Post by brodie on Jun 27, 2019 7:03:20 GMT -5
The rolling hills set a beautiful background for the simple house. Set on carefully tended land, the scene was a little familiar to those who watched valor faithfully. A horse, a goat, animals scattered about the property but she paid them no mind as heavy boot fell on the old deck. The wood beneath her foot creaking as she tested her footing. Had she been anyone else perhaps she would have remarked on the beauty of the spot. But she was not And this was no usual social call. She knew he was out, had planned her approach carefully.
And now, Brodie took a seat on the old deck, kicking her feet up and a cigarette perched between Scarlett lips, she thought nothing of it as she waited patiently, her one eye not covered by a patch, looked out over the land before her as she anticipated his approach; puffing on that cigarette between her lips.
Cosmo had made a habit of the hike. It was therapeutic to be home and have a schedule, something to look forward to now that his antics with Savell were no more. With his hiking backpack tossed over his back he had hooked his thumbs into the straps and with his backwards hat and bare feet he almost had the appearance of someone on their way back from the school yard. It was the same pattern he had followed every time he was home. During the evening he would gather all this things, write a note for Savell, and then break over that small horizon to the view of his front deck to see if anything had changed.
This time it had.
There was no hesitation from Cooper, because for a split second his heart pounded against his rib cage as if it were trying to be released. This was the reunion he had been waiting for over the last few days. As he drew closer, he saw the wispy smoke from the end of the cigarette and then his eyes drew to the eye patch.
Brodie.
The invitation had been tongue in cheek, but one he guessed Brodie had taken very seriously after all. So when he reached the front step he took his eyes off of her and went to his front door. Taking the note, he tucked it into his pocket and disappeared into the house, leaving Brodie right where she was perched.
A few minutes of clanging in the kitchen, Cosmo remerged from the front door with two cups of coffee in his hand. One jet black, the other looking like a child made it because of the color with the mixed in cream and sugar. He sat the cups down on a table beside her chair and then he took a seat in the rocking chair beside her and gently began to rock back and forth as the mismatched King and Queen surveyed their surroundings quietly as Cosmo sipped his coffee.
She didn’t move a single inch his entire approach, her one good eye barely following him as he disappeared into the house, her mind ticking over the note she hadn’t noticed upon arrival. She sat almost eerily still in her chair until he emerged with the cups. As her cigarette all but extinguished herself, she seamlessly replaced it with another, sparking it with a zippo lighter she drew from her pocket, the lighter was old and beaten up, not something picked up from a recent trip. As she slid the lighter back into her pocket she finally looked at the cup, a slight quirk of her lip before another puff on the end of her chosen habit, letting the smoke curl up in the air between them.
”How many notes will it be?” Her question sounded more like she was musing aloud, not asking him directly, her eye still not returning to him as she finally lifted the cup, bringing it close to her face and inhaling the scent. Her movements were so fluid it was as though she knew every last thing she was going to do before she did it. Her free hand lifted to run a finger over her eyepatch as she finally turned her head to look at him.
”You are every part the cliche you like people to believe and yet...” moving her hand away from her face she upturned her palm as though holding something invisible in it, as her fist slowly closed around it she half chuckled, expelling a little more smoke from her lungs than usual. ”It’s all bullshit.”[/color]
As she spoke, the smell of smoke lingered. Cooper did not mind it even though he wasn’t a smoker. It was strong, but it was a gritty reminder of how real the situation he was really was. He let his fingers explore the ceramic of his favorite coffee mug as he let he pause linger between them for a moment. As his back leaned on the rocking chair he curled one of is long legs underneath him and continued to stare out into the darkening yard. After long deliberation he decided to speak, still rocking back and forth with his one foot arched and his toe rocking him in rhythm.
”As many as it takes, I guess.” ”His voice was rather flat and dead, but his face was bright and alive. Through it all, he had remained clean. No alcohol, no drugs, and no junk food. So although he stared ahead like a strung out zombie, he was alert and very aware of every single thing around him. ”I…””
Pausing, he took another long drink of his coffee.
”And you would know that better than anyone, wouldn’t you?”” That’s when he turned his head to meet her gaze for the first time. His eyes locking on not the eyepatch, but her good eye. ”But I don’t care if you think it’s bullshit, or if anyone else thinks it’s bullshit. I need it for myself. Because if I don’t have that, what the fuck do I have?”
”What the fuck do you have.” She mirrored his words back to him in a rash of a tone, her eye not once moving from his gaze until she finally inclined her head, leaning into the shrug. A more animated movement than she would usually make. ”Have you considered the answer to that?” Placing the cup down she finally pulled the cigarette from her lips, a ring of red lipstick thick around it as she rolled it between her fingers, the yellowish embers dangerously close to her skin, but still her eyes remained on him.
She allowed a breath, or three to pass between them before she continued speaking. In all truth she had no idea why she had come here; almost her entire time in Valor had been locked into a violent battle with a man who, when it Came time to step up. Had turned tail and run, his reasoning didn’t matter to her. He had run away.
