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The morning after their match, as Darby’s body is screaming from both the strain of defending the TNT title and the shock of being fucking jumped after the bell had rung, while he’s sitting in catering alone with a cup of coffee and not much else, Jack slides into the seat across from him. He’s got a plate full of food and wide, wary eyes.
Jack’s an odd one, when all the chips come down, and coming from Darby, that’s saying a lot. Last year, Darby would have sworn the guy didn’t know how to talk at all; now, it seems, it’s begun to come a little more naturally. But he’s still quiet. Awkward. Generally unused to most human interaction, and well, jungle, so his desire to avoid most other people makes sense. As if to prove a point, while Darby stares at him, Jack lifts both shoulders in a shrug.
Then he gestures, half-heartedly, at the table.
“Sure,” Darby says, slowly. “You can sit there.”
Jack’s mouth stretches and curls up at the corners, soft. He nods a few times, and then focuses on his breakfast, and Darby sips at his coffee watching the man responsible for a decent 75% of his current aches and pains—definitely the one in his shoulders, anyway, from those damn snare traps.
After a few minutes, Jack raises his chin. He motions at Darby’s coffee cup, eyebrows high.
“Maybe later,” Darby tells him. “Caffeine first.”
Jack’s nose wrinkles, and Darby scoffs a little into his mug. “Not a coffee drinker?”
As a negative, Jack wobbles his head back and forth a few times, though his nose remains crinkled. Cute. No coffee in the jungle, apparently, and it’s apparently an acquired taste.
They lapse back into quiet. Jack doesn’t say anything, and Darby doesn’t bother with anything more, and they stay there at the table while catering hums around them in an oddly companionable silence. There’s no sign of Luchasaurus, or that weird short guy that rolls with them, Marko. It’s just Jack and his breakfast and those big brown eyes that keep sliding over, almost shyly, whenever he thinks Darby isn’t looking.
It seems, against all odds, that Darby’s got himself something of an admirer.
Jack shows up the next week, too. Finds Darby backstage in one of the locker rooms, the bare minimum that management goes to in their attempts to minimize backstage fighting by separating them between three rooms that all stink of mildew. Darby sure is tired of Jacksonville. Jack sits next to him on the bench while Darby is taping up his wrist, and halfway through the process, shifts his hands to the side, palms up towards the ceiling: an offering.
Huh. Been awhile since Darby had one of those aimed in his direction, and it’s certainly never come from a guy he beat last week. But Jack doesn’t seem like he’s one to hold grudges. Maybe no one ever taught him how.
That’s an interesting thought.
“Okay,” Darby says. He extends his arm across the bench, allowing Jack to grasp his elbow with one hand and get a grip on the tape with the other. He isn’t really sure how this is going to go, all things considered. Jack’s focus never wavers as he finishes wrapping Darby’s joint, and when he’s done, Darby pulls his arm back towards his chest and tests it, giving his wrist an experimental twist. It’s the perfect tension—holding the flex in place without restricting or digging into his skin. In all honesty, it’s probably better than he could have managed by himself with only one hand.
He glances up, meeting Jack’s eyes. “Thanks. It’s… actually really well done.”
Jack’s mouth quirks a little. He arches his eyebrows once, briefly, and then the corners of his lips pull further, amused.
“I didn’t say you didn’t know how to do it,” Darby tells him.
Jack tilts his head to the side, mouth pursing and eyes widening, and fine, fine, Darby will give him that one. Darby huffs out a little laugh, giving the wrist one final check. “Okay, yeah, maybe I sounded a little surprised. Bet you get that a lot.” Then he pauses. The others are milling around them, caught up in their own conversations, their own preparations. “You’re good in the ring though.”
That earns him another eyebrow hike. This time, the laugh fills Darby’s lungs completely. “Alright, alright. You’re really good in the ring. But that’s all I’ll give you, ‘cause you weren’t quite good enough to beat me.”
Jack’s tongue darts out to poke at the corner of his lips. He doesn’t seem offended; instead, he nods. There’s a ghost of a smile on his face. And Darby doesn’t know why he seems to have been chosen here, not when Jack’s normally a specter gliding silently through the backstage with his entourage to either side.
It’s not so bad. Jack’s easy companionship: doesn’t demand much attention, doesn’t annoy Darby with useless chatter. He also doesn’t stand up when Darby does, ready to head to gorilla, so Darby jerks his head towards the door. “You comin’?”
Jack nods, and follows.
He’s not back with Darby the entire time, but enough that it’s noticeable. Darby thought having somebody at his elbow would be obnoxious—after all, Sting knows when to leave him alone and when to show up again—but it isn’t. At least Jack isn’t. He’s just sort of quietly nearby, save for the time he disappears with the rest of Jurassic Express, and then he reappears right before Darby’s gearing up to go out.
