Fandom: Wrestling (TNA)
Title: Faith
Author: Falcon Whitaker
Pairing: AJ Styles/Christian Cage
Rating & Warnings: Rated 13+ for a single f-bomb and a reference to sexual activity.
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the wrestling personas featured here-in. Each of them belongs to either A) the respective wrestler who portrays it or B) the company who owns it. I do not profit.
Feedback/Concrit Welcome?: Very much so.
Summary: AJ's thoughts upon realising that Christian Cage is leaving TNA.
~~~~~
faithful (adjective)
loyal, constant and steadfast; reliable
~*~
The view from the balcony of Christian's hotel room was pretty spectacular, if you liked that sort of thing. The sunset had painted the sky in shades of pink and gold and AJ had to admit that it was kinda awesome. He and Christian had been watching it for some time now, sitting out there on slightly uncomfortable plastic seats drinking beer. It felt so much like the good old Coalition days that AJ could almost taste the nostalgia. Except...
Except that Christian hadn't looked him in the eye yet. Not once.
And that was how he knew that Christian had decided to leave.
The realisation felt like cold water dripping down the back of his neck, slowly numbing him from the inside out. It was all his fault. Of course it was all his fault.
There was a time when they were a team, aeons ago, when AJ would have described himself as "faithful" with a straight face. He got caught up in Christian's glamour and like a fool, he lost his head and then his heart. He was puppy-like in his devotion to Christian. Faithful.
And yet...
And yet no matter what he did, how hard he tried, it was never good enough for Christian. His faith and love turned to desperation turned to despair, and so he fell for the first person to acknowledge his efforts and pay him his dues.
Karen Angle. Yeah, that was stupid.
She was like a poison in his brain. Love rusted into hate; devotion, to bitterness; and faithfulness, to faithlessness; and he never even noticed. It felt good. Until everything blew up in his face and he was left with nothing.
And so he went crawling back to Christian again when the problems with the Mafia began, like a mangy cur returning to a previous owner. Of course he did. Who else was there to go to?
Apologies led to drinks led to a drunken fuck on a bed with itchy sheets that neither had mentioned since - although AJ thought about it a lot - and here they were. Sipping beer, watching the sunset, silent.
AJ took a swallow of his drink and wished that he could go back and fix it somehow. Pick Christian over Kurt, or stay away from Karen, or miss out on Christian all together and skip this bullshit entirely. But that was impossible, and time was marching on into a future where Christian Cage was notably absent and where all this and all that came before would be nothing but a memory.
But then again, in the end, memory is all you have left. Memory and a broken heart.
That is the fate of the faithless.
~*~
faithless (adjective)
disloyal; untrustworthy