But Cooper. He was too proud, or too stupid to run and no matter how many times he trawled out the same words, about suffering and heartache... talking like a man already resigned to a fate out of his hands. Something burned beneath that she recognised. Which, she supposed in those breaths, was perhaps why she had come after all.
”Do I strike you as someone who cares what people think?” She lifted that spare hand and tapped at the extravagant eye patch. Then moved her hand to wrap a few strands of hair around her fingers, pulling it back and leaning her neck to match the tug, mimicking an action she had done for the cameras a hundred times.
”No, no you don’t.” He said as he adjusted his headband as he leaned back. His eyes unwavering from hers. ”And I’m not trying to live up to the expectations of other people anymore. I’m not trying to be someone I’m not for them, or play a part like you may think. I got one crutch, one vice, one thing that keeps me grounded when everything is falling to shit. That’s pro wrestling, competition… athletic competition.”
”I can live with whatever Ri-Savell has done because I know I’m a better WRESTLER than she is. I can live with her going off with who the fuck ever because I know I’m a better wrestler than they are.” His eyes burned into hers. ”And I swear the wars we’ve been through? I’ll do 100 more of them. Because I’m not going anywhere. If even for out of spite at this point, if I can’t even walk to the ring they can wheel me down because I won’t give up. If you want to do this forever, then we will fucking do it forever.”
Despite his words, he sat the coffee mug down gently between them and then his hand went to her lighter. He took it in between his fingers and began playing with it as he eyes finally dropped from hers. Skillfully he tossed the lighter up and down in his hand, giving it a spin while in mid-air.
Brodie had marked Cosmo the second he had walked through the door. He hadn’t forgotten got. Even on his worst days, that threat or… whatever it was. It pushed him to be the best competitor he could be.
She shifted in her chair, seeming almost uneasy at his handling the lighter, sitting on the chairs edge she leaned her elbows to the edge of the table and propped her chin on one. ”Because you’re a better wrestler than she is.” The words were drawn out and slow, as though she was trying to understand what pertinence wrestling ability had to heartbreak. She hasn’t had her heartbroken since she was too young to know the feeling. It all seemed like a distant and foreign concept.
But pain, she knew all about pain.
”You think I came here to issue some kind of threat, that we all play our parts down to our bones.” Finally the cigarette nicked at her skin, a delay, she seemed not to feel it and then a flinch as though skin and brain connected all at once and she dropped it, her boot extinguishing the cigarette before he could even blink. Her eyes followed the path it had fallen. ”For some, a mask is... just a mask.”
She brought her eyes back to him, but stayed fixated on that lighter, her bottom lip being bore into by bright white teeth as she sucked in a breath, something between frustration and exhaustion, but she didn’t let a second of it show on her near expressionless face.
”I said I wanted to see you suffer. And here I sit, watching you suffer. So I wonder, is this what I wanted. Or...” finally she snatches the lighter mid throw, closing her hand around it and pressing it to the table, palm down her fingers creating almost a cage around the possibly prized possession. ”Has the human condition become so alien that even suffering, it is empty in the heart of a man who doesn’t know himself.”
”I told you. I know who the fuck I am.” For a moment he wanted to take the lighter back but instead he pushed himself up from the seat and then moved to the porch banister in front of her. As he stood, one arm crossed over his bulky chest as the other formed a stand to hold his chin up. ”And if you’re not here to threaten me then what…”
More confusion for him as he put his head in his hands for a brief moment. He leaned down and let all of his hair cover his face before he pushed it back again with the floral headband he was wearing. Brodie did want to see him suffer, and for the longest period of time he thought she meant losing the title, or losing his golden boy status in Valor. Both of those he had managed to keep and no matter how rough around the edges he got, he continued to sell out arenas all the while main eventing every single show he was on.
”What do you want me to do? Do you want me to find myself so you can see me suffer some more? I lost my grandmother, yet you didn’t stop hunting. I lost Savell. You’re still on the hunt. I lost someone I thought was my mentor, someone who was a father figure to me. And you side with him to come after me. We can talk about the business side all you want, but yeah. I take that part all the way to the bone.”
”And now you have me here, alone. To do whatever you want… and this is what I get. What else do you need to see or want to see?” He held up his phone. ”Want to see how pathetic I am? About how I would take the girl back who was with my friend a day after we broke up?”
As he began to fall apart before her eyes, she paused, leaning back in the chair she had taken up residence in, she left the lighter sitting on the table. For a moment, her face seemed to soften, pulling another cigarette from the packet she tapped it against the table, shaking her head. ”You know who you are. The champion, the golden boy. The perfect little soldier who keeps marching on.”
She stood in a fluid movement that was almost too quick for a person, her right index finger pressing together against his chest she craned her neck back to look up at him, an odd smile on her lips. ”This.” She pressed harder against the Center of his chest, as though she could feel the broken pieces beneath her fingertip. ”This is who you are?”
She pulled her hand away and seemed to fall back into the chair, landing gracefully sneering and shaking her head, she finally retrieved the lighter to spark up once more, speaking with the cigarette perched between her lips. ”I partner with no one, the man you seek approval from even now? He is nothing to me. This isn’t about me, it was never about me...” she let her words trail away as she shook her head once more.