That’s when Sting shows up, too. He gives Jack one look, and then frowns at Darby. “Made a friend?”
“Yeah,” Darby replies, though the question prickles along his skin. He’s not really keen on having to explain this; partially because he doesn’t know any more than Sting does, really, but also because he weirdly thinks he might want to keep this close to the chest. Jack is… hard to break in with, and ignores pretty much everyone else. Whatever this is, Darby’s already sort of bizarrely possessive about it. Whatever. He’s allowed to be weird. Jack is weird.
Sting watches Jack for a minute with his arms crossed over his chest, though all Jack is doing is studying the audio equipment piled near the tunnel entrances. He’s crouched by one of the amplifiers and only appears to notice the scrutiny after a minute or two. Then he peers up at Sting with those big eyes that narrow, dubious.
Darby doesn’t say anything. If Sting is surprised, he doesn’t let it show. Just turns back to Darby again. “Doesn’t talk much, does he?”
“Doesn’t need to,” Darby says, and it’s true; Jack’s easy to read, if you bother to pay attention. “I get it.”
Jack stands. Somehow, Sting’s attention has made him unsure, because he shifts his weight from side to side a few times. Maybe he thinks Sting will tell him to leave, or, worse, that Darby will tell him to leave. Darby has no intention of doing that. Jack can stay wherever he’d like to.
“You gunnin’ for another shot at the TNT?” Sting asks.
Jack’s face creases. He’s a little annoyed by the question, Darby thinks, by the way his mouth tips lower in a frown. He shakes his head.
“He’s not an idiot,” Darby offers, with a grin aimed at Jack that shows all his teeth. “He knows he can’t beat me.”
A picture of ridiculous innocence, Jack bats his eyelashes in return. One corner of his mouth quirks up. And Darby has to laugh, because it’s endearingly comical.
“Sure,” Darby says. “You’re just gathering intel for the next time.”
Jack mimics pulling binoculars up to his eyes, agreement, which only makes Darby laugh harder.
Sting, it seems, has accepted that Jack’s presence isn’t a threat, because he nods. “That’s our cue.”
Jack stands and tips two fingers against his forehead, a salute that manages to read absurdly sassy.
Darby returns it. “I’ll still have my title when I come back.”
Jack’s expression pulls, amused, but he nods. There’s a challenge there, the unvoiced undercurrent. Prove it.
Darby does. Ten’s an easy victory, even with the Dark Order mucking around ringside as they attempt to turn the tides in their boy’s favor. When he gets back through the tunnels, he’s still got the TNT belt on his shoulder.
Jack gives him a high five, clearly taught to him with gusto, and well, Darby’s gotta admit, it’s not so bad having Jack in his corner.
The next week, Darby isn’t scheduled. It’s good, because he thinks his joints have been systemically knocked out of place over the past month, but it’s bad, because Jack is. And it takes Darby a little while to decide he ought to go anyway, to get in his car and make the five hour drive to Jacksonville again. He doesn’t think too hard about it. He can’t, or else he’ll probably turn the damn car around, and he’s already gotten over the Florida border.
No one really bats an eye when he shows. He’s enough of a fixture that the staff either assumes he’s scheduled, or figures that someone snuck a promo in. Darby didn’t budget enough time to do much more than show up in gorilla as everyone was getting ready, but whatever.
It’s worth it to see Jack’s face. The guy is ridiculously expressive: the consequences of never having to tamp down your emotions, maybe, or the natural progression when you didn’t have any assholes making you certain that you shouldn’t be feeling anything. Jack’s whole damn face lights up when he catches sight of Darby weaving through the crowd.
Then he twists his head a little, expression turning suspicious but amused.
Darby holds both hands up, surrender. “Yeah, yeah, I know. But, I thought… well, you’ve got that tag match, so maybe I ought to be here.”
Jack’s smile is blinding. Darby’s gonna destroy his whole damn reputation on this one if people find out, that’s for sure.
“Here to gloat?” Luchasaurus asks, sidling up to where the two of them are standing. “Or to try and haggle a rematch?”
Jack shakes his head and then ducks his chin down, rubbing at the tip of his nose with one hand.
“Nah,” Darby says. “Just here for moral support.”
“You bring your guard dog with you?” Lucha asks, and okay, rude, but Darby really doesn’t want to start throwing hands and spoil his ridiculous gesture.
He lifts both arms up again. “Dude, I come in peace.”
Lucha doesn’t look like he totally believes it, but Jack taps Lucha’s forearm with two fingers, and it must be some kind of sign they have worked out, because Lucha’s whole form relaxes a little. He still doesn’t look happy, but Darby assumes that’s the best he’ll get at this point.
Darby leans in, swats at Jack’s shoulder. “You got this. You guys are good.”
