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Marko likes the Hallmark channel.
Apparently, this is not something that he is proud of; or, and Jack isn’t really sure about this, it’s not something that he wants other people to know about. It may actually be both, in that nebulous area of public perception that Jack is about twenty years behind on, and Jack’s learned better than to point these things out. People really don’t like these things being pointed out, though they all react differently to them: Luchasaurus’s stance straightens, muscles tight as he goes quiet, while Marko gets incredibly snappy, aiming for the jugular when threatened. Jack’s learned to keep it to himself.
But Marko likes the Hallmark channel, even though he is embarrassed by it and never wants anyone to know, and that’s why Jack ends up watching so many movies on it. He doesn’t mind the movies. After the first few, he started to figure out that he could predict the way they would go—the man and woman would meet, develop feelings, something would go wrong to push them apart, and then they get back together in the last act, usually with a kiss and swelling music. It’s always a man and a woman, which he finds strange, and it’s often involving some sort of divide between cities and villages, which he doesn’t really understand.
Marko is also easy to predict, after enough time. He’ll grumble through the first thirty minutes about all the things he doesn’t like—the backstory, the man’s attitude, the woman’s catty best friend—and then go silent by the time the split happens. By the end, he’s always smiling. Jack thinks he probably enjoys the predictability. He’s pretty sure that going into stressful situations knowing that things will be fine in the end helps to soften the mid-movie blows.
“You know, Jack?” Marko offers, as the credits start to roll on the latest one. It’s after 11 PM, and Jack’s got an early morning to meet with the trainer. “Things don’t always work like this.”
Like in the movies? Jack’s seen couples, and they all seem to behave in the same manner as the actors on the screen had. They hold hands while walking down the street, or they kiss outside the windows of a coffee shop. He blinks at Marko, not following, and Marko sighs loudly, as though put upon. Sometimes he does that, when dealing with Jack.
“People don’t always get this stuff, y’know? Sometimes, people are just lonely.”
Marko is lonely; Jack understands this. Marko is lonely, and he wants to be kissing someone with music playing in the background, which is why he watches so many movies. Jack thinks he ought to say something, but he isn’t sure what, and Marko is staring at the words on the TV, unseeing.
“Sometimes,” Marko begins, softly and without looking over at Jack, “you just want someone there to hold your hand. To sleep next to you. To kiss you.”
Jack’s never had anyone hold his hand, or sleep next to him—aside from naps in airports on uncomfortable chairs, or kiss him. He’s wondering if maybe he’s also supposed to want these things. He glances up at the TV, which has started into a commercial for a breakfast cereal, and loops his arms over his knees. Maybe Marko’s movies are the blueprint. He should use that, since he’s so painfully unprepared for this sort of thing.
That means he ought to find a woman from a city… probably, if Jack’s strange background is to be considered, and then he should start up discussions about her life goals and push her into embracing her childhood dream she gave up because it wasn’t plausible. Then something will happen just as they are becoming close, driving a wedge between them, and Jack will need to enter some kind of festival or contest, or arrive at the airport at the very last minute to win her back.
He’s not entirely sure how to do that. It all seems rather complicated. His face must betray the frustration, because Marko huffs out a laugh. “You don’t have to force it if it’s not something you want, you know. But someday… you might feel those butterflies in your stomach. Palms sweaty, the whole nine yards.”
Jack shrugs. Marko goes quiet for a moment, and then adds, “Besides, once you finally fall for someone? You’ll know. You’ll feel it. Don’t worry, man; she’s out there somewhere for you.”
Jack picks at a piece of fuzz on the hotel comforter, worrying it down. Maybe he just has to wait, then. Maybe, unlike the movies, things don’t happen at all the right times.
Marko claps a hand on Jack’s shoulder. “Alright, I’m tired. ‘Night, man.”
Jack has a hard time getting to sleep that night. He stares up at the ceiling, and thinks about how it might work for a woman with very white teeth and smooth hair to arrive backstage searching for her long-lost father she has only ever seen in a single, ripped photograph. He isn’t really sure he would be filled with the desire to walk with her to Starbucks and gaze in her eyes as fireworks are going off overhead.
Jack doesn’t really understand the internet, either. The company made him an account and told him to update it, and mostly he just finds things that are already there from the official accounts and uses those as content. But apparently, the fanbase uses Twitter heavily, and they’re currently involved in choosing the next person to challenge for the TNT belt.
Luchasaurus has the app on his phone. He sits next to Jack backstage and shows him the post, along with the replies. “They’ve turned it into a poll, it seems.”
“Oh,” Marko says from Jack’s other side. He’s leaning over Jack to see, his elbow digging into Jack’s side. Marko is like that: touchy. Jack doesn’t always love it, but he doesn’t really know how to tell him to stop. “And the person they choose will get a match?”
“It appears so.” Luchasaurus scrolls down with one thumb.
“Helluva way to book a company,” Marko grumbles. He might be annoyed that he is not one of the choices. As usual, Jack isn’t sure he’s right, and doesn’t want to ask. Instead, to avoid the conversation continuing, he leans a little closer and raises his eyebrows at Luchasaurus.
“Yes,” Luchasaurus says. “Your name is coming up a lot.”
That’s exciting. Jack wants a shot at the TNT championship, and he hasn’t ever gotten close to it yet.
“If this keeps up,” Luchasaurus tells him, “I think you’ll get a match with Darby.”
He does. Tony books the match. And Jack sits in the back of an Uber with fire sparking along his arms, because he’s finally gotten his moment.
Darby is, at least as far as Jack is concerned, something of an enigma. He keeps to himself backstage and only really talks to Sting. He’s found himself in the middle of fights he probably could have avoided if he’d just learned how to walk away. And he’s small, as far as wrestlers are concerned: scrappy. People call Jack small, too, wonder if he’ll ever be anything in a place like this. Darby doesn’t make much effort to talk to people, but then again, neither does Jack, so he isn’t sure he can judge anyone else on that aspect.
Jack’s never fought Darby before. Luchasaurus goes out with him, and that helps, but standing in the ring, Jack’s a little at a loss. This is a big match for him, and he needs to get his thoughts in order, and instead, he finds himself staring at the greasepaint on Darby’s face while his stomach sort of flips.