”I have seen men break, buckle and fall to pieces under the weight of their own judgment. You think I seek to destroy you because I talk about suffering, because I have no taste for the way the world turns... but you don’t understand.” She finally exhaled, a cloud of smoke shrouding her face for a moment as she let out a single solitary laugh. One tone, barely present at all before it was gone.
”What do YOU want?”
Even with her quick movements, Cosmo didn’t bother to flinch. She could have put a stake right through his chest and he would have accepted it, because it would have at least released some of the pressure on his chest. The tightness had been there now for a while; the pain was still very real. Feeling her touch in this setting was… bizarre. The only touch he had felt from her was her scrambling to try and end him in the matches or wars they had been a part of. As Cosmo looked from her finger, his eyes rested on her lips where she gave that odd smile. Before he could remove her finger, she was back in the chair and she had lit another cigarette.
”I admittedly don’t understand, Brodie.” As he said that he leaned down the post which helped hold up the deck and sat on the floor before her and folded his legs underneath him and gently let his head bump against the wood. It thumped like a heartbeat as he continued to do it, his eyes not on hers but now to the side, exploring the cracks in the deck and then following each one back up Brodie’s body and to her eyes.
”I didn’t try and figure you out like everyone else is, or get inside of your head, or belittle you.” He pursed his lips. ”I’m not going to try and sit here and say what you underneath all of that,” he motioned to her up and down.
”I want to get over it all. I want this feeling to go away.”
”You want the pain to stop.” It wasn’t a question, a statement of the obvious. Her eyes followed his, the way he looked her over. A slight shift in her seat, barely noticeable as she pulled the cigarette from her lips to chew at them, exhaling the smoke through her nose now as she nodded, as though he was finally understanding. ”Welcome to the land of the living, Mr. Cooper. That is all anyone wants, for the pain to stop. And you can fight, you can scratch and scream and battle against the wind itself. But that pain won’t fade, it won’t stop so long as you choose to carry it with you.”
She snatched up the lighter once again, the battered side resting against her open palm, she held it out to him, her spread hand resting in the distance between them as she placed that cigarette back to her painted red lips. Her eyes looking him over just as he had looked over her.
”Share it.”
Cosmo found himself watching her movements. From her red lips, following every word to the smoke that floated above her and disappeared. Then back to her fingertips which worked around the lighter. While his eyes followed it, he found it being presented to him. Like a child unsure if the presenter was going to pull it back at the last second, he reached out and placed his hand on top of the lighter and took it back from her, his fingertips brushing her palm as he flicked the lighter to make it come alive with fire. Just as quickly as he appeared he let go of the small button and it extinguished.
”Share it? Like?” He paused and looked from the lighter and back up to her eyes… or eye.
Her eye flickered to the flame for just a second, as quickly as her let the flame die, she looked back into his face. A defeated man wasn’t what she wanted to stare down at. As he sat there, looking broken and lost, she felt a stir or emotion inside of her, all at once she tried to quell it, just as he had the flame. But he wasn’t the same as Krähe had been... wasn’t that she was here.
”A problem shared.” She almost uttered the words,half of a sentence she had recited when the match had been announced, a phrase that had taken on a very different meaning away from the cameras and the eyes of people she tried so desperately to keep at arms length.
She let the cigarette burn out as she stared back at him, her words hanging between them like the lighter had, not moving not so much as a blink from that one good eye as she stared back at him.
As he saw her cigarette die out, he stood back up from his blubbering, mopey spot and stood over her. Leaning down he sparked the lighter back to life and relit it for her, all the while never breaking his gaze before he dropped the lighter back into her hand. There wasn’t anything gentle in the movement, it was more of a firm understanding. She didn’t need to say anything else, but he would have finished the sentence for her. Finally, he broke her gaze and turned his back to her. Both hands leaned on the porch railing as he pushed against it, his head down and looking at the ground below.
”Share it.” He muttered to himself as he knocked his knuckles a few times on the wood.
Everyone who had approached him, he had told them that he was fine. Cosmo hadn’t thrown Savell under the bus for what she had done, but he had shouldered the blame. And out of everyone that he could have possibly broke down on, it was the woman who had been chasing him the hardest, and the longest. The woman who had been digging her claws at his heels from the second she laid eyes on him, and suddenly he had found himself at her feet like he was praying at the altar for answers.
She watched him quietly for a little while, letting him lean into his own thought before she moved from her seat, stopping at the railing she turned her back to it and hopped up. Almost too jovial a move for her as she sat atop the railing now, cigarette held between her lips and knuckles gripping the railing. An odd degree of trust that she wouldn’t be pushed as she veered back to look at him, arching the one visible brow she has.
”Pain is like venom, a sickness... you hold it in and it poisons you. The longer you let it slick through your veins in the place of blood, the more it consumes..” she huffed out a little smoke, her words wrapped around the end of that cigarette as she spoke. ”So... suck it out, share it.”
When Cosmo finally raised up from his hunched over position, he was back eye level with her. As if he had worked from the floor all the way back up to her eyes and experienced every emotion in between. If he didn’t know her any better, she would have looked so fucking cool sitting up on his porch banister and smoking her cigarette. Like most things she did, he noticed that was effortlessly as well. Just like wrestling seemed to come natural to her. His gaze seemed to gravitate him back towards her as he moved in front of her on the banister, standing a good distance away from her knees.