Jack nods, biting down on his lower lip. It tugs the skin in, pulls it tight, and it’s such an absurd thing to focus on, because it’s so unguarded. The guy just reacts without worrying about what anyone else is seeing or if others are going to use the telegraphing to their own advantage. The Acclaimed are across gorilla smacking each other’s chests and yelling obscenities to hype themselves up, and Jack is just standing amidst the crowd with his nerves written all over his features.
Marko shows up with bottles of water clutched to his chest. “Here. Got these for you guys. I’ll stash ‘em so you’ve got them when you come back in. Victorious.”
“Or you could just give them to me,” Darby says.
The glare Marko shoots him is impressive, for someone that fucking short. “Why, so you can steal them all and leave them with nothing just to be a dick?”
“What the fuck, man,” Darby sighs.
Jack taps a few times at Marko’s arm, shakes his head, and then points to himself. He waves both hands in the air, the it’s fine signal.
“Why, though?” Marko asks Jack, and gives Darby another lingering stink-eye. “Fine. Whatever. You could’ve picked someone better to imprint on.”
And that… that’s the first thing Darby has seen that Jack really doesn’t like. Jack’s mouth thins and purses, embarrassed, the kind of self-deprecating that spins internal faster than the speed of light. His face turns off to the side as his shoulders slump a bit, unhappy as shit. It could be a trick of the lights, but Darby’s pretty sure that Jack’s cheeks have gone pink.
Okay, Darby might not have much of a handle on this, but he knows enough to know he really hates that expression. He taps Jack’s elbow, once. “Hey. He’s just being an asshole.”
Marko looks like he wants to argue that point, though Darby couldn’t care less about him. Jack’s tongue darts out, his teeth settling lightly around it. His eyes track across Darby’s face once. Then that ghost of a smile returns, hovering over his features.
Staff is calling them towards the tunnels. Jack gives Darby one last look, and Darby knows what’s riding on this: a shot at the Bucks.
He holds his fist out. “Give ‘em hell.”
Jack bumps their knuckles together, and follows Luchasaurus towards the entrances.
Darby watches on one of the screens. Tag matches are hard. There’s too much motion, too many moving pieces. He doesn’t really know how Jurassic Express manages as well as they do, but they still come up short. Jack gets nailed in the face and spent the last minute on the floor after rolling off the apron.
All Darby really has time to do before they shuffle back in, limping and wincing, is to grab one of the med staffer’s towels and pour half a water bottle on it.
Jack ends up collapsing on one of the metal chairs at the back, set up against the wall. He’s got one hand fisted in his hair and the other clutching his nose. Darby swings in next to him, offering him the towel.
“I’ll go find ice,” Luchasaurus says. It elevates his stock a little, that even now, after they lost, he’s looking out for Jack first.
Darby looks at Jack and shrugs. “You’ll get it next time.”
Jack meets his gaze: those big brown eyes, narrowed with frustration and cloudy with pain. He taps the towel against his nose once. Then he sighs, shoulders dropping, and says, “This sucks.”
The laugh that jolts free from Darby’s teeth is loud. He hadn’t expected that. It takes a lot to shock the ever-loving shit out of him. “Yeah,” he agrees, though the mirth remains on the back of his tongue. “It really does. But it’ll come around again. And you’ll get there.”
“Really?” Jack asks.
“Yeah,” and it feels more like a promise than an empty platitude. He’s a little surprised by how much he means it.
Luchasaurus returns with a bag of ice, with Marko in tow, and Jack goes quiet again, and as Darby sits on the chair while the commotion continues around him, he wonders, briefly, if Jack would have volunteered something else if they’d had more time.
He’s heading back out to the parking lot when Ethan Page and Scorpio Sky find him. Doesn’t even have a chance to yell out much more than a desperate, “Fuck you!” before he’s pushed down the damn staircase. He feels every single one of those metal stairs on the way down, punching bruises into his skin.
At the bottom, once his momentum stops, he’s staring up at the stars as the waves of agony crash over him. Page and Sky are laughing, but the sound retreats, and then fades. Darby inhales, and his lungs still work. He exhales, and his chest doesn’t explode. Every nerve ending is screaming.
He doesn’t believe in signs, but there, on the concrete, he closes his eyes, and thinks, well, fuck me.
And the next week, he loses the TNT title.
Straight up can’t recall the last minute of the match, either, because everything had gone dark and his limbs had gone heavy. He probably could blame the mottled skin that had only just faded after being tossed down the staircase. He probably could also blame Miro being twice his size and a fucking feral piece of shit, also. Doesn’t really matter. The point is, he lost.
Staff gets him backstage, and all Darby can see is fucking red.
His temples are throbbing. He barely passes the concussion check. His lungs feel like somebody dug an icepick into the fleshy cores and ripped all the sinew free. He sits on one of the chairs that digs uncomfortably into all the parts of his body re-ignited with pain next to Jack while Sting’s leg gets worried over by half the polo shirts.