And Luchasaurus gets into a fight with Sting, and they both disappear through the tunnel, and Jack gets dropped on the apron, and all in all, he comes out of that match far worse for the wear. It’s not even because he loses, either. It’s because there, in the ring, with Darby’s skin sliding against his own, Jack finally understood.
It’s sort of horrible, really: distracting and uncomfortable, and it makes Jack’s breath come too quickly. He sits backstage with his shoulders against the bricks and tries to figure out which way is up. Darby isn’t a smooth-haired woman from a big city, but Marko had told him there would be butterflies, and Jack can’t think of a single other way to better describe the churning in his gut.
“You did good,” Luchasaurus says; a peace offering. Jack lost, so he couldn’t have done that good.
Jack tries to think what the Hallmark movies would tell him to do. Always, the woman encounters her romantic match in some sort of situation where they are placed together. Sometimes, it’s at the only diner in town that inexplicably holds only three tables. Other times, he’s the rival real estate agent determined to buy her family vineyard for far lower than the asking price. None of these feel particularly relevant to Jack’s situation, which is a problem. He doesn’t think Hallmark has made a movie about wrestlers. He’s going to have to make up his own formula.
He runs his hands through his hair, and thinks about the way Darby’s fingers had felt laced through his own. It wasn’t, strictly speaking, hand-holding the way the movies always show, but Jack had liked their palms flush together all the same.
Marko and Luchasaurus are kind to him, after his loss. It’s nice, that they worry about Jack being stuck on not winning, but since that’s not what Jack is stuck on at all, it loses its effectiveness. The next week, he finds himself in Marko’s hotel room again, as usual—it’s the default, really, to see the time pass before the broadcast together.
Marko grabs for the television remote. “Wanna watch a movie?”
Normally, Jack would sit down with him, because it’s easy, but he doesn’t particularly feel like watching another romance play out in ways he can’t follow. He frowns at the television as it flickers to life, wishing something would offer more constructive suggestions.
Marko must notice his furrowed brow. “Well, we don’t have to. I mean, we could do something else. Maybe there’s something else on.”
Marko defaults to watching situations, rather than living them, and once upon a time, this had felt normal for Jack, too. Problem is, he doesn’t really have anything else to do, but the arena isn’t far. They’re always in the same hotel in Jacksonville. It’s a few miles to Daily’s Place; certainly walkable. Jack nods his head towards the curtain-covered window.
“You’re going out?” Marko blinks at him, and then, when Jack knocks his knuckles together, looks even more incredulous. “You’re going to the arena? Do you have a med check?”
Jack shakes his head. Marko might try to stop him… but he doesn’t. He flops onto the bed and switches the channel until the familiar Hallmark logo shows up. “Fine, whatever. I mean, if you wanna hang out there with the staff, go for it.”
It’s a nice walk to Daily’s Place. Jack’s done it a number of times over the past year, but not often alone, and he likes the way the wind caresses his cheeks. Reminds him of all the years past. In Florida, the air is often just as heavy, just as humid. Sometimes the cars can be just as big of a threat as the predators were.
No one is really surprised when he shows up backstage. The night before a broadcast, people tend to come and go as they’re summoned. There isn’t much to get ready, without the moving around, but they do the sound and video checks so things are in place. Jack meanders through the hallways and nods at the staffers who pass, and no one really gives him a second glance.
He’s not sure what he’s looking for. He stands down in the seats and shoves his hands into his pockets and just… waits. Until there’s a thud on the catwalks over head, and Jack cranes his chin up to look. A figure sitting up on the metal grating.
Finally, Jack’s found it: the movie moment. It’s not a small town festival or a local friend’s wedding, but it’s there all the same. And Darby isn’t a no-nonsense girlboss frustrated about how her boss won’t give her a promotion at her big city job, either, but that doesn’t really matter. He’s sitting cross-legged when Jack hauls himself up onto the metal; he looks up when Jack approaches, a question on his face, though he doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t really react at all as Jack settles down onto the grating next to him.
The butterflies are back. It’s such an apt term for the feeling. Jack remembers once when a whole swarm of them had moved through the trees as they migrated, and he’d been able to reach his hand into the fog of them. Their wings had whispered against his fingers, his wrist, his forearm, a thousand caressing tickles all doubled up on top of each other, and he’s got the same sensation in his stomach now, as Darby’s gaze settles on Jack’s face.
A few moments pass, as Jack’s lungs go tight and panicked. He doesn’t have anything else to do, because he’s already gone past the only road map he had, and even that was terribly vague. But Darby’s mouth screws a bit to the side, and he asks, “Med check?”
Jack shakes his head. There’s maybe a few inches between them, and he’s intimately aware of it. He wants it to be less, but doesn’t think he ought to push it. Then he worries that Darby will tell him to leave, the movie formula flipped horribly on its head.
Darby nods, slow. “Just here to pass time?”
Jack nods. He pulls his knees up and laces his fingers over the top of them. Darby doesn’t tell him to leave. In fact, all Darby does is let his head fall back against the rail, the criss-cross of metal keeping them from tumbling down to their deaths. Jack likes it up here. Height is, for the most part, safer, and the arena isn’t nearly the same sort of situation, but it still rings similar. There’s something comfortable about being up closer to the clouds, even if they’re covered by the retractable roof.
“You’re really quiet,” Darby says, and Jack’s blood goes cold, because he’s heard that before. He’s heard that exact same thing before, and then someone either smacks him, or insults him, or laughs about it, like it’s all some big joke. Like Jack is a joke. Darby doesn’t do any of those things. He just shifts against the grating and continues, “Man, people here are really fuckin’ loud, aren’t they? Always fucking yappin’.”
Jack laughs, a sharp huff that he can’t bite back. As soon as its free, he’s glad it clawed its way out, because Darby smiles, one side higher than the other. He has a very pretty smile. Maybe he could be one of the love interests with his nice teeth and blue eyes. Jack often didn’t understand the movies, when one of the leads would lose all other thoughts and only be able to think about the other, but now, he thinks he does.
“You here alone?” Darby asks, and Jack nods. Darby shifts back to staring at his feet, at the world beyond the catwalk. “A’ight.