”Yeah, it makes sense…” he trailed off. His eyes the focused on her eye patch. It was one of the more brutal things he had ever done in a wrestling match before. ”I have plenty of open wounds to pull from.” He finished as he stepped forward.
”Can I see it?” He blurted it out, his head nodded towards the injury he had given her in their Apex Championship. ”Your eye?”
Swinging on the bannister she paused for a moment before swinging in towards him. Leaning her head to right and offering up her left eye, she pressed her teeth into her bottom lip once again.
Only one person had seen beneath the patch, an act of intimidation and cruelty. Not like this... but all the same she inclined her head, stretching her neck to wordlessly offer permission at his request.
When Brodie lifted her head, Cosmo stepped forward and admired the patch with his fingertips for a moment. He could smell the fumes of her cigarette as he breathed gently through his nose and then with one hand to his side he gently took his fingertips and raised the eyepatch up. Not a trace of remorse lined his featured as he let he eyepatch rest above her eye, just at her hairline. Softly with fingers traced over the injury like he had done with the eye patch.
”I wish I could say I regret this,” he said in a low voice. ”But I don’t. I loved… every fucking minute. Something about feeling your eyeball and eye socket, hearing you scream…” His jaw clenched as he continued to admire his handiwork.
”And I would do it again… in a heartbeat. I liked it. And I’m going to chase that feeling.” He sighed deeply and then just as softly as he had removed the patch, he put it back on her eye.
She leaned in just a little bit more, a smirk drawing back across her lips as she brought her head back straight, her one eye locked on his gaze as she purred the next words out at him. ”There.” She looked almost pleased, if she were able to look pleased. ”There is what you need. Not pathetic, not a mask... performing for no one, but honest without regard for judgment.”
Pushing up off the railing she stopped dead in front of him, neck craning to look up into his face all over again. Lighter back in her hand she slipped it into his pocket, nodding once before rounding him and falling back into the chair where she had been sitting for all the time before that moment.
”Is it out yet?”
”I wouldn’t say it is out,” he said as he continued to look at her. He had fought off the sudden urge to grab her throat when she exposed to it to him. But wasn’t that why she was here as well? To show that sometimes things that happen in the wrestling business should be left there. Couldn’t she have attacked him when he was on the floor before her, groveling. Couldn’t he have shoved her off the banister and broken her neck. He watched her settle back into the chair and he felt the heavy cigarette lighter in his pocket. He knew he needed to keep it as a reminder, a reminder from one of his greatest adversaries since he had been in the wrestling business.
”But… I get it. I understand.” His gut still burned with mixed emotions. Every time he had a waking moment that wasn’t focused on something else he had the image burned into his brain of Riley going off with Zeel. But if she wanted him to share how mad that image made him, he had a few choices over the next few weeks on who would feel that wrath.
Cosmo pulled her lighter back out of his pocket and flicked it again, tossing it up, casually gliding it between his fingers.
”What about you… you trying to get anything out?” And his eyes slowly met hers. "Or have you already? Is this what I'll be?"
Finishing that final cigarette, she smiled. Her lips slowly curbing into a careful and genuine smile before shaking her head. Just like before, each movement was fluid and purposeful, almost as though her presence on the porch could later be attributed to a fever dream thanks to too much work in the sun. Only the lighter he now had in his hands would serve as an anchor, proof of her presence after all.
”It will hurt. It always hurts... but now you understand.” Her teeth took residence on her bottom lip for just a second as she looked him over. When she first arrived she had second guessed her reasoning for being here, but now she knew. The right decision had been made.
”As for me? A story for another time.” As she stood from the chair, she turned around and about him, pushing up onto her toes to lean over his shoulder and send her whispered words straight to his ear, should anyone be attempting to over hear her.
”They may cheer the Apex.” The world had a little sting to it, almost as though she loathed giving any prominence to something so pointless in her own eyes. ”But you, will give them the man.” Before the word had finished forming she dropped back on her heels and stepped away, already halfway down the steps from the porch by the time her words had sunk in for him.
She paused to glance back, once at the foot of the stairs and smiled up at him, extending her arms as though she were about to take a bow for a great performance, only to then drop them, as though signalling that for the first time, someone outside of her world, had seen the real Brodie.
”Show them, who you really are.”
When she had leaned in with a whisper it had sent chills all over his body. Possibly from the action, possibly from the coldness of Brodie herself, and possibly because they had never been that close without the intent of arm. His arms stayed glued to his side as he listened to her and before he could react she was at the bottom of the steps. One step brought him to the tops of the stairs where he stretched his long arms out on either side and let his hands rest on the wooden columns.
When Cosmo had said that he and Brodie weren’t as different as she was acting, he wasn’t really speaking out of experience. He just knew he had experienced pain, experienced loss, he knew that he had been someone that people dreaded to see coming at one point in his life. There was something more under the surface and for some reason, he really wanted to know.