Jack’s fingers press lightly into the crook of Darby’s elbow.
“Yeah,” Darby croaks out, staring at the tiles of the floor. “This fucking sucks.”
“Darby?” one of the staff calls. “We’ve got a car for you.”
Darby glances at Sting, who raises a hand and shoos with his fingers. “Go. They’ll likely keep me here half the night.”
“Thanks for the assist,” Darby tells him. Then he twists, turns his protesting neck so he can look at Jack, rumpled in his t-shirt and joggers. Jack shrugs. And then, when Darby fails to respond, seems to realize there was an unasked question hanging between them. He cocks his head to the side, eyebrows arching.
Darby sucks in blistering oxygen. Then he pitches his voice louder to make it to the original staffer: “We’re coming.”
Jack loops an arm around Darby’s waist, and the steadiness is a god send.
The car drops them off at the back entrance of the hotel. Darby stares up at the windows and the lights behind, curtains keeping the rest of the world at bay. He’s tired. The TNT belt had been impossibly heavy, but it had been his, and now it’s gone. The last thing he wants to do is go up into that sterile hotel room and simmer in his own frustrations. He’ll end up tearing one of the damn paintings off the wall.
Jack’s palm taps Darby’s arm, twice.
“Yeah,” Darby says. Then he changes his mind. “Are you hungry?”
He glances at Jack, expecting either a nod or a headshake. Instead, Jack watches him for a moment, and then says, “Sure.”
Darby’s car is in the back lot. He doesn’t even bother to search for anything before he’s got it rumbling down the street.
He hadn’t had a destination in mind, and only turns in when he sees Jack’s face in the passenger seat illuminated by the ice cream sign. Yeah, ice cream probably is the most amazing fucking thing when you’ve only been eating it for a few years, all cold and overly sweet and chilling you straight down to your toes.
They get in right before the place closes, too, and Darby’s got the tourists to thank for the late hours. The two of them sit out on top of one of the wooden picnic tables, eating out of plastic cups while the stand goes dark and the only employee disappears into her car.
“Feels different now,” Darby comments. It’s a vulnerable admission.
“Bad?” Jack asks. Here, in the darkness, beneath the scraggly bushes that separate the parking lot from the road behind them, he must feel more comfortable. Darby’s figuring out that those words will eventually fight their way out, but the atmosphere’s gotta be right—the more people around, the less likely Jack is to speak.
Darby jabs his ice cream with the spoon. “Well, I sort of feel like I got run over by a mack truck, so…”
Jack laughs. That’s something Darby could get used to. Jack’s got all the qualities he likes in people, and they’re all for the most fucked up reasons. He doesn’t give a shit what anyone else thinks, only because he was never conditioned to. He ignores the minor shit, because he’s needed his focus to be on the important things to survive. He’s quiet and doesn’t demand a conversation, but that’s just due to not having people to speak to for so long.
“But,” Darby continues, scuffling his soles against the wooden bench beneath, “yeah. Bad. I’m nothing, now.”
“You’re not nothing,” Jack says.
“The title mattered. The championship mattered. And I mattered, while I had it.” Darby shakes his head. His appetite has dried up. “I don’t matter anymore.”
There’s a long pause. Darby glares at the concrete, lost in rage and guilt and disappointment, until Jack offers a quiet response. “You matter.”
Darby glances at him, and Jack shrugs, looking embarrassed. He doesn’t repeat it, and he doesn’t say anything more, and maybe Darby could ignore it if he wanted to. Except that he doesn’t. Because at the end of the day, he’s pretty sure he likes mattering to Jack. He gets the distinct impression that not many people end up in the same spot.
“Well,” Darby tries, and lets the syllable hang alone for a few moments before continuing. “Guess there’s nowhere to go but up now.”
Jack nods. He points up at the moon overhead with the hand not holding his plastic ice cream cup.
Darby huffs. “Yeah. Touch the sky. Aim for the stars. Get all that motivational bullshit in here. Why not?”
Jack’s smile is slow and wide. He holds his fist out, and Darby, after a single breath, taps his knuckles against it.
“We’ll get there,” Darby says. It takes awhile to realize he really means it, but as he mulls over the words later, he’s not entirely sure what, exactly, he was referring to.
Darby’s body aches for days, and then rainbows: red-purple, then violet, and then a sickly green as the bruises fade. He spends his days skating the parks nearby, trying to forget about the TNT gold no longer being in his hands. It doesn’t work, but at least with the wheels beneath his weight, he can ignore the thrum of disappointment that worms its way into his veins.
He isn’t scheduled the next week. On more than one occasion, he wonders what Jack is doing, and maybe that should have been a giant neon light, shrieking down at him.
