If I Knew Then
Title: If I knew Then
Rating: T
Summary: Randy stared at John's profile in silence for a moment. He could practically hear the wheels turning in his lover's head. Knew he had taken that glorious trip down memory lane. Knew her phone call had only made things worse.
Warnings: AU'ish, Domestic-sort of, Character bashing.
Disclaimer: I own nothing and no harm is meant. Seriously people, this is FICTION.
Beta: None, all mistakes are mine.
A/N: WARNING: Let me say sorry before this even starts. I'm pretty sure that John's wife, Elizabeth, is an amazing, wonderful person but for the purpose of this fic, I had to make her the bad guy...girl...whatever.
It's been a few months since I've written anything so if it's confusing or just plain bad, I apologize.
Randy removed the last picture from the wall, taking a moment to reminisce before he placed it in the box. It was one of the family together at Six-flags earlier that year, he was holding Alanna while John held Izzy. Each had a big smile plastered on their faces but Randy couldn't remember for the life of him how his left wrist ended up handcuffed to John's right.
Coming up blank, Randy shrugged his shoulders and taped off the box. He'd have to remember to ask John about it later. Picking up the box he looked around at what used to be John's home office. He had never used it, cause I mean come on, what wrestler needs a home office? It was mostly just for show though Randy could recall reading a book or two in here when he really wanted peace and quiet.
Now it was just an empty shell of a room with a few built-ins and a bay window.
Walking down the hall, Randy passed what used to be Izzy's room, she was their oldest at four. Isabelle was her real name but John had insisted on giving her the nickname. If you let John tell it, she was the only reason he couldn't call his marriage to Elizabeth a mistake. Such a loving, kind-hearted, innocent and very energetic little girl could not in any way what so ever be called a mistake. The spitting image of her mother with John's dimples, Isabelle never ceased to amaze Randy.
After Izzy's room came an empty guestroom and bathroom. Unless he had missed something, every room in the house should now be bare.
John had agreed he would take the master suite which was downstairs. They'd already done the living room, den, kitchen and dinning room the day before, with the help of friends and family, of course. Oh yeah, and about a ton of pizza and beer.
Randy chuckled to himself as he walked down the stairs. Maybe he ought to call and make sure Mike and Santino were still alive this morning.
"Hey John," Randy called as he set the box down among about a dozen of it's counterparts. "Upstairs is done." He waited a beat but received no answer.
"Hey John?"
After still receiving no response, Randy slowly made his way down the hall towards the master bedroom. The door being closed caught him off guard.
Before knocking he pressed his ear to the door, trying to distinguish any sound of the older man. Randy heard a muffled voice but couldn't make out any words which probably meant John was in the closet or bathroom. He knocked, calling John's name one more time.
For a few seconds Randy couldn't hear anything. Then as he went to reached for the doorknob, he heard glass shattering followed by a few colorful words from his lover.
Randy opened the door but didn't walk in. Bare feet and glass didn't really mix well last time he checked. More boxes sat in the middle of the room but Randy's narrowed gaze was drawn towards the man standing in the closet doorway talking on his cellphone.
Now he understood why John hadn't answered him.
"For fuck's sake Elizabeth, I'm her damn father!"
Elizabeth Cena was John's ex-wife...sorta, but more importantly, she was the current bane of his existence.
Randy hadn't liked her from the beginning. She was too clingy, too demanding, and too much of a threat to him. She was taking away his best friend.
After traveling and basically living with John on the road for about three years at the time, it pretty much came as no surprise to him when his feelings slowly started to change. Denial still took root first, though. Not that he was gay, he'd known that since his teenage years, but the fact that he might somewhat possibly be falling in love with his best friend. His straight as an arrow, skirt chasing best friend.
So he thought.
It didn't help his case any that they'd always gotten along comfortably. Able to talk about anything and joke about the most crude of topics. Hell, John even understood that Randy wasn't a cold-hearted bastard, just brutally honest and straight forward about...most things.
So you can imagine how pissed off he was when he finally felt like he had gotten some sort of control over his feelings, guess who comes walking into John's life? Little Miss Princess. They'd met at some bar and blah, blah, blah. Randy didn't really give a fuck. She was infringing on his territory, dammit.
"Hell no! I've been in Izzy's life longer than you have and we both know that's saying a hell of a lot." He tuned back into the conversation to watch a red-faced John punch a hole through one of the closet walls. Randy winced but John barely flinched. "Don't give me bullshit, Elizabeth, we both know you don't have the balls to do that."
John ended the call, staring at the hole he created for a few seconds. Then much to Randy's dismay, he let out a frustrated scream before hurling his phone at the bedroom door. The no longer closed bedroom door.
"Shit..."
"What the fuck, Cena?" Randy glared at him.
