of co-dependent needs.
So she chose to say nothing, to shut her mouth, and walk out. "You bitch! -" he yells after her, a raging, wounded animal, "I'll get you for that! I'll -" and she coolly ignores the sounds coming from the trailer as she walks past the set. Takes in the warm, mild tropical air of Florida at Christmastime.
She passes a face so familiar that she almost returns his double take, and his sheepish after look all but confirms the long held suspicion of where the idea for this mockumentary, almost but not quite, defamatory movie about Tyler Zane, the Game Boy came from. Greeting an old friend, she walks over and places a firm hand on the shoulder of the pudgy, bespectacled, massive bulk of a man-boy who never really grew out of an awkward college rut, not even after he sold a screenplay for a budgeted feature and added Writer to his resume.
"Chad, buddy, long time," she said, breezily, jauntily. "Listen, I'm sorry that I'm going to be the one that torpedos your, you know, big break in show biz, but there's a few facts you need to know about Alastair Joyner."
She flips him a smart phone, underhanded, and his moon face is O-slack in wonder at her confident stride as she keeps walking past him. She half turns, holding her arms out apologetically, "I think Alastair is very angry at women, on the whole, and - well, anyway, if that little tidbit on the blurb isn't bad enough, I suggest you keep watching the site for a few more updates in the next few days. Kinda gonna make your producers a little touchy, I think."
"Wha- but, Array - " Chad Jacoby babbles, "this, this is gonna kill my movie - "
She makes an OK gesture, thumb and forefinger, "Oh, and when Kyle finds out exactly who wrote this slanderous production, man... he's gonna be so pleased... Well. Anyway, adios muchacho. Merry Christmas."
Her heels clicked confidently as she strode off the lot, feeling somehow bolstered, despite the dark turn of the day's events. She didn't even look back. Somewhere in the Caribbean a natural disaster, a hurricane would rise from currents of air pressure, roar onto land, tear buildings and trees asunder and fling them in it's wake. She knew how that felt. Hurricane Array had made landfall, had left a movie production in ruins, and was moving on. It was supremely empowering. And it fed an itch she had begun learning how to scratch. A need she wasn't ever going to give power back from.
Someone close had taught her that.
The thing is, I didn't want to bring Gerard Angelo down to ruins, despite everything before, going into Collision Course I kinda liked the kid. Liked his swagger. And honestly, the more I trashed him, the less it would mean when I did end up beating him. But the more we go on with this the more I'm afraid I'm going to have to crush him, that's what I stopped responding to his taunts over Twitter. Well, that and the fact we got two, three days into it and it was breaking down to him sorta repeating my points back to me piecemeal and claiming I was the one who never beat him. As I said, weird, weird hill to die on. But that "gotcha last" kindergarten taunting was overwriting my simple criticism of him which still is enough to bring him down to flaming ruins... that his dissertation on the fact that there is a Grand Conspiracy to keep Kyle Shane in power and give me favors, cause I'm so in tight with whoever the fuck the general manager is... does him no good. In fact, here's a secret.
Any time you complain that there's favoritism, that you're being overlooked, or that nobody pays attention to you, it makes you look low rent.
It puts you under a microscope, it makes anyone with two brain cells to rub together look at your efforts and find out why you aren't getting the attention you feel like you deserve.
And so Gerard Angelo, if you want to keep thinking that, and keep believing you've been wronged and given such a bad shake, it's your right.
But I'd stop listening right now, because I'm going to hurt your feelings. The undeniable truth has a way of doing that.
The truth isn't just that if you complain about nobody noticing you then you're giving them an in to look at your record. It calls into question exactly what you think you've done that warrants that attention in the first place, and when you ask why nobody is treating you like you're the future of this company, why nobody's giving you props or nominating your name at the Icey Awards, people will smile and talk around it and glad hand you. But the truth will be that you haven't done anything to deserve those awards. And honestly, how up your own ass do you have to be to demand it? To demand that you be taken seriously?
Facts. I never asked for the attention I got. Not from management, not from my peers. I didn't complain about a ceiling being put in place to keep me out, I did something about it. If I had a limitation in my spot, I owned where my spot was. Look back at my history, I said that if I was going to be working with the Underground championship, I would make that title My World Title. And I did. I never said that Grimm, or Gabriel, or Seromine was holding me back from reaching my potential and I never said that people looked at them when they should be looking at me. People always looked at me because of my work ethic. And they responded to that. You saying it's the other way for you makes you look second rate, and questions why you aren't good enough, well. What have you done? Aside from win a Rumble a good four of the bigger names of the company weren't involved in, what was time you set the world on fire?
And you think you did that because you and I went to a draw? You've "gone to a draw" your way through all of your scrapes with greatness. If it wasn't for that and tag matches, what would you have to hang your hat on?
Like I said, dude, I didn't want to keep pulling this thread but your argument falls apart like an athletic shoe made in a Hong Kong sweatshop. Specifically the grasping at excuses like Kyle Shane must have paid an extra referee, Kyle Shane must have gimmicked a turnbuckle to break! Like I would go to all of that effort when my clearest statement of motivation is that I want to prove I'm the absolute most skilled in between the ropes at any given moment. Get the fuck out of here. I could go on, but I haven't even begun to fully deconstruct the tidal wave of bullshit that comes with dealing with your inconsistencies, and the fact is that it didn't have to be this way. We could have left it as a quien es mas macho, best competitor wins, struggle between honor and the will to be a champion. Both of us had a technical loss under our belt, so we could have said "Bah, I'll pick myself up and I'll get him next time!" and kept it as a matter of pride. But you, Gerard, you wanted to bring conspiracies in. And favoritism. And magical, unrealistic bullshit that never happened about me MAKING turnbuckles snap. And it all became asinine.