The next time he’s in the ring, the week after that, he wins. Pity it doesn’t seem to matter much now that he’s lost the belt.
Or, as he’s sitting backstage with a bottle of water, maybe it doesn’t matter because the only person sitting next to him is Sting.
“Double or Nothing,” Sting’s telling him, and Darby ought to have been listening, but he’s preoccupied. “You can’t get the belt back, but we can finally get the upper hand on Page and Sky.”
Darby stares at the fluorescent lights, the harsh glare that always manages to give him a headache. “Yeah.”
Sting must take his lack of enthusiasm as apprehension, because he pats Darby’s shoulder a few times. “Don’t worry about it. My leg’s fine, and you’re in great fighting form again. This will be the final nail in the coffin.”
“Right,” Darby agrees, and thinks, yeah, it probably will be.
The PPV sets his nerves on edge. Not in a bad way, but with a quickness that jolts through his bloodstream. There are people here again: actual fans in the crowd, a packed house. They are finally performing in front of a live audience, and Darby can already hear the reverberations in his bones.
And as he’s in the hallway, out of the locker room just to avoid the fact that everyone is hyped up to the point of no return, trying to quell the outside noise that threatens to knock his confidence loose, Jack finds him. Nearly gives Darby a heart attack when he appears without much of a sound behind him and wraps his fingers around Darby’s bicep.
“Jesus!” Darby exclaims. “Holy shit. God, you’re like a god damn ninja, you know that?”
Jack’s smile reads delighted. And good fucking lord, Darby feels the same; it’s been a few weeks since he’s seen the guy, and if this isn’t a good indication of how deep Jack has managed to worm himself beneath Darby’s skin, then Darby doesn’t know what is.
“You ready for this?” Darby asks. “Also, dude, we have to get you a phone.”
Jack pantomimes holding a phone in front of him and texting, thumbs a blur, and Darby chuckles. “Yeah, exactly that. You go off grid, man, and it’s just… quiet.”
Jack stills, studying Darby. His face, for once, gives nothing away, and that might really be the edge of the mountain, the cliffside Darby suspects he’s been toeing for weeks. Then Jack points back at himself, the motion only half-complete, as though he thought better of it midway through.
“Yeah,” Darby says. The words come out low. “Yeah, I’d… I’d text you.”
Jack’s gaze doesn’t shift, doesn’t move. He inhales deep enough that Darby watches his chest rise and fall. His eyes flicker to the side, to the doors of the locker room. Then he arches his eyebrows and tilts his head, a question.
“Where do you wanna go?” Darby asks.
Taking a step back, Jack motions with a quick nod for Darby to follow, and Darby can’t do anything but that. They end up at the end of the hall, in a stairwell with such pronounced acoustics that every one of their too-quick breaths ends up echoed right back at Darby’s ears.
Jack’s fingers curl and uncurl at his sides, rhythmic.
“Are you nervous?” Darby asks, and he thinks it’s a fair question. There are a lot of people watching, and it’s been a long time since any of them have heard the shouts and chants in real time. “It’s a battle royale. There’s a lot of people in there with you, but you got this.”
He gets a slight wince in response. “Darby.”
“Yeah.”
Jack’s teeth sink into his lower lip as his features twist into an unhappy smile. “I don’t know how to do this.”
“What, win?” Darby frowns.
Jack sucks in another deep breath. There’s a moment where everything is written across his features, the most absurd and jarring sort of exhibition. And then he leans forward to press his mouth against Darby’s in a kiss that’s barely there, adorably hesitant, and nauseatingly chaste.
It lasts half a second, at most; then Jack pulls away. He looks like he’s bracing to get punched.
Darby inhales sharply enough to make his lungs rattle. “Have you ever done that before?”
Jack shakes his head. “Was it bad?”
“No,” Darby whispers. Maybe he ought to say more, but fuck it, neither of them are made for the talking part of this. He just crosses the space between them again, kisses Jack, makes it count. Nips at the man’s lips until Jack parts them in a gasp, steals his way in because it feels amazing and Jack unfolds against him in the most deliciously pliant way and his hands are greedily pawing at Darby’s shoulders, his arms, his chest, like Jack can’t decide where he most wants them to land.
Darby’s got Jack’s face between his hands when his common sense returns, and listening to it requires pulling away. Jack almost doesn’t even let him, eagerly following Darby back until Darby finally twists his head to the side. They are so very exposed still, even in the stairwell, and god, his paint is already on his skin, and now it’s smeared across Jack’s chin, too.
“Hold on,” Darby says, and it sounds absolutely wrecked even to his own ears.