He goes quiet. Jack’s been made to believe that silence is uncomfortable, but it doesn’t feel uncomfortable with Darby. They sit side by side, far enough that their shoulders aren’t touching, and Jack focuses on his breathing: in and out. He lays his hands on his thighs and stretches his fingers out. They remain that way until some time passes, and Darby exhales, slow and loud.
“You gonna win tomorrow?” Darby asks, glancing to the side.
Jack nods, and Darby smiles. Jack’s entranced by the way it spreads across his face. Jack points at Darby, whose eyebrows rise.
“Yeah,” Darby agrees. “Me, too.” He kicks at the catwalk beneath them, which sends a pang the whole way through, loud and jarring. “You’re not so bad, Jungle Boy.”
That doesn’t fit; not really. The ring name is one of those things that Jack wears, but it’s starting to fit a little bit worse every day. And here, high above the ring they’ll both be in, separately, tomorrow, he doesn’t want to have to be that.
“Jack,” Jack says, quietly.
Darby regards him for a few beats as Jack’s lungs press against his ribs, ungainly. Then Darby nods. “Jack.”
Later, when Jack makes his way back to the hotel, his heart keeps it’s too-quick rhythm. He wonders how the well-dressed corporate women manage to keep their wits about them in all the movies when faced with someone who makes their palms sweat. And for the first time, he realizes that all those movies may have simply distilled everything down into its simplest form, and that the real thing is a heady buzz that remains in his thoughts well past the time he ought to have fallen asleep.
Darby wins the next night. Jack and Luchasaurus do, too.
Jack knows just where he’s going to find Darby after the broadcast has ended, as the staffers are cleaning up the cameras and the sound cords. He climbs up to the catwalk as the janitorial staff begins working through the arena, and settles down next to Darby. Darby’s got the belt with him, still; must have come up pretty much right after things stopped.
He catches Jack looking at it, but he doesn’t seem annoyed or threatened. “Shiny, huh?”
Jack holds his hands beneath his eyes and pops his fingers out like fireworks, which makes Darby laugh. Oh. Jack likes that. He likes the way the burst of warmth goes all the way through his torso.
“Wanna hold it?” Darby asks, which is a surprise. He passes the belt over into Jack’s hands. It’s heavier than Jack imagined. He’s never actually gotten to see any of them up close like this, never gotten to run his fingers across the bevels in the gold before.
Maybe he ought to be more disappointed that he lost that match against Darby, but he’s finding it hard to hold onto it while here, seated next to him.
“Puts a target on you, y’know?” Darby says, as Jack hands the belt back to him. Darby sets it on his thighs, where the strands of the ripped denim lay against the black of his leggings. “Everyone wants a piece of you.”
Jack twists his mouth a little, pursing his lips, and Darby shrugs. “I guess it’s fine. The way things work. But sometimes…” He trails off. He goes quiet for long enough that Jack isn’t sure he’ll continue. Finally, he sucks in a deep breath and exhales it with force. “Sometimes I dunno how much longer I’ll be able to keep doing this.”
His face does something, something Jack doesn’t like. He should be happy that he won his match—handily—and instead, his chin is bowed. Back lit by the fluorescent lights, his profile reads distinctly doomed, and it twists in Jack’s chest. Jack taps at Darby’s arm, and then, after Darby lifts his head again, offers a thumbs up. He’s aware that it’s painfully inadequate.
Darby doesn’t seem to mind, because he smiles. “Yeah, okay. Keep going, huh?”
Jack’s pretty sure his own smile in response means very little, yet somehow, it seems to suffice. Darby shifts one leg up so the belt sags a little and raps his nails against it. They’re short and painted: black. Jack’s only ever seen that on the women of the roster. He gets the feeling that’s one of those things he’s missing pieces of, but the women in Marko’s movies always have pretty nails.
“So tell me, Jack,” Darby says. “What do you do when you aren’t here in Jacksonville?”
Jack pulls a face, nose wrinkling, before he pushes his hand through the air to simulate an airplane taking off. Darby takes that in for a moment, and then adds, “Guess you can’t go back to the jungle, huh.”
Jack shakes his head. The idea would be laughable, at this point, though he can’t deny that sometimes he misses the simplicity of it. Beneath the trees, he knew who he was, and who the enemies were. Everything fell into neat squares; here, he’s got no such lines drawn. He’s on his own here, and the waters are somehow infinitely murkier.
“Well,” Darby starts. His hands settle on the TNT belt once more, curling over the edges in a way that reads absentminded. Habitual. “Maybe you’ll win, now that you’re here.”
When Jack smiles at him, Darby laughs. “Not my belt, though.”
Fair, and it doesn’t really sting. After all, Jack lost that match. He shakes his head, and Darby laughs again, and Jack decides he really loves that—making Darby laugh. He’s not sure he’s really seen the man do much of that before. Honestly, Darby makes himself pretty scarce, all things considered, though now Jack’s certain this is where he normally comes to escape.
Darby stands, belt tucked beneath one arm. And he swings his other hand down for Jack. It’s hardly anything: just being vaguely helpful while Jack’s still on the grating. But when Jack curls his fingers around Darby’s and uses the man’s arm for leverage to hoist himself up, it feels like more. He doesn’t want to let go. Oh, he really doesn’t want to let go, and it kind of hits, all at once, that maybe this isn’t something he should be feeling.
Back at the hotel, he stops by Marko’s room. Marko has a Hallmark movie going.
“You wanna watch?” Marko asks, hand on the doorknob. “There’s about half left.”
Jack joins him on the bed, and, sitting there watching the big city woman cry in the cemetery of the grandmother she had stopped talking to when she’d turned fifteen and now deeply regrets cutting off all contact with, because the strawberry farm is facing certain ruin and she can’t remember her grandmother’s secret pie recipe, he thinks that the gulf separating the woman and her farmer love interest doesn’t feel nearly as wide as the one he’s staring down.
The next week, he ends up in Daily’s Place again the night before the show. There was some big weather event that grounded a ton of flights across the country, and the EAs are more haggard than they usually are as they scurry around trying to re-book people. Jack isn’t sure Darby will even be in yet as he climbs up to the catwalk, but he is, seated in his usual spot. He’s without the belt today—has his phone out in front of him.