And now we're here, and you're teamed with a man you kind of hate, and I'm teamed with a man I kinda hate, and the soul of the World title is kept in limbo until some authority figure that hasn't been seen on Pure Class Wrestling TV in seven months comes out there and declares that it's going one way or another.
And it's all hanging on to each other. Co-dependent. You need Dominator to counter me, because aside from you, Dominator was the last up and coming star people thought once was going to become a main event player. Justin Michaels needs me, because he knows what I bring to the table in a tag match and how I don't hold anything back. And you and I both need each other, we need to stand face to face for the first time since Collision Course, speak our lines and prove to the other one that they were the one who lost, You were the one who won. Everyone needs something in this match. It's just a matter of who WANTS the most, is going to take it. And I'll tell you something. That isn't you. That isn't either member of your team, when it comes down to it.
Dominator should have been the man to beat, but his momentum was shattered by Arsen Goodstone. As much as Dom wants to play up his unstoppable run with the Underground title, it was his own inconsistency and inability to commit that hampered him, and now look at him. He's had to take long stretches of time off so we all have a chance to forget about the last thing he did. It was still him that lost the title, cleanly to a man who lost it on his first defense, and it was still Dominator that hasn't done anything of note as of late. In fact, the Deadly Rumble could have been his chance to show up to the party and really make people take notice, but instead he placed, what? Fourth? And that's the Dominator I always knew was inside. The Dominator that just barely squeaked a win in the round robin tournament to crown the Underground champion, where he got a DRAW out of High Tide. See where I'm going with this? This is a Dominator who claimed to be undefeated during his entire run, but I still remember taking his first loss to Gabriel in September 2017. That's the Dominator I know. A man who promotes himself well, and has all the tools to be a big player, but never has panned out to be the real Dominant Force he's supposed to be. He's mostly been getting by.
And it is with all of this said that I want you, Gerard, and you, Dom, to take what I said and examine yourselves. Come on, don't make me do all the work for you and drag an ego crippling out of you kicking and screaming. I want you both to show just a smidgen of self awareness of who you are and where you are in your career, and your complaints that you haven't been where you should be. Dom, your answer to that was to pull the age old PCW trick of attacking a champion after a match is over and posing with a fucking belt while Angelo, you just straight up stopped short of calling PCW prejudiced or anti Hollywood biased. Both of you tried to up your stake without putting in the work that I or, sigh, yes, Justin have.
And now you need each other just to support your spurious claims.
In the younger, more rash times, I would have been content to make a harsh threat that I was going to take both of my boots, stick them up your asses and walk you around the arena. But if you want to be seen as the contenders and studs you are, I want you to show me something this time. I want you to step the fuck up. Do something new and interesting, make me think you worked hard even though you're losing. Do something to GET noticed by management, do something that MAKES people pay attention to you, view you as more than a just okay placement in a midcard that hasn't done anything to stick in the mind's eye for longer than a mayfly sex session, do something so game changing that at least SOMEONE has to put you under consideration for an Icey. Or else shut the fuck up and sit down, and never, ever complain on God damn Twitter videos again about being overlooked by a management that loves Kyle Shane.
You two desperately need, and deserve each other.
Me? I've already got everything I need in the palm of my hands.
He stands in the middle of her living room.
It's all flooding back, it's almost another time the ghosts come to life. He sees her and the Australian boy side by side, in the kitchen, laughing at they make pasta. He turns to the sofa and sees them, sitting comfortably and intimately, sharing beers as they binge on Netflix. He sees them sitting across from each other, propped at the edge of their little spots on the ottoman, running lines from a script, their echoes moving in silence.
He sighs, and pulls off his ski cap, tousling his hair. He shouldn't have come here. Not just because Alastair probably still had a restraining order on him. (He was a bandit, rebel by nature, who gave a crap about that?) It just felt wrong without her. But he had gotten... the weirdest text from Patrick. That was two days ago, when he was supposed to be going out on the town, meeting Patrick at Sheehan's Pub down in Dorsey. It was cryptic, even in a way the hacker's missive's usually weren't. It was terse, asking him if he had seen any news about Array. He hadn't, because he was avoiding it. But, the "lessons" Patrick had been running him on. The philosophical debates. The talks about the nature of the beast that had been passed along with him. They all circled around the fact that he was broken, too broken to love someone like Array. He had thought Patrick was trying to push him off of her for good, not have him checking up on her. Whether that was brother's intention or not, it had planted a seed. And so he stood here, in her living room, wet snowmelt covered parka and ski mask in hand. And he felt wrong.
But he felt right? The pull was what it always was. What drew him and Array together. He could never explain it. He stopped trying.
He had tried to the doorman downstairs, lord knew. That asshole had instructions not to let him up the elevator.