“Sorry,” Jack replies, immediate. He steps back but keeps his fingers clawed into Darby’s jacket sleeves as though he can’t quite get himself to let go. “Sorry, I—”
“No, it’s not that,” Darby interrupts. Drags the back of his hand across his mouth and gets more of his ruined paint job on his skin for his trouble. “This is—this is great, this is amazing. But we’re due up to go out in, like, an hour, and you’re covered…” He laughs; can’t help it, the way the sound bubbles up out of his throat. He flicks his finger against Jack’s chin. “You’re covered in paint, Jesus.”
Jack’s hand moves to his mouth. “Shit.”
Now they’re both laughing, even as Darby is fumbling in his pockets with the little container of wet wipes he tends to carry with him before shows in case of being dumb enough to try eating or drinking after he’s gotten his game face on, whenever the schedule requires him to get ready hours before the first bell is set to ring.
“Here.” As he drags one of the wipes down Jack’s face, the situation hits all over again. His eyes trail down Jack’s form, another chuckle forming in his lungs. “Can’t go out there right now anyway.”
Jack follows Darby’s gaze, chin dipping, and then he laughs again. “Right.”
It takes a few moments to get the paint off Jack’s skin. When Darby is done, he’s reluctant to drop his hold on Jack’s head. Jack keeps watching him with those big eyes.
“I like you,” Jack whispers, like it’s the easiest thing in the world to admit, like anything can ever just be that simple, like he’s terribly unbothered by his own emotions—and he probably is, because no one has ever made him feel as though they’re wrong.
Darby doesn’t know why he’s here. Why it’s him of all people: he’s a mess, he’s practically a social pariah, he’s just a stubborn asshole who doesn’t know when to quit, and yet somehow, he’s enough. Enough for this. Maybe they’re both just round pegs that never quite seem to fit into square holes.
Darby drags his thumb across the top of Jack’s lip, beneath his nose. “I like you, too.”
Jack beams. “After…”
“Yeah,” Darby agrees. He’s managed to forget about the show, forget about the crowds. Now it comes roaring back into the forefront of his thoughts. “After. Hotel. Although, you… fuck, you’ve never…”
Jack holds both hands up and wiggles his fingers with the most ridiculous smile, canines pronounced. “Untouched, and all that.”
“Not after tonight, you fucking won’t be,” Darby promises, with every ounce of sincerity he can muster up. And Jack just grins like he can’t wipe the emotion off, even as he plucks the wet wipe out of Darby’s hand and gets to work on Darby’s face. Yeah, he’s gonna have to redo the whole damn thing now.
He’s never been less bothered by the addition of extra work.
“See you in gorilla?” Jack asks.
“Y’know, when you say that, it kinda sounds like something you’d say in the jungle.” Darby clicks his tongue against his teeth twice. “How would I do out there?”
“Oh, you’d be eaten by a jaguar immediately.”
The stairwell acoustics send Darby’s laugh booming. “You little shit.”
“Don’t worry,” Jack says, with faux wide eyes. “I’d save you.”
Darby thinks he should say more. Something like, I love finally getting to hear you sass me or you’re even more interesting when you throw everything back, and in the end, he just can’t get the words off his tongue. But Jack probably understands that more than most would.
Jack tugs on Darby’s jacket lapels, a finality. “Okay.”
He’s gonna go silent once they get back out there, once the activity of the backstage washes over them and threatens to drown everything else out.
“Okay,” Darby agrees.
Darby and Sting win the tag match—they beat the shit out of Page and Sky, and it feels fucking amazing.
Jack wins, too. He’s last man standing after shoving Christian Cage out of the ropes.
Funny, that.
It takes a little maneuvering and stalling to end up in the same car back to the hotel. At this point, Darby’s spent so much time in Jacksonville he wonders if he should start paying local taxes, but soon they’ll be on the road again, and he won’t have to make do with the shitty Florida tourists any longer. They’ll be on the road again: the two of them.
Darby’s blood is singing with adrenaline. He’s high on victory, and equally high on Jack’s presence on the other side of the backseat. Jack’s got their ankles looped together in the darkness of the footwell. Darby actually thinks he’s gonna go insane.
The driver turns the radio up, humming along. It’s so damn loud that Jack has to lean over to ask, “Should we eat something?”
“Kinda got other plans, Jack.”
Jack’s eyes dart to the back of the driver’s head. Lady Gaga’s voice fills the interior. “But. I mean, you should…”
“Jack,” Darby says, leaning in close enough that his lips are caressing the shell of Jack’s ear. “We are going to go back to the hotel. I am going to get my mouth on you. And it’s gonna last all of two minutes, so I’m not worried. We can eat after that if we want to.”
Jack barks out a laugh that seems to catch in his throat. Darby gets it; the guy’s caught in the dopamine overwhelm of finally experiencing the euphoria of wanting someone and getting it.
“And then,” Darby continues, “we’re gonna take a shower, ‘cause I’m so fucking gross. And we’re gonna do this whole thing over again.”