He looks up briefly as Jack crosses the space and sits down. Darby’s still got his travel clothes on, so he hasn’t hit the gym yet, though to be honest, Jack’s never really seen Darby in the gym.
“Do you watch much YouTube?” Darby asks. Jack shakes his head. He’s unfamiliar with much outside of whatever Marko gravitates to. Luchasaurus tends to find more documentaries, and Marko hates them, so they rarely watch things altogether. “Well, there’s these guys on there. And they do all this stupid shit, trying to prove things wrong? Like, urban legends, common beliefs, shit like that. It’s fucking hilarious.”
He tips his phone sideways so Jack can see, and they watch the clip together. It is funny: one of the men is blasting the side of a car with a flamethrower. Jack’s not sure what information they’re trying to disprove, but he can’t argue with how entertaining it is watching them melt through the side of the vehicle until one of the tires sags down, a puddle of what used to be rubber.
When the short ends, Darby is still laughing when he thumbs away from the tab. “What do you usually watch?”
Jack shrugs, and then, when Darby’s eyebrows hike, spreads his hands wide and empty. “You don’t have a phone?” Darby asks. He sounds incredulous, which is the pretty standard response Jack gets to that. He’s probably going to have to break down soon and have Luchasaurus help him get one.
Darby watches him for a moment, and then asks, “What the hell do you do on the plane every time?”
“Uh…” Jack starts. He rubs at his nose, suddenly self-conscious. “Sleep, sometimes.”
“Sure,” Darby agrees.
Jack picks at the bottom of his sneaker, where the sole has begun to fray a bit. “Watch people, I guess.”
“People watching?”
Jack nods. “You learn a lot about people at the airport. Stressed out parents. Overtired business men. It’s a lot of…” He pauses, thinking. “A lot of people at their worst, I guess.”
Darby goes quiet. Jack’s a little afraid that he’s given too much away, said too much even though he’s hardly said anything at all, but after a second or two, Darby nods. “Still. Gotta be boring as fuck.”
Jack can’t argue with that; he laughs a little, pleased when Darby laughs, too.
“I’ve got an old iPod,” Darby tells him. “I’ll bring it next week. Probably has shit music on it, but maybe it’ll be something to help pass the time next time you’re traveling.”
Jack’s chest goes warm. That sounds like a gift, even though Darby has been terribly blasé about the whole thing. It’s not something that Jack is real used to. Everything they do now is out of necessity: Luchasaurus will order coffee, simply because Jack isn’t sure what to get, and Marko will grab the first aid supplies, only because he’s the one backstage more.
“Really?” Jack can’t stop himself from asking, even though it sounds awful.
Darby blinks at him. “Yeah. Dude, it’s no big. I’m not usin’ it. Can make your plane rides more enjoyable.”
Jack’s not sure how to explain that his plane rides into Jacksonville are already more enjoyable, but that the rides back out twist in his stomach. He thinks, maybe, that’s not something he should say, even if he wants to. Like Marko and his favorite movies, he thinks it might be one of those things that people don’t like to hear about. A lot of people on the roster like to avoid conversations about things that make them uncomfortable.
He’s afraid that admitting things to Darby will make Darby uncomfortable.
The catwalk is warm. It’s nice to sink into the comfort it offers, wrapped around Jack’s shoulders. He shifts a little against the railing as Darby pulls up another video, and they laugh their way through another twenty-minute segment where the hosts attempt to squash various fruits into pancakes with huge steel weights.
They both win the next night. Jurassic Express’s tag match wasn’t much and lasted barely five minutes, but Darby had a long, drawn-out battle he narrowly came away on top for.
At some point during the day, Darby apparently made a decision, and not even his bout in the ring can deter him from it. When Jack gets up on the catwalk, Darby has a bunch of music queued up on his phone.
“Here,” he says, and slides closer as he swings the phone out in front of them. Their shoulders brush. It’s the closest they’ve been since Jack started up this routine of joining Darby high above the arena, and it sends a jolt through his limbs. Given what they do, he’s no stranger to touching other people, skin against skin, but it feels very different here, done so casually. Darby pays it no mind, and Jack tries not to swallow his tongue given their proximity.
The butterflies are back, a whole swarm of them. He wonders if they’ll ever finish their migration up through his chest.
“I dunno what kind of music you like,” Darby continues, jolting Jack out of his reverie, “so I’m just gonna play a whole bunch, and you tell me what hits.”
He’s got his earbuds connected, and offers one to Jack, who slides it slowly into his ear. The phone is already playing something, a deep bass line. It turns quicker, then lower, and then rachets up once more. Jack’s never really gotten this, never had anyone just present him with options. The music he hears is either someone’s entrance theme, or playing from the speakers in a coffee shop. Alone, he doesn’t have the foggiest clue what to even search to find what he’s looking for. When the song is done, Jack glances sideways. Darby is watching him for a reaction.
Their shoulders are still pressed together.
Jack nods, and Darby grins. “Okay. So we like rock music. Let’s see what else we got.”
Jack likes jazz and how meandering and unpredictable it is, but he doesn’t like the screaming cacophony that’s barely got a melody buried beneath. He’s neutral on country music, with all the twangs, and likes the R&B a little better. But when he finally finds one that makes him tap his toes against the grating, bobbing his head because it’s good, he gets a full-body laugh out of Darby that verges on disbelief.
“Really?” Darby asks, shaking his head. “Carly Rae Jepsen?” He laughs again, though it feels good-natured. Jack’s not always good with figuring that out, but this never slithers beneath his skin or anything. “A’ight, man, we’ll go with Top 40.” He clicks through a few times. “I’ll grab some from the past few years and put it on there for you.”
Oh, that’s what his plan was—loading the iPod up with songs. He’d done all this just to make sure he put things on that Jack likes.
“If you don’t have a phone or listen to music,” Darby begins, eyes still down on his screen, “what do you when you’re here for filming? Sleep?”
“Marko likes movies,” Jack replies, without really thinking.
Darby lifts his head up, brow arched. “Oh? What kind?”
Shoot. Jack’s walked Marko into something the other man would probably slap him for, and there’s no real way to avoid it now. He winces, and then says, “Uh, Hallmark movies.”
Darby laughs. Again, it doesn’t feel bad, and Jack’s getting better at identifying when reactions are meant to be mocking in nature. It just sounds like Darby finds the answer hilarious.