So he had done a fairly impressive Spider-Man/Assassin's Creed jam and scaled the wall up, digging his fingers into slippery, snowmelt covered handholds and climbing up three stories.
Amusingly, on the way, two pairs of curtains had been drawn, and a portly man wearing lingerie had gazed out over the adjacent rooftops, and he was quite taken aback. As much as the climber himself was, hanging on to his windowsill.
"I won't tell if you won't," came the muffled, strained voice of the climber in the ski mask, and the middle aged man, covering his lingerie'd near nudity with self-aware shamed blushing, said through the glass back to him, "Deal, mister."
He'd kept climbing, until he found her window. He knew that window. He could almost scent her.
But she wasn't there. And he felt wrong, at her absence. She should be here. No, I should be... where she is. I don't know where that is. But I should find her.
He wondered. He had to know.
He floated through the house, feeling wistful and sad and missing a part of him. A part he needed. Because for all Patrick's lessons, he tried to see the sense in what his brother was trying to get him to be. Be crueler, harder, be less open with his heart. Turn heel on all the things, in a sense. But when reminded of Array, he could not break the connection the way Patrick wanted. He could not let her go.
But hadn't he? So many times, if not this current time with the Australian boy toy she'd gravitated to while he was so distracted and away on tour? Hadn't he pushed her away? He pondered this as he went into their bedroom, and sat on the bed, sitting like a man grappling with existential questions.
She'd been doing the pushing this time. And Alastair, lord, he'd pushed. But he still... couldn't let go of the only connection in his life he really felt didn't remind him of the brokenness that came with his upbringing. Because everything was easier when she was around. He laughed, bitterly. He needed that. He needed her. But look now, buddy, because she's gone. And Patrick must love this.
He got up, fingering the ski mask. He was dimly aware in the back of his mind he had to get things together for his flight, and he groaned as he realized he still had to record a promo on this fucking tag match for Trauma.
He took a last look as he stepped towards the window. "Bye, Array," he whispered to the empty apartment. And it escaped his lips, like a final, sweet, blown kiss across an airport.
Then he glanced down at the three stories from the apartment window, and silently cursed, having not figured out how to get down from here this way.
Elsewhere.
The next day.
Across town.
In a hospital bed.
A coda.
The John Doe has been near death since New Years Day, having been found lost a lot of blood in a snowbank. No identification. No social security number. Fingerprints and identifying marks scoured off. He had regained consciousness previously, but floated in and out. As he drifted near death, he reflected, soap opera elements viewed through wavery, rain sluiced glass played out in his mind. He had sent a celebrity blog a news tidbit about a certain someone engaging in lewd public acts with a minor. He had sent Array text messages, encouraging her to go confront her boyfriend publicly. But his man tailing her, unreliable junkie, had lost her and botched the job, and then he had held him up for another fix. And his brother...
His brother had not come for him.
This grated over and over in his unconscious mind, brother hadn't come. Brother hadn't come. It wounded him, over and over, as much as he wanted to deny to the taunting, madness voice in his head, he couldn't deny, he had drifted in darkness for days and brother hadn't come. He'd left him here... alone.
He was always alone.
Brother had his circle of people, that wouldn't let him bleed out, alone in a hospital ward, but his one member of his small circle, his flesh and blood, and he hadn't even bothered. He gritted his teeth, hating it. Hating the idea of it. That he... needed someone in his life, but he was alone in the dark and no one was coming and yes, he had NEEDED Kyle. He needed his brother. Where was he?
Day one, day two. Turning, feverishly. Groaning. Brother didn't come.
And then, finally. On the third day, his temperature broke, and his eyes snapped open. The wasted, palsied muscles of his face pushed into an awake position from the death mask, arranged into a snarl. The pupil of the eye was the first thing that moved. "Brother..." he hissed through unmoving, weakened lips... "why didn't you come when I needed you..."
When the nurse came back and saw him awake, he would play his part, answer their questions, and get some pain meds. He'd bide his time for a few days. But when he got access to a phone, he had a favor to call in.
There was going to be someone very much in need, who could perform a similar service for him.
"Don't hold out on me like this, Patrick," comes from behind the gun. He's framed by the lights from the sidewalk, almost a corona around him, casting him in shadow.
The street just yards from them is noisy with party, with revelry, with strangers all joining out in the street and braving the cold night air, filing out from bars, wearing glittered hats and their best party bacchanalia, carrying noisemakers. It matters not to them that the snow falls around their upturned faces. It matters not that their partying and cheers cover up the harshly whispered tableau taking place in the alley, the mad, pleading transaction between two men intertwined by job and payment, and by naked, unvarnished need.
"You didn't do what I asked, Nathan," comes from the scrawny, bag of bones, bent figure standing opposite the tweaked gunman. His tone, arch and measured, is a response to the desperation of the gunman. "You were supposed to trail the girl."
"It wasn't my fault! Her and the boyfriend got into some kinda - a thing- on the set of a movie, and she went out there - "
"As I said. You didn't do. What I asked. And so. You get nothing," the rejoinder was clipped, bit off by the thin, wormy lips of the speaker after each break. "I needed Array's movements, and I needed you to do a job right. You failed." Walking in his awkward way, he tried to move past, to the end of the alley and back out to the street level.