”I’ll have a cup waiting for you next time, then.” He nodded to their little spot on the porch where he had found her sitting. ”I look forward to hearing about it. Until then, I’ll show them. Hope it’s you in the ring when I do.” A smirk spread to his lips. And like the sunk disappearing over the horizon, so did she beyond the grassy distant hills.
[/font]
And now, Brodie took a seat on the old deck, kicking her feet up and a cigarette perched between Scarlett lips, she thought nothing of it as she waited patiently, her one eye not covered by a patch, looked out over the land before her as she anticipated his approach; puffing on that cigarette between her lips.
Cosmo had made a habit of the hike. It was therapeutic to be home and have a schedule, something to look forward to now that his antics with Savell were no more. With his hiking backpack tossed over his back he had hooked his thumbs into the straps and with his backwards hat and bare feet he almost had the appearance of someone on their way back from the school yard. It was the same pattern he had followed every time he was home. During the evening he would gather all this things, write a note for Savell, and then break over that small horizon to the view of his front deck to see if anything had changed.
This time it had.
There was no hesitation from Cooper, because for a split second his heart pounded against his rib cage as if it were trying to be released. This was the reunion he had been waiting for over the last few days. As he drew closer, he saw the wispy smoke from the end of the cigarette and then his eyes drew to the eye patch.
Brodie.
The invitation had been tongue in cheek, but one he guessed Brodie had taken very seriously after all. So when he reached the front step he took his eyes off of her and went to his front door. Taking the note, he tucked it into his pocket and disappeared into the house, leaving Brodie right where she was perched.
A few minutes of clanging in the kitchen, Cosmo remerged from the front door with two cups of coffee in his hand. One jet black, the other looking like a child made it because of the color with the mixed in cream and sugar. He sat the cups down on a table beside her chair and then he took a seat in the rocking chair beside her and gently began to rock back and forth as the mismatched King and Queen surveyed their surroundings quietly as Cosmo sipped his coffee.
She didn’t move a single inch his entire approach, her one good eye barely following him as he disappeared into the house, her mind ticking over the note she hadn’t noticed upon arrival. She sat almost eerily still in her chair until he emerged with the cups. As her cigarette all but extinguished herself, she seamlessly replaced it with another, sparking it with a zippo lighter she drew from her pocket, the lighter was old and beaten up, not something picked up from a recent trip. As she slid the lighter back into her pocket she finally looked at the cup, a slight quirk of her lip before another puff on the end of her chosen habit, letting the smoke curl up in the air between them.
”How many notes will it be?” Her question sounded more like she was musing aloud, not asking him directly, her eye still not returning to him as she finally lifted the cup, bringing it close to her face and inhaling the scent. Her movements were so fluid it was as though she knew every last thing she was going to do before she did it. Her free hand lifted to run a finger over her eyepatch as she finally turned her head to look at him.
”You are every part the cliche you like people to believe and yet...” moving her hand away from her face she upturned her palm as though holding something invisible in it, as her fist slowly closed around it she half chuckled, expelling a little more smoke from her lungs than usual. ”It’s all bullshit.”[/color]
As she spoke, the smell of smoke lingered. Cooper did not mind it even though he wasn’t a smoker. It was strong, but it was a gritty reminder of how real the situation he was really was. He let his fingers explore the ceramic of his favorite coffee mug as he let he pause linger between them for a moment. As his back leaned on the rocking chair he curled one of is long legs underneath him and continued to stare out into the darkening yard. After long deliberation he decided to speak, still rocking back and forth with his one foot arched and his toe rocking him in rhythm.
”As many as it takes, I guess.” ”His voice was rather flat and dead, but his face was bright and alive. Through it all, he had remained clean. No alcohol, no drugs, and no junk food. So although he stared ahead like a strung out zombie, he was alert and very aware of every single thing around him. ”I…””
Pausing, he took another long drink of his coffee.
”And you would know that better than anyone, wouldn’t you?”” That’s when he turned his head to meet her gaze for the first time. His eyes locking on not the eyepatch, but her good eye. ”But I don’t care if you think it’s bullshit, or if anyone else thinks it’s bullshit. I need it for myself. Because if I don’t have that, what the fuck do I have?”
”What the fuck do you have.” She mirrored his words back to him in a rash of a tone, her eye not once moving from his gaze until she finally inclined her head, leaning into the shrug. A more animated movement than she would usually make. ”Have you considered the answer to that?” Placing the cup down she finally pulled the cigarette from her lips, a ring of red lipstick thick around it as she rolled it between her fingers, the yellowish embers dangerously close to her skin, but still her eyes remained on him.
She allowed a breath, or three to pass between them before she continued speaking. In all truth she had no idea why she had come here; almost her entire time in Valor had been locked into a violent battle with a man who, when it Came time to step up. Had turned tail and run, his reasoning didn’t matter to her. He had run away.
But Cooper. He was too proud, or too stupid to run and no matter how many times he trawled out the same words, about suffering and heartache... talking like a man already resigned to a fate out of his hands. Something burned beneath that she recognised. Which, she supposed in those breaths, was perhaps why she had come after all.