“Hallmark movies,” Darby repeats. The smile is still on his face, bright and blinding, and Jack wants to press his fingers against it just to see if it radiates warmth through his skin. “That’s funny. Well, nothin’ wrong with romance.”
Jack’s face must give too much away: the question, at least, because Darby offers a little shrug. “I dunno. That shit’s kinda nice sometimes. But don’t tell him I said that.”
Jack shakes his head, absolute, because he has no intention of telling Marko they had this conversation about his movie habits at all. And Darby must find more Carly Rae Jepsen, since he tilts the phone screen up a bit.
“Wanna listen to more?” he asks.
Yes. Jack nods. They re-settle, shoulders flush once more, and Jack only has half his focus on the music in his ear. The rest of it is hyper aware of how close their knees are, and how warm Darby’s arm is pressed against his own.
Jack doesn’t go up the next week on the night before the broadcast. Marko complains, loudly, that Jack never spends time with him anymore, and rather than risking an argument, Jack climbs onto Marko’s hotel bed and lets the man switch on his favorite channel.
“You just keep running off these days,” Marko grumbles. They’ve missed the first twenty minutes, though it’s easy to figure out what would have happened. This one is a rarity: the love interest has a young child, and the big city woman nearly hit the kid with her car. It’s not a meet-cute Jack’s seen in too many of these.
A few moments pass before he realizes Marko is fishing for a response. Jack shrugs, curling up around his knees as best he can. He doesn’t want to explain to Marko where he’s been; he’s afraid of someone poking holes in everything. As long as the catwalk hours exist only between him and Darby, Jack can pretend that they’re anything he likes.
“C’mon,” Marko says, needling. He’s like this. Never takes Jack’s silence for an answer. “Are you planning to ditch us for some other stable or something?”
Jack shakes his head, as forcefully as he can. He’s not. Of course he’s not.
“Fine.” Marko turns back to the television and loops one arm behind his head. He still looks put out, though, so Jack’s good and stuck here for the night. “Well, whatever. You’d never find people as cool as us to wrestle with, anyway.”
As they watch the rest of the movie unfold, Jack just hopes that Darby doesn’t think he’s abandoned him or their strange, quiet time up above the arena. He presses his chin into his knees and wishes, for the first time, that he had a phone so he could at least send a message saying exactly that.
They’ve got a tag match the next day, and it’s important. It would give them a shot at the Bucks, to get those titles, and oh, Jack wants the tag titles. He and Luchasaurus are good; he knows they could get them, that they could win, if only they’d get the chance.
And that’s why, when they lose, the whole thing ends up feeling like such a punch in the gut. Jack’s head is pounding from getting knocked onto the floor. Marko offers him a towel filled with ice, though it only does so much, numbing the pain a bit. Jack’s angry and he’s frustrated, and more than anything else, he wants to get away from everyone else backstage.
That should be their title chance. They’ve come up short again, just like always.
Medical takes awhile to clear him. Jack sits against the brick wall and waits for them to make sure his brain wasn’t rattled around his skull. Luchasaurus and Marko are waiting for him, but Jack can’t think of anything he wants to do less than slide into the back of a car with them.
He motions at his neck, cutting. Luchasaurus tilts his head to the side, surprised. “You don’t want to ride?”
Jack shakes his head, then points out the doors to the night beyond the arena. “You’re going to walk?” Luchasaurus continues.
Jack nods. “Okay,” Luchasaurus says, and shrugs. He doesn’t try to stop Jack when Jack wants to do something else, and it’s always appreciated. “Be careful.”
The car takes off, and Jack heads back into the arena. He’ll walk home, but not yet. Losing has settled heavy around his shoulders. His temples throb. He maneuvers around the staffers and heads to the back of the stands, then takes the ladder until he gets to the top, where Darby sits with his phone out. He looks vaguely surprised when Jack drags himself across the grating.
“Hey,” Darby says. “I didn’t know if you’d…”
He trails off. Jack’s face must have everything on display; he lost his ability to hide things somewhere between the third and fourth time he got slammed into the apron. He’s exhausted, and he’s mad, and mostly, he’s mad at himself for not being better. The metal creaks as he heaves himself down onto the suspended bridge.
Darby is quiet for a second. “Sorry. About tonight. I saw the match.”
Jack closes his eyes to try and block everything beyond their location out: the voices, the scuffing of the cleaning crew, the thudding of tables being moved around. Darby doesn’t offer platitudes. He doesn’t really move for awhile, long enough that some of the tension has shifted off of Jack’s lungs.
“I brought that iPod,” he says, voice soft. “Didn’t figure you had headphones, so I grabbed my old wired pair. Ain’t great, but they’ll do.” Jack opens his eyes again. Darby is holding the device aloft. “Wanna listen?”
Jack nods. He pushes one of the rubbery headphones into his ear, and after the music starts up, he closes his eyes again. It’s easy to get lost like this, with the beat and the lyrics. He can see why people listen all the time, no matter where they are. Tuning out the rest of the world allows him to float off a bit, and be somewhere else.
They’re close enough that their arms are brushing again. Jack scoots away just a tad, enough so that he can slump down and rest his head against Darby’s shoulder. His stomach twists, nerves flaring up. He’s afraid that Darby will push him away. He’s afraid that he’s ruined this whole thing. But more than anything else, he’s afraid of not doing it when he has the chance. Maybe, if Darby does fling Jack off, it’ll be worth it to try, just once, to feel what it’s like.
Darby doesn’t push Jack off. He doesn’t move away, either. In fact, he actually doesn’t do anything at all for one full song, as Jack’s weight slowly shifts down into Darby’s arm. Then, as Jack’s gotten comfortable, as the butterflies have startled up into his lungs to beat their wings against his ribs, Darby exhales. It’s long and measured and steady.
He still doesn’t shove Jack away.
They stay like that through the whole album, while Jack’s head slowly stops thundering in time with his heart beat, and their hands rest close enough on the metal grates that their skin touches, tiny sparks of heat and awareness skating up Jack’s arms.