A hand, restraining, pushed the bentback man, nearly making him lose balance, would if not for the walkers. As is, the shiny, rheumy eyes and frantic, wolfish lips peeled back in frenzied menace, the menace of someone in desperate need. "Need??"
Need. It is the be all, end all. "I did your job best I could, you always pay me my junk before, I need my fix, Patrick, you gotta give me my fix this time."
"Let go, you cretin, let - "
The gun jumps in the alley, a kiss of fire in the snowy, blustery night. The flat report of a typewriter. The man with the crutches' eyes spring wide as a doe in headlights, he looks down, squeaks out a silent protest from wheezing lungs, holds his hand to his stomach and feels a red, jelly-like spreading mass. His assailant, panicking now, discards the gun. Murmuring over and over, "What do I do, what do I do- " as he looks back and forth in the alley.
And yet the sound of the party just about swallowed the jump of the gun. If any heard, it was engulfed by the "FIVE, FOUR, THREE, TWO..." One... and then, strangers in the street popped bottles of champagne, lovers and first time meeters alike kissed, and the whooping and revelry ratcheted up several notches as a very desperate junkie in the skin of a man fled from a scene.
In the alley, as the parade marched on by, crutches man slid down the wall, burbling and twitching now of his own, his body transforming into a parody of the man his transaction was with, as it's own monkey began to scream for a fix of life-saving elixir, and now he found himself in desperate, life-saving need. It was almost blackly ironic.
He slumped, losing consciousness in the alley, as snowflakes pelted down and began to accumulate on him, in his spreading pool of blood, on top of a card he'd carried in his possession to give to someone. Cold wind flapped it open. "Dear brother, happy new year, I think you'll like my newest lesson -"
The air had a magical feeling as the horde of drunken partygoers filled the wintry Boston air with chords, "And we'll take a cup o' kindness yet, for auld lang syne!"
The snow, falling on the alley, carried these ethereal words and qualities, even as they began burying the card and coating the bloody, slumped man.
I've had a lot of time since Collision Course to think about co-dependency. About mutual need. Honestly, that thought is never far from my mind, as I'm always evaluating why I do what I do, and why I stay in wrestling when I'm given so many outs. Are the headaches worth it? If they're not, and I'm still doing this for the lulz, why am I unable to get it out of my mind when I try to leave it behind? If it is worth it, even when I'm tested, what makes it worth it to me? The easiest, and the one people will tell you, is that I'm addicted to the achievement, but it's empty. If that were the case, then I'd have another out, another reason to leave it behind after Collision Course. A controversial ending is not what I wanted. And now the match finish is under review and a "decision will be made" on Trauma and given how much Gerard Angelo's bitching about conspiracies they may just strip the title from me. So if I wanted out, there's your sign, Kyle. Right? It would be an anti-climactic ending to this run, a dour footnote on something that was marked as quest for grand achievement, and a shitty way to end a title run that ran 380+ days. If I was only in it to check off achievements unlocked, having my final match of the year end in a double reach around with no lube would be such a waste that it wouldn't be worth my time.
But that isn't it, and despite what Gerard Angelo's saying, it ain't all about salving my ego, either. I'd be lying if I didn't say my ego plays a part in what I do. Fuck it, on some level, everything we do is ego. But why do I keep returning? If I didn't blow off counselling so much I probably would have mapped out an answer, but I know my addictive personality. I am dependent on this. I need to keep coming back to it. Even if I find it's less satisfying. And I will always find a fed needs me just as much as I need it. It's not one-sided, what I get out of this. No one has my will. No one has my determination to stick it out, despite the dissatisfaction. No one has the "I'll either walk out with my head held high or be carried out on my damn shield" mentality that I do. People that say they do, don't. So companies largely respond to that. They see that spark that won't let me quit. And sometimes they play nice with it, give me opportunities and give me enough challenges to feed that spark. And sometimes they give me a never ending grind that wears me down to the bone. Either way, they get what they can use out of me. And I get what I need from them. Co-dependency.
So I guess that's why people say that I'm given favoritism, huh?
That's why Gerard Angelo has to cry about the fact that "Waaaah if it was ANYONE ELSE, they would have taken the title!" Hell, Justin Michaels has been paired on my team - this'll be the third time now, and him and Angelo sing the same tune so much that they should have been the team this week, would have been if they hadn't had to go matchy-matchy on teams between challengers and champions. Michaels ALSO says that it clearly points to favoritism because, gosh, I've held the title longer than Billy Sadistic or Whitey Ford or a laundry list of other people who haven't been relevant in 5 years that I'm supposed to give a shit about. It's not a case in his mind if I'm just that good. They call it favoritism, when they don't see that the company often times is taking more than it gives me. Taking my effort, taking my drive, taking my passion and taking it for God damn granted. While Pure Class Wrestling may never, ever acknowledge it, they take the golden eggs from this goose and demand he lays another one on the next cycle, and would he maybe lay a few more this time around? Do I get reverence out of it? Some, sure. But do they cater to my every whim? Do they hand me opportunities? Do they turn a blind eye and let me get away with doing anything I wanted?
Or do they need me, more than they have ever needed any one of you? Do they see that I'm more reliable than the Gerard Angelo's of this world can ever be?
Think about that and get back to me when you can stutter out a response. I'll wait.