Jack inhales sharp enough to cut glass. Then he nods, eyes dark and pupils blown.
“Awesome,” Darby says.
The thing is, Darby never saw Christian Cage coming. The man wasn’t even a blip on his radar, not even after he got involved in things. Not even, really, after he decided he wanted to take Jack under his wing, be a mentor. Darby hadn’t thought a thing of it. He’d been too fucking obsessed with the way he managed to coax those toe-curling noises out of Jack, the way he got a deluge of words that Jack couldn’t seem to stop, the way Jack kissed like his whole life depended on it.
Darby didn’t Christian Cage coming until Jack shows up outside his hotel room door looking like the world was ending, refusing to step inside.
“Christian says this is a distraction,” Jack says, to his shoes, to the floor, to the fucking pieces of Darby’s heart that now lie strewn around the ugly carpet. “He says this is only going to hurt my chances.”
“Jack,” Darby tries. Something dark has taken up residence in his throat, slimy fingers curled around his windpipe.
Jack sucks in a watery, ragged breath. “He says I have to stop this. I have to cut this off.”
“You don’t,” Darby replies, desperate. He’s so fucking desperate to stop this train veering wildly off the tracks.
“He’s good.” Jack raises his chin, and his eyes are welling up. Even here, even now, he’s still bowled over by his own emotions, never fighting them as they slam into him at full speed. “Christian is good.”
“You’re good,” Darby rasps.
Jack shakes his head. “Not yet. I’m gonna be better. He says I can be the best.”
“Jack,” and oh, that comes out horribly.
Jack steps back from Darby’s door. “I’m sorry,” he whispers.
“Jack!”
But Jack never looks back as he walks away, no matter how long Darby stands there hoping that he’ll change his mind and come back. He never looks back, not even the next week when they pass each other in the commotion, not the next month when they end up in baggage claim at the same time, not six months later when they’re standing outside the arena waiting for cars beneath the moonlight.
Jack never looks back, because he trusts. Because no one has ever taught him to do anything differently. Because he takes everything at face value when people make promises. Because he assumes that things given to him were given with all the best intentions.
Jack never looks back, but Darby watches.
Darby watches Jack’s whole fucking life fall apart in real time, a bomb detonating, a spectacular and all-encompassing explosion.
And by the time Jack circles back into Darby’s orbit again, Darby’s so fucking bitter he could spit fire with all the vitriol clenched between his teeth. Maybe he could have reached out again. Maybe he could have tried harder. Maybe Jack would have reached back finally, after all these years, the way Darby had spent so long wishing he would.
But Darby doesn’t try.
And a few months later, Darby watches another life get hijacked and stolen out from under him by the same man.
Tag belts. That’s a new one, and honestly, not one that had ever even entered his radar. And sure, yeah, he’s held gold before; not quite the same as this, but metal always feels the same in his hands. Heavy. Meaningful. This shit carries weight, even if it ends up tarnished by the end. It’s not tarnished now, anyway, not even with Darby’s own blood splattered across the ridges.
He sits in the back of the car with the belt stretched over his lap. His temples throb, but what else is new? At least blood comes off the shine easily enough with some good old fashioned elbow grease, so he does get it clean, dragging his thumb until all the red is gone. Good as new, really.
How many other people have bled on this thing? He flips it over, running his fingertips along the stitches. Yeah, it’s been places. The people who held this thought they were always gonna hold it. That’s how the gold works, addictive. It’s a stamp of approval. And all the names of the waists it’s been around are carved, inelegantly, into the far corner. Adam Page. Cash Wheeler. Matt Jackson.
Darby’s fingers still, hovering in midair. There’s another name there, nestled into the corner. He remembers that waist—can still remember the way the skin had felt beneath his mouth, the intoxicating rush when he’d mouthed bruising kisses into the juts of bone, the way the muscles beneath had jumped and trembled beneath his too-greedy fingers.
But that was the old Jack. There’s nothing of that Jack remaining, not anymore; no quiet smiles, no expressive shrugs, no unbothered stream of pure emotional response. That all got beaten out of him, piece by piece, until all the things that had kept him alive beneath the ferns were replaced with a cacophony of razor-sharp shards like all the rest of them.
God, Darby misses the way Jack used to quirk his eyebrows up instead of vocalizing, the way he’d twist his mouth when he was being a little shit, the way he used to look at everything with wonder instead of rage.
Darby glances at his bag on the opposite side of the seat, where his phone sits in the front pocket.
And then, before he can talk himself out of it, he grabs for it. Opens up Instagram with his thumb, because he still doesn’t have the guy’s phone number.
got something of yours, he types. He hits send before he can choke on the panic.