Jack carries the iPod around with him everywhere. True to his word, Darby loaded it with the types of music Jack had responded positively to, and Jack’s got a library of songs to explore at his fingertips now. He listens to The Killers on the airplane home, and puts on the playlist called Pop Punk 2000s that night. He works his way through the full landscape of what’s labeled as ‘oldies’: Led Zepplin and Blondie and Pearl Jam and a huge array of one-offs from artists who never appear on the device again.
By the next week, he’s created his own playlist from everything he’s listened to. He gets, now, why everyone he sees when traveling has headphones on. He wishes, a little absently, that someone would have done this earlier for him, so he wouldn’t have had to go so long without it, lost in the fog of information overload and no real method of filtering results, but it doesn’t really matter. He’s grateful for it now.
When he gets to the catwalk the next week—late, because his flight departed over two hours behind schedule due to the plane they needed getting grounded in Chicago, Darby’s waiting for him. He doesn’t have the belt, but he does have his skateboard, something of a staple with him at shows.
“So?” he asks, smiling.
Jack shows him everything he’s singled out, all the songs he’s put on the playlist that he plays over and over again, and Darby just seems delighted the entire time. After Jack tucks the iPod back into his pocket, Darby raises both eyebrows at him. “Has anyone ever taught you how to skateboard?”
Jack shakes his head. Darby stands up and holds his hand out. “Let’s go, then.”
For the first time, they head outside Daily’s Place. The whole space is dotted with dual post lamps, flooding the parking lot that twists and winds around the parking spaces. At this time of night, it’s quiet; the only cars are the local staffers who drive, so there aren’t many. Even security isn’t present, though they’ll show up tomorrow for the broadcast.
Jack inhales deeply. Looking out at the concrete spanning wide, this is a movie moment. He’s not sure what the Hallmark movie would make of this, but it probably doesn’t matter much. It skims up his arms and leaves goosebumps on his skin.
“Here,” Darby says. He chooses a spot in the middle, ostensibly where there’s little else for Jack to kill himself on. “One foot up.”
Jack complies, rolling the skateboard a few times back and forth. His sole rests squarely on it. The feel is much different than being up on the post and the ropes, but the quickening of his stomach ends up the same. If he knocks himself loopy here, he’s going to have a hard time functioning in his match, that’s for sure. “What if…”
“You won’t fall,” Darby says. “But it’s hard to figure out the balance, at first.” He holds his hands out, palms up. “I got you.”
Jack’s heart clogs his throat when he reaches for Darby’s fingers and curls his own around. Darby’s hands are so warm. “They’ll kill you if I end up with a head injury.”
Every time he says something, Darby grins; it makes Jack want to do it more. “Then don’t get a head injury. I’d hate to disappoint people.”
Jack lifts his foot off the ground for half a second, and the skateboard nearly goes flying beneath him. “I’m gonna die.”
“You’re not gonna die,” Darby promises. His grip tightens.
Jack almost dies. At least he comes pretty close to it. Turns out, those wheels are far more slippery than he thought, and his balance is far worse. But by the end, he can stay upright for a little while before the whole thing threatens to upend him and he hops off. He almost brains himself on the parking lot at least three separate times, though he’s laughing, and Darby is too, so he doesn’t really mind.
They don’t go back into Daily’s Place when Jack decides he’s courted death enough for one night. Instead, they walk back to the hotel side by side. It’s the first time they’ve been somewhere other than the arena, and Jack’s hyper aware of that fact. Attempting to corral his thundering heart does nothing; he’s stuck, it seems, in a perpetual state of overwhelm as Darby’s shoulder presses into his and neither of them shift away.
“Thank you,” Jack says, about halfway through the walk, while the road that loops around the full complex hums with cars.
“For what?”
Jack thinks back to all the other times he’s shown up and not known how to do something or what the expectations are. He remembers how it was always Luchasaurus who navigated things for him, and he’s starting to realize that’s largely just because no one else would. “My background is… unique. I don’t know a lot. So, thank you for not holding that against me.”
Darby doesn’t answer for long enough that Jack panics a bit and thinks he needs to add something more, so he says, “A lot of people don’t understand, I think.”
“I lived out of my car for awhile,” Darby replies, after another pause that turns Jack’s stomach into knots. “Just… transient. Didn’t even have a mailing address.” When Jack looks at him, Darby shrugs. “A lotta different backgrounds, y’know? Sometimes, that leads to the good stuff.”
“Is this the good stuff?” Jack asks, quieter than he’d meant to.
Darby doesn’t answer, but he smiles. The lamps lining the pathway running east to west catch on the curves of his face.
The butterflies press up against Jack’s skin, an explosion in his abdomen. “Some people here are…” He trails off. “Not exactly good stuff.”
“Oh, some people here suck.” Darby laughs, loud and bright. “God, MJF sucks so bad.”
Jack’s chest loosens a bit. “He really does.”
He wants to hold Darby’s hands again, wishes they were back in the parking lot, even though the skateboarding was probably a threat to his well-being. He’s itching to lace their fingers together and he isn’t sure if he’s allowed. The movies never really explained how much fear ends up worked into the whole process of liking someone; they’ve all glossed over the most gut-wrenching part and turned it into a mass-produced assembly line, when in reality, Jack’s half-convinced he’s going to puke up his own guts out of anxiety alone. No one ever explained how isolating it is, standing on the side of a cliff wondering if he’ll end up jumping into the abyss without anyone there to stop his fall. He ends up not doing anything, afraid of the consequences, but as they turn around one of the corners, their hands slip together on account of walking so close to each other.
Darby’s index finger slides against Jack’s. It curls hesitantly around, and the wind is nearly knocked outta Jack’s lungs. When Jack shifts a little, he gets their fingers entwined, just those two, but it’s enough. He’s pretty sure he’s not alone here.
They stay like that, silent, until they get to the crosswalk and the hotel’s erratically lit windows looms in front of them, and then Darby pulls away to press the button. Jack’s heart beat is a roar against his ears.
He doesn’t say anything until they get back to the lobby. “Good luck tomorrow,” Jack says outside the elevators. He’s already missing the contact.
Darby smiles. Every instance of that smile summons another wave of heat licking up through Jack’s chest. “You, too.”
Jack wins the next day, but Darby doesn’t.