”Do I strike you as someone who cares what people think?” She lifted that spare hand and tapped at the extravagant eye patch. Then moved her hand to wrap a few strands of hair around her fingers, pulling it back and leaning her neck to match the tug, mimicking an action she had done for the cameras a hundred times.
”No, no you don’t.” He said as he adjusted his headband as he leaned back. His eyes unwavering from hers. ”And I’m not trying to live up to the expectations of other people anymore. I’m not trying to be someone I’m not for them, or play a part like you may think. I got one crutch, one vice, one thing that keeps me grounded when everything is falling to shit. That’s pro wrestling, competition… athletic competition.”
”I can live with whatever Ri-Savell has done because I know I’m a better WRESTLER than she is. I can live with her going off with who the fuck ever because I know I’m a better wrestler than they are.” His eyes burned into hers. ”And I swear the wars we’ve been through? I’ll do 100 more of them. Because I’m not going anywhere. If even for out of spite at this point, if I can’t even walk to the ring they can wheel me down because I won’t give up. If you want to do this forever, then we will fucking do it forever.”
Despite his words, he sat the coffee mug down gently between them and then his hand went to her lighter. He took it in between his fingers and began playing with it as he eyes finally dropped from hers. Skillfully he tossed the lighter up and down in his hand, giving it a spin while in mid-air.
Brodie had marked Cosmo the second he had walked through the door. He hadn’t forgotten got. Even on his worst days, that threat or… whatever it was. It pushed him to be the best competitor he could be.
She shifted in her chair, seeming almost uneasy at his handling the lighter, sitting on the chairs edge she leaned her elbows to the edge of the table and propped her chin on one. ”Because you’re a better wrestler than she is.” The words were drawn out and slow, as though she was trying to understand what pertinence wrestling ability had to heartbreak. She hasn’t had her heartbroken since she was too young to know the feeling. It all seemed like a distant and foreign concept.
But pain, she knew all about pain.
”You think I came here to issue some kind of threat, that we all play our parts down to our bones.” Finally the cigarette nicked at her skin, a delay, she seemed not to feel it and then a flinch as though skin and brain connected all at once and she dropped it, her boot extinguishing the cigarette before he could even blink. Her eyes followed the path it had fallen. ”For some, a mask is... just a mask.”
She brought her eyes back to him, but stayed fixated on that lighter, her bottom lip being bore into by bright white teeth as she sucked in a breath, something between frustration and exhaustion, but she didn’t let a second of it show on her near expressionless face.
”I said I wanted to see you suffer. And here I sit, watching you suffer. So I wonder, is this what I wanted. Or...” finally she snatches the lighter mid throw, closing her hand around it and pressing it to the table, palm down her fingers creating almost a cage around the possibly prized possession. ”Has the human condition become so alien that even suffering, it is empty in the heart of a man who doesn’t know himself.”
”I told you. I know who the fuck I am.” For a moment he wanted to take the lighter back but instead he pushed himself up from the seat and then moved to the porch banister in front of her. As he stood, one arm crossed over his bulky chest as the other formed a stand to hold his chin up. ”And if you’re not here to threaten me then what…”
More confusion for him as he put his head in his hands for a brief moment. He leaned down and let all of his hair cover his face before he pushed it back again with the floral headband he was wearing. Brodie did want to see him suffer, and for the longest period of time he thought she meant losing the title, or losing his golden boy status in Valor. Both of those he had managed to keep and no matter how rough around the edges he got, he continued to sell out arenas all the while main eventing every single show he was on.
”What do you want me to do? Do you want me to find myself so you can see me suffer some more? I lost my grandmother, yet you didn’t stop hunting. I lost Savell. You’re still on the hunt. I lost someone I thought was my mentor, someone who was a father figure to me. And you side with him to come after me. We can talk about the business side all you want, but yeah. I take that part all the way to the bone.”
”And now you have me here, alone. To do whatever you want… and this is what I get. What else do you need to see or want to see?” He held up his phone. ”Want to see how pathetic I am? About how I would take the girl back who was with my friend a day after we broke up?”
As he began to fall apart before her eyes, she paused, leaning back in the chair she had taken up residence in, she left the lighter sitting on the table. For a moment, her face seemed to soften, pulling another cigarette from the packet she tapped it against the table, shaking her head. ”You know who you are. The champion, the golden boy. The perfect little soldier who keeps marching on.”
She stood in a fluid movement that was almost too quick for a person, her right index finger pressing together against his chest she craned her neck back to look up at him, an odd smile on her lips. ”This.” She pressed harder against the Center of his chest, as though she could feel the broken pieces beneath her fingertip. ”This is who you are?”
She pulled her hand away and seemed to fall back into the chair, landing gracefully sneering and shaking her head, she finally retrieved the lighter to spark up once more, speaking with the cigarette perched between her lips. ”I partner with no one, the man you seek approval from even now? He is nothing to me. This isn’t about me, it was never about me...” she let her words trail away as she shook her head once more.
”I have seen men break, buckle and fall to pieces under the weight of their own judgment. You think I seek to destroy you because I talk about suffering, because I have no taste for the way the world turns... but you don’t understand.” She finally exhaled, a cloud of smoke shrouding her face for a moment as she let out a single solitary laugh. One tone, barely present at all before it was gone.