"I'm waiting," she said, her eyes flashing, as she crossed her arms over her chest. "I'll wait all day if I have to,"
This young girl, younger in face than she seems, older in road miles travelled translated into years on the soul than anyone in the room. She has steel in her spine. The PA's don't want to cross her. She's flown from freaking Boston for this. The assistant closest to the sound stage is trying to shield her, shepherd her back perhaps to catering, but the lithe young mocha skinned girl gives a thousand yard glare to the tall boy dressed as someone we know. And he knows that she sees him. And he knows that she knows. More than a few sympathetic looks turn his way.
"Can we get a cut?" he asks, the sweaty desperation staining his top lip matching that we'd see out of an assailant in an alley, a weeks' time and 500 miles bodyslide up north. The director groans, throws his hands up, and shouts for a cut. A bell rings, and people begin criss-crossing the set, bustling to the innumerable things that go into the production of a feature.
He's a tall boy, he is, and his broad, affable face is now pinched in consternation, his brow thundered, his eyes, well a little darkened from their usual surfer brah puppy. His hair is frosted into spikey blades, and he's wearing, to him, what is a ridiculous set costume, but to her it looks like home. He reads the expression of longing on her face and it stokes fires of anger he's tried not to let out. He can't. There was that one time after her show, but it was due to stress, and the complications of her ex, and the pressures of re-shooting a feature film that was already dangerously over-budget. She understood. I mean, when they talked it over, with a mediator afterwards, she had understood and she had committed to doing what she could to reduce the stressors, including cutting ties with persona that made him uncomfortable. So it was with relationships. Give and take. Mutual assistance, based on communicating and giving your partners needs. Right?
Need. She was looking at who he was playing with such softness, such faraway yearning in her eyes, that he could see it, and so he needed to get into the trailer and get out of this costume so he could face her as himself. He beckoned her follow him. She did. When they exited the sound stage and crossed a wet, rainy back lot, he opened a door to a small trailer, held his arms wide, and placed a hand on a vase with a beautiful poinsettia plant. "Merry Christmas, luv."
She brushed aside from that, turning to eye him, and said, "Is it true?" She held up a smart phone like a tabloid emblazoned "J'accuse". Even if he couldn't read it's darkened screen, he ill liked the portents.
"Someone leaked a story to your friend and mine, Elizabeth Harper, late of the Globe, now with her own celebrity blog site. More clickbait. More shocking headlines. Here's a shocking headline," she opens her phone with a swipe of her finger, and it's glow in the trailer illuminates a cold, angry face. "Actor Alastair Joyner, seen here, in club in Miami with underage party-goer, there's snapshots of you touching her, Alastair, what the fuck."
He tries to come with a quick defense, a thought she was 18 mate, a she was fast and loose, a I was drunk, I'm sorry forgive me, but for the life of him he can't think of anything except now his brow is darkening, his face flushes, and he purses his lips, stubbornly leaning back against the cabinet, and he folds his arms and says "So. It's not alright when it isn't your boyfriend doin' it to you, is it? Maybe should have been an MIT college party? Or is that the only time it's acceptable for someone to have some fun with an underage girl?"
She can't believe the darkness she's hearing in her light, happy, boisterous Australian boy (hadn't wanted to believe the pictures, either) and for just a second she's on the backfoot, her mind whirling, denying, because no, Kyle never did that to me, not at the party and not when we lived together, he saved my life, and we never - and then the rage sparks again on her face. Her nerve comes back.
"Alastair. I've put up with a lot of shit from a lot of men in the last eight years but I have never seen someone go that low."
"Nah, babe, it's just not what you're willing to admit." His voice was brittle. He had known he'd done a wrong thing, but he had the ever pricklish needs. And perhaps it was the distance between them, but they weren't getting satisfied. He turns his gaze down at his shoes. "It's not like you care, anyway. Life's fallin' apart. You and me on different schedules all the time. Never talk to one another. This movie may never get finished, and now this comes out? In a blog? Who sent the story to that lady?"
Who indeed, she wondered, but then she brushed it off and jabbed a finger in his shoulder. "You could have talked to me. You could always have -"
"NO I COULDN'T!" he explodes, and there goes the flare of that temper, the one that caused the... incident between them. "Can't talk to ya about anythin, you don't want to stop going down the same behaviors."
She looked at him there and then, in his familiar tights, with his familiar haircut. And she saw him sadly as the imitation he was. Maybe it felt forced because he was playing a role, a Tyler Zane to the real thing, and because she had met him on this movie playing a part she was so familiar with it was so easy to fall in with him. Maybe she had been lonely, and she filled a void she had with an easy replacement of something she needed. Needs. They're a tricky, sticky thing. But even if he was familiar because, in his role, he was almost in the character, he wasn't quite it.
"I came all the way here to talk with you about this, Alastair, because I wanted to hear it from your lips. But all you've given me is just cheap little excuses."
"Oh, yeah, this is good," he rolls his eyes heavenward. Anyone in the lot can hear the row inside the trailer. "You're gonna get holier than thou with me for not talking, for me pushing you away. You're the bloody one with a problem, lady."
"My only problem is that I didn't listen to warning signs back in fucking Boston, Alastair. That was my mistake, and mine alone."
He gets between her and the door to the trailer, grabbing her wrist. "If ye walk out that bloody door, it's over, Array. I am not going to let you go out there on that set spreading blab about some bloody celeb rumor blog, and hurt my career."