Honestly, Jack just hadn’t even thought that Darby could lose. Somehow, he’d built the guy up to being a larger than life spike of adrenaline that wouldn’t stop, no matter what, and while he was mostly correct, he hadn’t accounted for Miro getting him in a chokehold after a brutal match until Darby’s eyes had rolled back in his head, limbs limp. It’s the kind of thing that Jack’s always a little afraid of happening to him, and simply hadn’t accounted for having to watch happen to someone else. Especially not someone he likes.
They have to haul him out of the ring, the staffers—takes three of them because he’s nothing but dead weight until they hit the tunnels, and even then, all he can really do is sort of kick uselessly at the floor. By the time they get back to the med quarters, he’s furious. Jack suspects all that adrenaline that was rendered useless when his consciousness slipped away, all that fury, has bottled up inside his veins and needed somewhere to go. He lost the belt, and he wasn’t even awake to see it stripped from his hands.
One of the med staff attempts to get an ice pack against Darby’s neck, because of course, given how tightly Miro had his arms around it, the skin will purple within a day, and Darby sort of just shoves the guy away. He slides down to the floor as his head drops into his hands. Sitting there, against the brick, he looks more miserable than Jack has ever seen anyone look before. The staffer tries to approach again, and Darby jerks away like a spooked colt. Maybe he yells something, but all that comes out is an angry growl, the kind that’s positively punched free.
Jack doesn’t really think, he just moves. He grabs the ice pack from the staffer and kneels in front of Darby’s position. His knees end up slotting between Darby’s scuffed ring boots. And Darby shudders when Jack gets the ice against his neck, like he’s thinking about flailing again until he figures out who it is.
Darby doesn’t kick Jack away. He doesn’t shove Jack back. He stays where he is, head in his palms, and allows Jack to press the ice against his neck. His shoulders shake against the wall; his breathing comes rasping and labored, half on account for how draining the match was and half due to the damage to his trachea, and Jack just holds the ice where it is until his fingers throb with the cold, his other hand curling around the side of Darby’s face.
This isn’t what he’d wanted. They were supposed to have a big finale moment, like the smooth-haired corporate woman finally quitting her lawyer job right before she’s made partner because she’s in love with the quiet man from her hometown who sells Christmas trees for a living. Instead, they’re both on the dirty tiles, and Darby’s wheezing in misery.
Darby coughs out a wretched-sounding, “Fuck,” before his hands slide down onto Jack’s forearms. His grip is tight, fingernails stinging.
“I’m sorry,” Jack whispers.
Darby inhales, and it’s awful: twisted and wet. “Fuck.”
He doesn’t say anything more, and eventually, Jack switches the hand holding the ice pack so he can press it against the other side of Darby’s neck, but Darby’s fingers stay where they are, bruisingly tight around Jack’s arms.
They end up, like always, in the rafters.
For a long time, they sit in silence. Darby doesn’t offer anything, though at least his breathing has steadied somewhat, and Jack doesn’t know what to say in the best of situations.
Finally, Darby blows all the air out of his lungs. “So that’s it, then.”
Jack can’t get his tongue wrapped around the right words, so he says nothing. Their shoulders are touching, as usual, the pinpricks of excitement still there even though the situation rings so horrible.
“Did you watch it?” Darby asks. He’s staring out at nothing, at the darkness covering the ring. “The match?”
Jack nods. He isn’t even sure that Darby sees the answer, but then Darby asks, “Did it look okay? Did I at least fight til the end?”
Everything swells up in Jack’s chest. “I don’t think I’m the best person to ask,” he says, dipping his chin down. “The whole time, I couldn’t…”
When he fails to continue, Darby asks, rough, “What?”
“I couldn’t breathe,” Jack admits. He doesn’t say the rest: that his fear was choking him, that seeing Darby go limp beneath Miro’s hold nearly took him out at the knees, that he was so panicked he’d had to lean against the wall watching the backstage feed. Maybe he should, but he just can’t get it out.
Darby is quiet for a long time. It’s long enough that Jack’s a wreck by the end, and then all he says is, “Jack.”
Nothing prepared him for this moment, for knowing that he was strapped to the tracks, watching the steam engine barrel down on him. This is somehow so much worse than squaring off against a threat with gnashing teeth and animal instincts, because here, he’s gonna be devoured from the inside out and still be expected to function afterwards. No one talks about how much he wants to claw his own skin off his bones.
God, Jack is desperate to cleave his skin off his bones.
“Why are you here?” Darby asks, almost a whisper.
Jack sucks in a warped chestful of air. “Don’t you know?”
It was an honest question, is the worst part; an honest question that he both does and doesn’t want an answer to. Darby’s fingers wrap around Jack’s chin, nudging his face up until Jack has no choice but to look him in the eyes.
“I think so,” Darby says, so soft Jack can barely hear it. His eyes rove across Jack’s face in a way that probably, before now, Jack might have found overbearing. He doesn’t let go of Jack’s chin. God, his eyes are blue. He was just absolutely destroyed in the ring, and his eyes are stupidly, impossibly blue. Jack fears he’ll choke on nothing. “I’m gonna kiss you.”
“Yeah,” Jack breathes.
In the movies, it’s always quite forceful. Sometimes, the big city woman launches herself at the small town man with impressive momentum as their faces smash against each other. Other times, the man who owns the only wood carving studio in their upstate Vermont tourist trap takes the woman with white teeth who works in Hollywood advertising and dips her low when he kisses her, enough that one of her feet extends out. But Jack’s first kiss isn’t actually anything like any of that. It’s the featherlight warmth of Darby’s mouth against his own, just enough pressure that Jack could, if he wanted, pull back and end contact immediately.
He doesn’t want to. He kisses back, getting the corner of Darby’s mouth because he’s just a bit off-center, too eager. He likes this—likes the way it feels beneath his lips when Darby breathes in, likes the way the sensation smolders in his belly. He kisses Darby again, gets pressure against his mouth and meets Darby halfway. Turns out, this is ridiculously easy to do. And he wants to keep doing it, except that Darby pulls away.
To be fair, he’s a mess after the match. He needs a shower, and probably more ice, and the remains of his paint is still smeared across his skin, so part of it has probably transferred over to Jack’s face.
But, oh, Jack just wants to kiss him again. He stares at Darby while Darby’s face splits into a smile and his thumb traces along Jack’s jaw.