"Sorry Randy, I didn't...didn't see ya." John ran a hand through his short hair sighing as he looked down at the mess he'd made. Glass was everywhere, some in the closet but most had spread throughout the room and there he stood in the middle of it all with only his socks on. "Shit.."
Randy cocked his head, staring at his lover for a moment. He wondered just how much further the bitch would be able to push him before John fell over the edge. Before he snapped, showing Miss Elizabeth and maybe even Randy a much, much darker side. Every man had his skeletons, every man sinned.
"I'll go get some shoes and a broom"
Cena's Viper
Three hours later, the glass had been cleaned up, the truck packed with the last of the boxes and a note had been made to come back tomorrow to fix the hole, plus get John a new phone.
While Randy talked to their parents about picking up the girls, John took one last walk through his old house. He'd lived here, wait...could he technically say lived?
He'd been here for about five years. This was the place Elizabeth had wanted to live in after their wedding.
Though John could have afforded a bigger home, Elizabeth hadn't wanted that. She didn't want to clean it and didn't feel comfortable about having strangers cleaning her home.
Her home
John chuckled to himself as he took the stairs two at a time, Isabelle's room, his intended destination. Yep, this had been her home for the first year, maybe year and a half.
Good lord, how could he have been so stupid, so damn blind. He was pretty sure he couldn't have found worse. Hell, not even if he had asked God to send him worse.
Reaching his daughter's old room, John leaned against the door frame and smiled as the good memories came flooding back. Izzy's crib, when she first crawled, he'd missed her first step in person but had it stored on one of his cam-recorder's memory cards plus it was part of a clearly labeled set of dvds. Even Alanna had her own set. Izzy's first words had been along the lines of 'dah dah' one morning during breakfast, Randy and God as his witness.
Yet, these were all memories that John had...alone. Elizabeth hadn't been anywhere in the picture, not after the first two months of Isabelle's life. She had dropped their baby girl off with John's parents one afternoon and never came to pick her up the following week. She never called unless she was drunk and looking to pick another fight yet she never asked about her daughter. No matter how many times he changed his number she always found him.
John closed his eyes for a second. He could still remember the night a couple of months ago when she found out about him and Randy. He couldn't recall ever seeing that cold of a look in Randy's eyes. Ever.
But now all of a sudden Elizabeth wanted to get to know Izzy, wanted to spend time with her, hell she was even trying to pull the 'every kid needs a mother' card. Somewhere deep down in him, some small part of his conscience, actually wanted to give her chance, see if she really had changed for the better. But before he could entertain that idea for too long, the rest of his conscience spoke up saying 'not a chance in hell', not unless he wanted to feel Randy's wrath.
The man had tried to warn him, had said "I'm just trying to stop you from making the biggest mistake of your life." But John had felt like he was a man in love and brushed aside his best man's worries as nerves. Just outside of a year, he became a married man but the honeymoon wasn't even over before his beautiful young bride began to show an very ugly side.
John pushed away from the frame tucking his hands in his short pockets. He spared the room one last glance before walking down the hall past his old office to the upstairs balcony. It being August meant the sun was out in full force but like yesterday, today there was quite the breeze. He let the wind caress his cheeks as he stared out at the backyard.
Man, oh man, oh man, Randy had never been so right. The fights, the yelling, the accusations, the cold shoulders. According to her, John was either never there or always in her face; no matter what he couldn't win for losing. She had done a complete 180 from the sweet, funny girl he'd met that night on the town.
Chaos reigned for about five months, two months too late, before dear ol' Johnny couldn't stand it anymore. Since it hadn't even been a year, technically the marriage could be annulled, like it never happened. But during the process of their annulment, Elizabeth dropped the big bomb on him. She was two months pregnant and despite snide remarks from Randy, she was adamant that this was John's baby. Of course he didn't take her word for it but sure enough six months and a blood test later, John was the proud new papa of a 6 pound 3 ounce bubbly baby girl.
"Hey John? You up here?"
"Yeah, out on the balcony." John answered Randy but kept his gaze locked on the swaying tree branches, trying to shove all those wonderful thoughts back into their box.
"Well, looks like we'll have the house to our self's tonight. Our mom's are refusing to give up the girls until noon tomorrow." Randy explained as he walked out onto the balcony. "Their flights leave at 1:30."
John laughed. He tore his gaze away from the trees for just a second to glance at Randy. "That doesn't surprise me." Alanna and Izzy had been staying with Sam for the last two months.
Sam was a godsend and Randy's best friend from childhood. She was also Alanna's mom.
It was an incident neither Randy nor Same liked to talk about much. An odd twist of fate to a pretty usual drunken Saturday night between the two of them three years ago. You can imagine the absolute shock they were in when they woke up the next morning plus add to that about a month later when Sam found out she was pregnant.