"i don't give a damn about your career, Alastair, and if you don't let go of my wrist I'm going to hurt you." She goes to leave.
With the intense, angry strength of a flailing man, he pins her arm. Her vision reddens. She is acutely aware that this could be an entry on a celebrity news blog in it's own right, model turned off-Broadway actress assaulted in the trailer of her boyfriend. He squeezes, pressed against her, using his size to overpower her. Her grasping hands skitter for a second, bumping over multiple items on the counter of the little bar by the wall, before her hands grasp on the glass vase containing the Christmas poinsettia.
She brings it in and it shatters across his face. His arms uncoil from her wrist and he's stopped bulling up against her chest. He falls back, squealing as blood comes between his fingers. Glass is embedded in the flesh. "MY FACE!" he yelps.
"Don't ever come near me, Alastair... I know you like restraining orders, so you're going to be the next one served. I mean it." There is so much she wants to say in those parting moments, regrets that she chose convenience and familiarity instead of sticking with her heart, sorrow that good times that they had had turned toxic. And maybe he was right, she had fault in not letting things go. But she also knew that this, none of this is what she wanted. And in every way, he was a parody, a pale imitation of a man he couldn't play. All of that she wanted to say, but the hardest words to say in a relationship are the communications of co-dependent needs.
So she chose to say nothing, to shut her mouth, and walk out. "You bitch! -" he yells after her, a raging, wounded animal, "I'll get you for that! I'll -" and she coolly ignores the sounds coming from the trailer as she walks past the set. Takes in the warm, mild tropical air of Florida at Christmastime.
She passes a face so familiar that she almost returns his double take, and his sheepish after look all but confirms the long held suspicion of where the idea for this mockumentary, almost but not quite, defamatory movie about Tyler Zane, the Game Boy came from. Greeting an old friend, she walks over and places a firm hand on the shoulder of the pudgy, bespectacled, massive bulk of a man-boy who never really grew out of an awkward college rut, not even after he sold a screenplay for a budgeted feature and added Writer to his resume.
"Chad, buddy, long time," she said, breezily, jauntily. "Listen, I'm sorry that I'm going to be the one that torpedos your, you know, big break in show biz, but there's a few facts you need to know about Alastair Joyner."
She flips him a smart phone, underhanded, and his moon face is O-slack in wonder at her confident stride as she keeps walking past him. She half turns, holding her arms out apologetically, "I think Alastair is very angry at women, on the whole, and - well, anyway, if that little tidbit on the blurb isn't bad enough, I suggest you keep watching the site for a few more updates in the next few days. Kinda gonna make your producers a little touchy, I think."
"Wha- but, Array - " Chad Jacoby babbles, "this, this is gonna kill my movie - "
She makes an OK gesture, thumb and forefinger, "Oh, and when Kyle finds out exactly who wrote this slanderous production, man... he's gonna be so pleased... Well. Anyway, adios muchacho. Merry Christmas."
Her heels clicked confidently as she strode off the lot, feeling somehow bolstered, despite the dark turn of the day's events. She didn't even look back. Somewhere in the Caribbean a natural disaster, a hurricane would rise from currents of air pressure, roar onto land, tear buildings and trees asunder and fling them in it's wake. She knew how that felt. Hurricane Array had made landfall, had left a movie production in ruins, and was moving on. It was supremely empowering. And it fed an itch she had begun learning how to scratch. A need she wasn't ever going to give power back from.
Someone close had taught her that.
The thing is, I didn't want to bring Gerard Angelo down to ruins, despite everything before, going into Collision Course I kinda liked the kid. Liked his swagger. And honestly, the more I trashed him, the less it would mean when I did end up beating him. But the more we go on with this the more I'm afraid I'm going to have to crush him, that's what I stopped responding to his taunts over Twitter. Well, that and the fact we got two, three days into it and it was breaking down to him sorta repeating my points back to me piecemeal and claiming I was the one who never beat him. As I said, weird, weird hill to die on. But that "gotcha last" kindergarten taunting was overwriting my simple criticism of him which still is enough to bring him down to flaming ruins... that his dissertation on the fact that there is a Grand Conspiracy to keep Kyle Shane in power and give me favors, cause I'm so in tight with whoever the fuck the general manager is... does him no good. In fact, here's a secret.
Any time you complain that there's favoritism, that you're being overlooked, or that nobody pays attention to you, it makes you look low rent.
It puts you under a microscope, it makes anyone with two brain cells to rub together look at your efforts and find out why you aren't getting the attention you feel like you deserve.
And so Gerard Angelo, if you want to keep thinking that, and keep believing you've been wronged and given such a bad shake, it's your right.
But I'd stop listening right now, because I'm going to hurt your feelings. The undeniable truth has a way of doing that.
The truth isn't just that if you complain about nobody noticing you then you're giving them an in to look at your record. It calls into question exactly what you think you've done that warrants that attention in the first place, and when you ask why nobody is treating you like you're the future of this company, why nobody's giving you props or nominating your name at the Icey Awards, people will smile and talk around it and glad hand you. But the truth will be that you haven't done anything to deserve those awards. And honestly, how up your own ass do you have to be to demand it? To demand that you be taken seriously?