“Wanna go back to the hotel and watch a movie?” Darby asks. “We could watch the Hallmark channel.”
Jack laughs, and laughs, and laughs, because he can’t figure out how to push down the joy bubbling up through his form.
They do watch a movie, too. Darby showers first, and then turns the television on.
“Not exactly Hallmark,” Darby says, skipping through to the channel he’s spied and then hitting the volume tab a few times, “but it is an early-ought teen rom-rom, so it’s kinda close.”
They end up side by side on the bed. Jack curls against Darby’s shoulder, cognizant that the man’s skin has to be positively on fire after everything and trying to keep his touch light accordingly, until Darby loops his arm across Jack’s shoulders. Darby’s soap smells like leaves after the rain, and Jack presses his nose into the junction of Darby’s neck. His hand slides up to tangle in the cotton of the t-shirt Darby put on, the fabric that’s caught the droplets of water leftover from the spray.
Darby’s hand cups the side of Jack’s face, the one that’s thrown over Jack’s shoulder. He presses a kiss against Jack’s temple, absurdly gentle.
“Can I ask you something?” he asks, which is a question in and of itself, really, and Jack’s never quite figured out why it takes two questions just to get to one.
“No, I’ve never…” Jack trails off. He figures he’s said enough—if that wasn’t Darby’s next question, it would have come soon anyway. It’s the sort of thing he has picked up on through all those years. The duality of the movies versus real life, anyway, is that the movies love protagonists with completely blank pasts, but that modern society finds it either laughable or somehow offensive.
“Yeah, I figured that out already.” Darby laughs, and his hand stays where it is, thumb against Jack’s jawline. “I’m not askin’ about that.”
“Oh.”
“Why me?” Darby asks.
Jack’s fingers curl against Darby’s t-shirt. His tongue swells, sticking to the roof of his mouth. No one ever told him about the physical effects of this, either, and he’s starting to feel remarkably ill-prepared in ways he’d never anticipated.
“Hey,” Darby tries. “It’s fine, you don’t have to—”
“There’s butterflies,” Jack whispers. His only salvation is how close his mouth is to the cotton, the way it caresses his chin. “There’s butterflies when I’m around you.”
Darby stills, and the only real way that Jack can interpret it is poorly, so he’s midway through an absolute spiral before he can choke out, “That’s stupid, right?”
“What? No.” Darby huffs out a laugh against Jack’s forehead that picks up a few locks of his hair. “It’s nice.” Then he drops another kiss, languid, against Jack’s skin. “Ditto.”
“I could still beat you up,” Jack says.
“Could not,” Darby replies, and then amends, “Well, maybe you could right now, honestly. I feel like I got fuckin’ hit with a truck.”
They only watch half the movie before Darby falls asleep. And even when Jack pushes up a bit to check, Darby doesn’t wake up. Jack ends up having to tug the blankets out from under him to get him down in the sheets; that seems to be enough to rouse him slightly, at least enough to tap his fingers against Jack’s shoulder.
“Stay?” Darby mumbles, half-muffled by the pillowcase as Jack shimmies him horizontal, a terrible angle.
Jack’s shared a room with Luchasaurus, twice, and Marko once. He and Luchasaurus had separate beds, the double-booking a cost-saving method by the company in the early days, but Jack had actually split a bed with Marko. He’d spent the night as close to the edge as he could get when Marko starfished across the mattress and kicked Jack in the back. He’d had bruises for days afterwards. Neither of those times feels like it compares to this, though.
Jack never understood the intimacy of sleeping. When it was simply survival, it meant nothing, but here and now, with the hotel room dark around them? The whole situation is different. It’s a vulnerability to lay your head down next to someone, to trust them to watch your back during the night.
“Okay,” Jack says, impossibly quiet. He clicks the television off, plunging the room into blackness. And then he curls around Darby, rewarded with Darby’s arm sliding over his side. He suspects that he should fall asleep quickly, but he’s far too keyed up to manage that. He lays as still as he can while his heart pounds in his chest, the situational overwhelm drowning his thoughts. He must do a terrible job at it, fidgeting, because Darby sort of groans.
“Can hear you thinkin’,” Darby grumbles. Jack had thought he’d fallen asleep. “Your brain’s fuckin’ loud.”
“Sorry,” Jack says, wincing.
“Not comfortable?”
Jack never wants to move again. “Very comfortable.”
“Then what the fuck is keepin’ you awake right now?”
“I keep, uh… I keep thinking about Marko’s Hallmark movies.”
Darby barks out an exhausted sounding laugh. “What? Are you shitting me? Why the fuck are you thinking about movies right now?”
“It’s…” Jack clears his throat a little. Darby is warm. Honestly, Jack knows he can drift off eventually, as long as he figures out how to silence his thoughts. “It’s my only frame of reference.”
“In those movies,” Darby asks, slurred with sleep. “What happens next?”
“Well, one of us would need to call our high-profile job in New York or Los Angeles, and tell them that we are not accepting the promotion, because we’ve realized we are simply not cut out for that fast-paced lifestyle and what we really want to do is design artisan baskets made from dried leaves harvested from our love’s organic beet farm.”
There’s a pause, the atmosphere swelling, and then Darby loses it. He laughs so loud Jack is sure he’s gonna wake up whoever is in the room next to them, and he doesn’t stop. And Jack doesn’t even mind, because the sound of the absolute delight is worth it.
“Dude,” Darby says, punctuated every time he apparently thinks about the situation Jack just described again. “I don’t know anything about basket-weaving.”
“You can have the farm, if you’d like,” Jack offers.
“Oh my god, I hate beets.” Darby turns over, chest still shaking from mirth. His arms circle around Jack’s torso. “We’ve gotta get you on some better TV, man.”
“Okay,” Jack agrees. He doesn’t mind finding something new to watch, as long as they can watch like this: tangled up together.
He wonders if this is supposed to be uncomfortable, with their knees knocking together and Darby’s exhales against his cheek, but it’s almost unbearably nice. No one has ever wrapped their arms around Jack like this, let their skin rest so comfortably against his like this. Yeah, he can fall asleep like this; already, his heart beat is slowing, lulled into relaxation.
Darby presses one last kiss against Jack’s forehead. “Night, Jack.”
“Night, Darby,” Jack whispers.