Surprisingly enough this hadn't ruined their friendship. Oh believe me, things were awkward at first and there was a bit of a strain on their relationship but then came the jokes about him and John going from wild and crazy bachelorhood to fathers in less than three years and everything else just kind of fell into place.
Randy stared at John's profile in silence for a moment. He could practically hear the wheels turning in his lover's head. Knew he had taken that glorious trip down memory lane. Knew her phone call had only made things worse.
"How ya holding up?" Randy questioned as he stepped into John's line of vision.
He leaned against the railing in front of John, folding his arms over his chest. They were at the right height for their eyes to lock unto one another, one blue glassy and distant, the other unreadable.
"And don't even fix your mouth to lie to me." Randy growled right as John open his mouth, no doubt about to shrug off his lover's worries.
John flashed his dimples, shaking his head. Though they'd only been together for a year now, the previous eight years of friendship meant they could pretty much read each other like a book.
"Yeah, well...where exactly would you like me to start."
An impromptu game of staring was launched as neither man blinked for a few moments.
"Her phone call"
Randy broke the silence but not eye contact however John didn't say anything at first, just offered Randy a sad smile.
"She wants..." He paused, bracing himself since he was pretty sure he knew what Randy's response would be. "She wants to talk about visitation rights and possibly sharing custody if-"
"Like hell!" Randy pushed away from the railing as if he'd been burned. His hands already balled up into fists at his side, his grey eyes no longer unreadable. The rage was very clearly displayed. "I'll be damned before-"
"Randy, fucking relax! You think I want her anywhere near Isabelle or Alanna for that matter anymore than you do?" John snapped getting right in Randy's face. "Over...My...Dead...Body!"
He could feel the stress from over the past few weeks starting to boil over. The wrestling, the moving, the late night phone fights with his ex, even his relationship with Randy. Though he was almost positive he and Randy shared the same feelings, hell had loved each other for years but were just too stupid or too scared to actually see it, this was still something new.
This was his best friend, which should have made it easy but only added pressure. What if they didn't work out? Would they stay friends? Would they be able to stand in the ring together? There was also the girls to think about. Even before they were lovers, Randy and John had treated them as sisters, raised them as such. Their parents loved both equally. What would-
And now John could officially call himself a girl. Just what he needed right now, his emotions running rampant.
Randy broke character first, his features softening as he reached out a tattooed arm and caressed the back of John's neck, bringing him just that bit closer. He heard John sigh and couldn't help the small smirk as the man closed his eyes, leaning his head back into Randy's touch and fisting his hands in the bottom of Randy's shirt.
"Sorry" Randy whispered softly against John's lips. He closed his own eyes and sighed as John responded back to him, accepting his apology with a kiss. His grip tightened momentarily on John's neck as he nipped at the man's bottom lip, asking entrance which John quickly granted but didn't put up his usual fight for dominance. John let Randy take control, let Randy's tongue explore his mouth at will. This told the younger man all he needed to know about his lover's current state of mind.
When air became a necessity, Randy slowly pulled away, licking at John's kiss swollen lips. He let his forehead rest on John's for a brief moment as the sun warmed the back of his head and neck. The earlier breeze had by now died down considerably.
Their peaceful moment was broken as Randy's cell began to ring. John pulled away, silently waging a war within himself to get his emotions back under control.
"Oh hey Mrs. Cena" John looked back up at Randy confused. Why would his mom...Oh yeah, genius here had broken his own phone.
"John?, Yeah he's right here. Hold on one second." Randy passed him the phone, holding onto it for just a second longer than necessary after John had it in his hands. He then side stepped John letting his hand trail possessively over the older man's abdomen. "I'll be waiting downstairs."
"Yeah, hey mom. Sorry, but could you hold on for one more second." John pulled the phone away from his ear and turned around, Randy's name on the tip of his tongue. He never got to say it though, Randy hadn't gone far. He stood next to the glass door, his piercing steel gaze suddenly making John feel a tad bit too exposed. As if Randy was examining him under the microscope, like he could see right through him.
The attention wasn't unwelcome per se, just a little unnerving.
Before he could say anything at all, Randy gave a small nod before going back inside, saying more with that one action and his eyes than any amount of words could.
No, they weren't perfect, far from it in fact. They still needed to sit down and have a talk. A little man to man; heart to heart talk. No longer could one of them go hole himself up in his own house when things got too tough. They were about to be living together. Best friends turned lovers turned family. Complete with two daughters, two fathers and one amazing mother.
Communication was the key to making this work especially since Elizabeth was starting to make a lot of noise again. John was pretty sure Randy was at his breaking point when it came to her but that didn't scare him...too much. What scared him the most was that he didn't know where his own breaking point was. He had never crossed that line before but had learned from Randy that the problem with crossing lines lay in the fact that you don't know you've crossed them...until it's too late.