Facts. I never asked for the attention I got. Not from management, not from my peers. I didn't complain about a ceiling being put in place to keep me out, I did something about it. If I had a limitation in my spot, I owned where my spot was. Look back at my history, I said that if I was going to be working with the Underground championship, I would make that title My World Title. And I did. I never said that Grimm, or Gabriel, or Seromine was holding me back from reaching my potential and I never said that people looked at them when they should be looking at me. People always looked at me because of my work ethic. And they responded to that. You saying it's the other way for you makes you look second rate, and questions why you aren't good enough, well. What have you done? Aside from win a Rumble a good four of the bigger names of the company weren't involved in, what was time you set the world on fire?
And you think you did that because you and I went to a draw? You've "gone to a draw" your way through all of your scrapes with greatness. If it wasn't for that and tag matches, what would you have to hang your hat on?
Like I said, dude, I didn't want to keep pulling this thread but your argument falls apart like an athletic shoe made in a Hong Kong sweatshop. Specifically the grasping at excuses like Kyle Shane must have paid an extra referee, Kyle Shane must have gimmicked a turnbuckle to break! Like I would go to all of that effort when my clearest statement of motivation is that I want to prove I'm the absolute most skilled in between the ropes at any given moment. Get the fuck out of here. I could go on, but I haven't even begun to fully deconstruct the tidal wave of bullshit that comes with dealing with your inconsistencies, and the fact is that it didn't have to be this way. We could have left it as a quien es mas macho, best competitor wins, struggle between honor and the will to be a champion. Both of us had a technical loss under our belt, so we could have said "Bah, I'll pick myself up and I'll get him next time!" and kept it as a matter of pride. But you, Gerard, you wanted to bring conspiracies in. And favoritism. And magical, unrealistic bullshit that never happened about me MAKING turnbuckles snap. And it all became asinine.
And now we're here, and you're teamed with a man you kind of hate, and I'm teamed with a man I kinda hate, and the soul of the World title is kept in limbo until some authority figure that hasn't been seen on Pure Class Wrestling TV in seven months comes out there and declares that it's going one way or another.
And it's all hanging on to each other. Co-dependent. You need Dominator to counter me, because aside from you, Dominator was the last up and coming star people thought once was going to become a main event player. Justin Michaels needs me, because he knows what I bring to the table in a tag match and how I don't hold anything back. And you and I both need each other, we need to stand face to face for the first time since Collision Course, speak our lines and prove to the other one that they were the one who lost, You were the one who won. Everyone needs something in this match. It's just a matter of who WANTS the most, is going to take it. And I'll tell you something. That isn't you. That isn't either member of your team, when it comes down to it.
Dominator should have been the man to beat, but his momentum was shattered by Arsen Goodstone. As much as Dom wants to play up his unstoppable run with the Underground title, it was his own inconsistency and inability to commit that hampered him, and now look at him. He's had to take long stretches of time off so we all have a chance to forget about the last thing he did. It was still him that lost the title, cleanly to a man who lost it on his first defense, and it was still Dominator that hasn't done anything of note as of late. In fact, the Deadly Rumble could have been his chance to show up to the party and really make people take notice, but instead he placed, what? Fourth? And that's the Dominator I always knew was inside. The Dominator that just barely squeaked a win in the round robin tournament to crown the Underground champion, where he got a DRAW out of High Tide. See where I'm going with this? This is a Dominator who claimed to be undefeated during his entire run, but I still remember taking his first loss to Gabriel in September 2017. That's the Dominator I know. A man who promotes himself well, and has all the tools to be a big player, but never has panned out to be the real Dominant Force he's supposed to be. He's mostly been getting by.
And it is with all of this said that I want you, Gerard, and you, Dom, to take what I said and examine yourselves. Come on, don't make me do all the work for you and drag an ego crippling out of you kicking and screaming. I want you both to show just a smidgen of self awareness of who you are and where you are in your career, and your complaints that you haven't been where you should be. Dom, your answer to that was to pull the age old PCW trick of attacking a champion after a match is over and posing with a fucking belt while Angelo, you just straight up stopped short of calling PCW prejudiced or anti Hollywood biased. Both of you tried to up your stake without putting in the work that I or, sigh, yes, Justin have.
And now you need each other just to support your spurious claims.
In the younger, more rash times, I would have been content to make a harsh threat that I was going to take both of my boots, stick them up your asses and walk you around the arena. But if you want to be seen as the contenders and studs you are, I want you to show me something this time. I want you to step the fuck up. Do something new and interesting, make me think you worked hard even though you're losing. Do something to GET noticed by management, do something that MAKES people pay attention to you, view you as more than a just okay placement in a midcard that hasn't done anything to stick in the mind's eye for longer than a mayfly sex session, do something so game changing that at least SOMEONE has to put you under consideration for an Icey. Or else shut the fuck up and sit down, and never, ever complain on God damn Twitter videos again about being overlooked by a management that loves Kyle Shane.
You two desperately need, and deserve each other.
Me? I've already got everything I need in the palm of my hands.
He stands in the middle of her living room.
It's all flooding back, it's almost another time the ghosts come to life. He sees her and the Australian boy side by side, in the kitchen, laughing at they make pasta. He turns to the sofa and sees them, sitting comfortably and intimately, sharing beers as they binge on Netflix. He sees them sitting across from each other, propped at the edge of their little spots on the ottoman, running lines from a script, their echoes moving in silence.