”What do YOU want?”
Even with her quick movements, Cosmo didn’t bother to flinch. She could have put a stake right through his chest and he would have accepted it, because it would have at least released some of the pressure on his chest. The tightness had been there now for a while; the pain was still very real. Feeling her touch in this setting was… bizarre. The only touch he had felt from her was her scrambling to try and end him in the matches or wars they had been a part of. As Cosmo looked from her finger, his eyes rested on her lips where she gave that odd smile. Before he could remove her finger, she was back in the chair and she had lit another cigarette.
”I admittedly don’t understand, Brodie.” As he said that he leaned down the post which helped hold up the deck and sat on the floor before her and folded his legs underneath him and gently let his head bump against the wood. It thumped like a heartbeat as he continued to do it, his eyes not on hers but now to the side, exploring the cracks in the deck and then following each one back up Brodie’s body and to her eyes.
”I didn’t try and figure you out like everyone else is, or get inside of your head, or belittle you.” He pursed his lips. ”I’m not going to try and sit here and say what you underneath all of that,” he motioned to her up and down.
”I want to get over it all. I want this feeling to go away.”
”You want the pain to stop.” It wasn’t a question, a statement of the obvious. Her eyes followed his, the way he looked her over. A slight shift in her seat, barely noticeable as she pulled the cigarette from her lips to chew at them, exhaling the smoke through her nose now as she nodded, as though he was finally understanding. ”Welcome to the land of the living, Mr. Cooper. That is all anyone wants, for the pain to stop. And you can fight, you can scratch and scream and battle against the wind itself. But that pain won’t fade, it won’t stop so long as you choose to carry it with you.”
She snatched up the lighter once again, the battered side resting against her open palm, she held it out to him, her spread hand resting in the distance between them as she placed that cigarette back to her painted red lips. Her eyes looking him over just as he had looked over her.
”Share it.”
Cosmo found himself watching her movements. From her red lips, following every word to the smoke that floated above her and disappeared. Then back to her fingertips which worked around the lighter. While his eyes followed it, he found it being presented to him. Like a child unsure if the presenter was going to pull it back at the last second, he reached out and placed his hand on top of the lighter and took it back from her, his fingertips brushing her palm as he flicked the lighter to make it come alive with fire. Just as quickly as he appeared he let go of the small button and it extinguished.
”Share it? Like?” He paused and looked from the lighter and back up to her eyes… or eye.
Her eye flickered to the flame for just a second, as quickly as her let the flame die, she looked back into his face. A defeated man wasn’t what she wanted to stare down at. As he sat there, looking broken and lost, she felt a stir or emotion inside of her, all at once she tried to quell it, just as he had the flame. But he wasn’t the same as Krähe had been... wasn’t that she was here.
”A problem shared.” She almost uttered the words,half of a sentence she had recited when the match had been announced, a phrase that had taken on a very different meaning away from the cameras and the eyes of people she tried so desperately to keep at arms length.
She let the cigarette burn out as she stared back at him, her words hanging between them like the lighter had, not moving not so much as a blink from that one good eye as she stared back at him.
As he saw her cigarette die out, he stood back up from his blubbering, mopey spot and stood over her. Leaning down he sparked the lighter back to life and relit it for her, all the while never breaking his gaze before he dropped the lighter back into her hand. There wasn’t anything gentle in the movement, it was more of a firm understanding. She didn’t need to say anything else, but he would have finished the sentence for her. Finally, he broke her gaze and turned his back to her. Both hands leaned on the porch railing as he pushed against it, his head down and looking at the ground below.
”Share it.” He muttered to himself as he knocked his knuckles a few times on the wood.
Everyone who had approached him, he had told them that he was fine. Cosmo hadn’t thrown Savell under the bus for what she had done, but he had shouldered the blame. And out of everyone that he could have possibly broke down on, it was the woman who had been chasing him the hardest, and the longest. The woman who had been digging her claws at his heels from the second she laid eyes on him, and suddenly he had found himself at her feet like he was praying at the altar for answers.
She watched him quietly for a little while, letting him lean into his own thought before she moved from her seat, stopping at the railing she turned her back to it and hopped up. Almost too jovial a move for her as she sat atop the railing now, cigarette held between her lips and knuckles gripping the railing. An odd degree of trust that she wouldn’t be pushed as she veered back to look at him, arching the one visible brow she has.
”Pain is like venom, a sickness... you hold it in and it poisons you. The longer you let it slick through your veins in the place of blood, the more it consumes..” she huffed out a little smoke, her words wrapped around the end of that cigarette as she spoke. ”So... suck it out, share it.”
When Cosmo finally raised up from his hunched over position, he was back eye level with her. As if he had worked from the floor all the way back up to her eyes and experienced every emotion in between. If he didn’t know her any better, she would have looked so fucking cool sitting up on his porch banister and smoking her cigarette. Like most things she did, he noticed that was effortlessly as well. Just like wrestling seemed to come natural to her. His gaze seemed to gravitate him back towards her as he moved in front of her on the banister, standing a good distance away from her knees.