The weight of the belt on his thighs has shifted even heavier. Darby sets both palms on the top and stares out the window, at the blurs of color rushing by. His head hurts. His clothes are a lost cause, covered in his own blood. Medical only let him out with a promise to see his doctor the next day. But they won, him and Sting. They won the belts. Darby isn’t sure what that means. Maybe nothing. Maybe everything.
On the leather, his phone lights up. And while he’ll never admit it to anyone, Darby’s fingers are shaking when he picks it up to check.
Jack’s reply.
You always have.
Darby thinks he must have hit his head all over again, a delayed dizziness, his thoughts going sideways. As his ears fill with a buzz, white noise at full volume, he starts typing back, only to get hit with a follow-up before he can complete a sentence.
Guess there’s no reason not to put that out there, at this point. Nothing matters.
Darby’s lungs hitch. They stutter. He deletes what he was writing, and replaces it with what he hopes—fucking hopes—that the warm body on the other side remembers: you matter.
A few moments later: Do I?
“God dammit,” Darby exhales. He types, you always have. Hits send.
There’s a minute after that: a minute where Darby feels like he’s going to claw straight out of his skin, bristling with nerves and anticipation.
Finally: Are you at the hotel? Can I call?
“Fuck the hotel,” Darby says, and hits the phone icon. When it’s picked up immediately, he wastes no time. “Hi. I’m in the back of a car.”
“You’re in…” Jack’s voice trails off. “Hi.”
“You’ve always mattered,” Darby says, his voice so rough it leaves his trachea scratchy. “You’ve always mattered, and you broke my goddamn heart.”
A pause. Then Jack says, low and warped, “I broke my own goddamn heart, too.” Another beat. “You didn’t say anything. In the spring. In the pillars shit.”
“I didn’t know how,” Darby admits. “Figured everything was done. Too far gone. That there was nothing left.”
Jack’s inhale is ragged. “Darby.”
“I miss you.”
“God,” Jack laughs, horrible. “I fucking miss you, too. Can we… can we start over?”
And Darby stares down at the tag belt on his thighs, traces one of the bevels with his index finger. He must stay silent for too long, because on the other side of the line, Jack says, “You were… you were one of the few people who saw me, back then. Who really saw me. And when it all came down, you know, I couldn’t… I couldn’t take you out. It didn’t matter what I would’ve won, I couldn’t do it. Even though I was sure you hated me for walking away.”
“I’ve never hated you, Jack,” Darby says. “I don’t think I even can.” The car slows, and he glances up out the window at the red Holiday Inn sign beyond. “Oh. I’m at the hotel.”
Another pause. “Darby, don’t… don’t hang up? Please. Please don’t hang up.”
“I won’t,” Darby promises. Even though he’s dragging himself, and the belt, and his damn ring bag out of the car with useless, exhausted limbs, he won’t hang up. It’s been too long. He should have gotten over himself quicker. He should have reached back out as everything Jack had put faith in fell to dust. But he didn’t, and he can’t change that now, and the very least he can do is not hang up.
“Tell me what’s been happening?” Jack asks. “Just talk to me. Please.”
“I’ll tell you everything,” Darby says, and gouges the side of the car with the belt as he tries to battle everything into the lobby. Whatever.
The clock says 3 AM. Darby’s showered—kept the phone on, sitting on the bathroom counter even though all Jack could hear was the water spray—and propped himself in the bed with one arm slung beneath the pillow. His phone’s as near as he can get it while plugged in, since about an hour ago, it started beeping like someone had gotten their hands on the damn nuclear codes.
Years ago, Jack had barely spoken. Now, the line is filled with words: regret, guilt, nostalgia, forgiveness. And deep down, Jack’s still that same quiet, awkward guy who’d been ill-equipped for social interaction, he’s just got fancy new sunglasses now.
Darby doesn’t want to hang up. There are years lost between them. He doesn’t want to hang up, but his eyelids are closing of their own accord.
“Darby,” Jack says, low, the way he used to volunteer those erratic vocalizations worth their weight in gold. “Can I… can I see you sometime?”
“Are you busy tomorrow?” Darby asks. Wait. It’s past 3. “I mean, today.”
Jack’s side of the line goes quiet, a little fuzzy. Then: “No. I’m not busy.”
“I fly back to Atlanta in the morning.” Darby can’t keep his eyes open. He got destroyed by the Bucks; everything hurts. His forehead sinks down into the pillowcase. For a second, he does doze off, and then he jolts back.
“Darby?” Jack says, and he might have tried it already. Darby might have missed it.
Darby reaches for his phone, fingertips trailing the screen. “Yeah.”
They’re backstage. They’re separated by the whole of the country. They’re kissing in the stairwell. They’re screaming at each other in the ring. Sleep rushes in, curling around Darby’s thoughts and whispering them into nothingness.
And just before he slips off completely, he hears, “I’ll see you tomorrow.”