He sighs, and pulls off his ski cap, tousling his hair. He shouldn't have come here. Not just because Alastair probably still had a restraining order on him. (He was a bandit, rebel by nature, who gave a crap about that?) It just felt wrong without her. But he had gotten... the weirdest text from Patrick. That was two days ago, when he was supposed to be going out on the town, meeting Patrick at Sheehan's Pub down in Dorsey. It was cryptic, even in a way the hacker's missive's usually weren't. It was terse, asking him if he had seen any news about Array. He hadn't, because he was avoiding it. But, the "lessons" Patrick had been running him on. The philosophical debates. The talks about the nature of the beast that had been passed along with him. They all circled around the fact that he was broken, too broken to love someone like Array. He had thought Patrick was trying to push him off of her for good, not have him checking up on her. Whether that was brother's intention or not, it had planted a seed. And so he stood here, in her living room, wet snowmelt covered parka and ski mask in hand. And he felt wrong.
But he felt right? The pull was what it always was. What drew him and Array together. He could never explain it. He stopped trying.
He had tried to the doorman downstairs, lord knew. That asshole had instructions not to let him up the elevator.
So he had done a fairly impressive Spider-Man/Assassin's Creed jam and scaled the wall up, digging his fingers into slippery, snowmelt covered handholds and climbing up three stories.
Amusingly, on the way, two pairs of curtains had been drawn, and a portly man wearing lingerie had gazed out over the adjacent rooftops, and he was quite taken aback. As much as the climber himself was, hanging on to his windowsill.
"I won't tell if you won't," came the muffled, strained voice of the climber in the ski mask, and the middle aged man, covering his lingerie'd near nudity with self-aware shamed blushing, said through the glass back to him, "Deal, mister."
He'd kept climbing, until he found her window. He knew that window. He could almost scent her.
But she wasn't there. And he felt wrong, at her absence. She should be here. No, I should be... where she is. I don't know where that is. But I should find her.
He wondered. He had to know.
He floated through the house, feeling wistful and sad and missing a part of him. A part he needed. Because for all Patrick's lessons, he tried to see the sense in what his brother was trying to get him to be. Be crueler, harder, be less open with his heart. Turn heel on all the things, in a sense. But when reminded of Array, he could not break the connection the way Patrick wanted. He could not let her go.
But hadn't he? So many times, if not this current time with the Australian boy toy she'd gravitated to while he was so distracted and away on tour? Hadn't he pushed her away? He pondered this as he went into their bedroom, and sat on the bed, sitting like a man grappling with existential questions.
She'd been doing the pushing this time. And Alastair, lord, he'd pushed. But he still... couldn't let go of the only connection in his life he really felt didn't remind him of the brokenness that came with his upbringing. Because everything was easier when she was around. He laughed, bitterly. He needed that. He needed her. But look now, buddy, because she's gone. And Patrick must love this.
He got up, fingering the ski mask. He was dimly aware in the back of his mind he had to get things together for his flight, and he groaned as he realized he still had to record a promo on this fucking tag match for Trauma.
He took a last look as he stepped towards the window. "Bye, Array," he whispered to the empty apartment. And it escaped his lips, like a final, sweet, blown kiss across an airport.
Then he glanced down at the three stories from the apartment window, and silently cursed, having not figured out how to get down from here this way.
Elsewhere.
The next day.
Across town.
In a hospital bed.
A coda.
The John Doe has been near death since New Years Day, having been found lost a lot of blood in a snowbank. No identification. No social security number. Fingerprints and identifying marks scoured off. He had regained consciousness previously, but floated in and out. As he drifted near death, he reflected, soap opera elements viewed through wavery, rain sluiced glass played out in his mind. He had sent a celebrity blog a news tidbit about a certain someone engaging in lewd public acts with a minor. He had sent Array text messages, encouraging her to go confront her boyfriend publicly. But his man tailing her, unreliable junkie, had lost her and botched the job, and then he had held him up for another fix. And his brother...
His brother had not come for him.
This grated over and over in his unconscious mind, brother hadn't come. Brother hadn't come. It wounded him, over and over, as much as he wanted to deny to the taunting, madness voice in his head, he couldn't deny, he had drifted in darkness for days and brother hadn't come. He'd left him here... alone.
He was always alone.
Brother had his circle of people, that wouldn't let him bleed out, alone in a hospital ward, but his one member of his small circle, his flesh and blood, and he hadn't even bothered. He gritted his teeth, hating it. Hating the idea of it. That he... needed someone in his life, but he was alone in the dark and no one was coming and yes, he had NEEDED Kyle. He needed his brother. Where was he?
Day one, day two. Turning, feverishly. Groaning. Brother didn't come.
And then, finally. On the third day, his temperature broke, and his eyes snapped open. The wasted, palsied muscles of his face pushed into an awake position from the death mask, arranged into a snarl. The pupil of the eye was the first thing that moved. "Brother..." he hissed through unmoving, weakened lips... "why didn't you come when I needed you..."
When the nurse came back and saw him awake, he would play his part, answer their questions, and get some pain meds. He'd bide his time for a few days. But when he got access to a phone, he had a favor to call in.
There was going to be someone very much in need, who could perform a similar service for him.