”Yeah, it makes sense…” he trailed off. His eyes the focused on her eye patch. It was one of the more brutal things he had ever done in a wrestling match before. ”I have plenty of open wounds to pull from.” He finished as he stepped forward.
”Can I see it?” He blurted it out, his head nodded towards the injury he had given her in their Apex Championship. ”Your eye?”
Swinging on the bannister she paused for a moment before swinging in towards him. Leaning her head to right and offering up her left eye, she pressed her teeth into her bottom lip once again.
Only one person had seen beneath the patch, an act of intimidation and cruelty. Not like this... but all the same she inclined her head, stretching her neck to wordlessly offer permission at his request.
When Brodie lifted her head, Cosmo stepped forward and admired the patch with his fingertips for a moment. He could smell the fumes of her cigarette as he breathed gently through his nose and then with one hand to his side he gently took his fingertips and raised the eyepatch up. Not a trace of remorse lined his featured as he let he eyepatch rest above her eye, just at her hairline. Softly with fingers traced over the injury like he had done with the eye patch.
”I wish I could say I regret this,” he said in a low voice. ”But I don’t. I loved… every fucking minute. Something about feeling your eyeball and eye socket, hearing you scream…” His jaw clenched as he continued to admire his handiwork.
”And I would do it again… in a heartbeat. I liked it. And I’m going to chase that feeling.” He sighed deeply and then just as softly as he had removed the patch, he put it back on her eye.
She leaned in just a little bit more, a smirk drawing back across her lips as she brought her head back straight, her one eye locked on his gaze as she purred the next words out at him. ”There.” She looked almost pleased, if she were able to look pleased. ”There is what you need. Not pathetic, not a mask... performing for no one, but honest without regard for judgment.”
Pushing up off the railing she stopped dead in front of him, neck craning to look up into his face all over again. Lighter back in her hand she slipped it into his pocket, nodding once before rounding him and falling back into the chair where she had been sitting for all the time before that moment.
”Is it out yet?”
”I wouldn’t say it is out,” he said as he continued to look at her. He had fought off the sudden urge to grab her throat when she exposed to it to him. But wasn’t that why she was here as well? To show that sometimes things that happen in the wrestling business should be left there. Couldn’t she have attacked him when he was on the floor before her, groveling. Couldn’t he have shoved her off the banister and broken her neck. He watched her settle back into the chair and he felt the heavy cigarette lighter in his pocket. He knew he needed to keep it as a reminder, a reminder from one of his greatest adversaries since he had been in the wrestling business.
”But… I get it. I understand.” His gut still burned with mixed emotions. Every time he had a waking moment that wasn’t focused on something else he had the image burned into his brain of Riley going off with Zeel. But if she wanted him to share how mad that image made him, he had a few choices over the next few weeks on who would feel that wrath.
Cosmo pulled her lighter back out of his pocket and flicked it again, tossing it up, casually gliding it between his fingers.
”What about you… you trying to get anything out?” And his eyes slowly met hers. "Or have you already? Is this what I'll be?"
Finishing that final cigarette, she smiled. Her lips slowly curbing into a careful and genuine smile before shaking her head. Just like before, each movement was fluid and purposeful, almost as though her presence on the porch could later be attributed to a fever dream thanks to too much work in the sun. Only the lighter he now had in his hands would serve as an anchor, proof of her presence after all.
”It will hurt. It always hurts... but now you understand.” Her teeth took residence on her bottom lip for just a second as she looked him over. When she first arrived she had second guessed her reasoning for being here, but now she knew. The right decision had been made.
”As for me? A story for another time.” As she stood from the chair, she turned around and about him, pushing up onto her toes to lean over his shoulder and send her whispered words straight to his ear, should anyone be attempting to over hear her.
”They may cheer the Apex.” The world had a little sting to it, almost as though she loathed giving any prominence to something so pointless in her own eyes. ”But you, will give them the man.” Before the word had finished forming she dropped back on her heels and stepped away, already halfway down the steps from the porch by the time her words had sunk in for him.
She paused to glance back, once at the foot of the stairs and smiled up at him, extending her arms as though she were about to take a bow for a great performance, only to then drop them, as though signalling that for the first time, someone outside of her world, had seen the real Brodie.
”Show them, who you really are.”
When she had leaned in with a whisper it had sent chills all over his body. Possibly from the action, possibly from the coldness of Brodie herself, and possibly because they had never been that close without the intent of arm. His arms stayed glued to his side as he listened to her and before he could react she was at the bottom of the steps. One step brought him to the tops of the stairs where he stretched his long arms out on either side and let his hands rest on the wooden columns.
When Cosmo had said that he and Brodie weren’t as different as she was acting, he wasn’t really speaking out of experience. He just knew he had experienced pain, experienced loss, he knew that he had been someone that people dreaded to see coming at one point in his life. There was something more under the surface and for some reason, he really wanted to know.
”I’ll have a cup waiting for you next time, then.” He nodded to their little spot on the porch where he had found her sitting. ”I look forward to hearing about it. Until then, I’ll show them. Hope it’s you in the ring when I do.” A smirk spread to his lips. And like the sunk disappearing over the horizon, so did she beyond the grassy distant hills.
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