Chapter Nineteen (Defanged Destroyer) [OWF]

They look like such big, strong hands.

They were cold, so very cold, fingertips numb when he pushed them into his forehead, digging into the tension that wrapped his skull like a tourniquet. He could feel them trembling, feel the nerve endings buzzing like they always did, giving him that near-pins-and-needles feeling he'd been dealing with for years. Lowering them slowly, he stared at the left because it was shaking and the more he tried to will it to be still, the worse that tremor got. His knuckles were still raw from unleashing his fury on the walls backstage at the Du Burns Arena – he wondered if anyone had bothered to clean off the bits of flesh he'd left behind. Maybe nobody noticed. The thought that he'd somehow become a part of that building even if he'd never be allowed back for the remainder of his career made him chuckle softly. The remainder of his career – however long that actually ended up being. If they kept pushing and pulling him in a million different directions, it was going to end soon. He could feel that control slipping even now, knowing that he was going to do something stupid. That level of foresight was there, that self-awareness never really further than arm's reach these days.

"Fuck," he muttered, shifting his position in the chair by the window, leaning forward to stretch his back muscles. Rolling his shoulders back, he felt the crunch in his spine, felt the twinge in his lower back – that old pinched nerve flaring to life with the sort of hello and good morning that promised the two hours he'd had were going to be it for him tonight. Jackson groaned, lifting his hands to his face again, muffling his yawn behind the press of his hands, lest he wake Missy up.

THUMP.

His cell phone fell to the floor, bouncing on the hardwood once before landing face-up on the thick shag rug that surrounded the bed like an island. He held his breath for a few seconds, listening to the sound of her breathing beneath the soft music playing from the iPod dock on the nightstand. When she didn't stir, he let out a sigh of relief – she was still asleep – thank whomever for small miracles. Slowly, slowly, he eased himself up out of the chair and made his way across the room, stepping out onto the balcony that overlooked the swimming pool, thankful that they were in Florida instead of the zero-degree weather back in Baltimore.

"Four years," he muttered, feeling the need to correct the deliberate mistake he'd made in the blog he'd just posted. Cavalier dismissal was the easiest asshole move, the instinctive reaction just like threatening to kill Ana and JD over that goddamned title screw-job had been. He still had enough crazysauce clout that they believed it. Selling had never been something he'd been bad at, after all, but the implication on Twitter had still stung. JD claiming he'd rung the bell not to seal the deal on fucking him over completely but to make sure that Ana was freed from his clutches before he did some irreparable damage.

Only hit a woman in anger once and she deserved it. That smart-mouthed little slut, carrying on with that fucknut in that mediocre band. Two steps forward and a thousand back, that's the nature of the beast isn't it? That's how this goes. Ryann Hardy was a fame whore. She used you to write her bullshit songs, played up every little moment so that the fans thought you were the biggest piece of trash on the planet – you reveled in it because you wanted them to hate you. You needed that because it was the best trip. They needed someone to hate. MWA needed a villain and you gave them what they wanted, served up on a silver platter for their consumption on weekly TV for more than three years. You gave them a monster. This is who you are and railing against it now isn't going to change the reality. Brad Jackson is an asshole and it doesn't matter if you call yourself the King of Pain or the Dark Horse or the fucking Sugarplum Fairy, for fuck's sake. They'll hate because you're sandpaper. You always have been and the monster is who they're paying you to be. So spew the vitriol. Threaten to murder Ana. Go to Baltimore and tear JD's arms off, beat him to death with them while the crowd rolls in the blood like the splash zone ticketholders at a GWAR concert. Suck it up and give them what they want. Nobody gives two shits about your last hurrah, about your retirement tour or the way you had this planned down to the letter on how you wanted to exit.

"I don't..." he sighed, "no monster. Not anymore. Defanged destroyer," he muttered, lifting the imagery from a song. "No monster now. Just blood in the water and too many fuckin' sharks pulled in by the scent." Shaking his head, he padded over to the railing and leaned against it, feeling the concrete against his toes. Three and a half years wasted on another mistake and he could still taste the ashes. Unfair to Missy, part of his brain was still mourning it. It was still circling, the needle stuck in the groove, unable to reset.

She knew everything, Alyvia did. She was the anti-Ryann, the girl who came in with her eyes open. No hero worship, least that was the party line. Turned out to be a lie. Maybe she was trying to finish what her garbage father had failed to do back in 1997. Maybe the truth was the real problem because they don't want to see what's behind the curtain. They don't want to see the blood and the pain and the sleepless nights. They just want to see the fame and the dollars in the bank so maybe it was that. Maybe she knew too much. Familiarity breeds contempt. Maybe that's what's happened in Carnage, too. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe they're always gonna hate no matter what you do. Maybe that's the truth.

"Four fuckin' years... something's gotta give." He had it timed down to the second how long it had been despite how much he wished he could forget. Remembrance was always going to be his penance. He felt his left ring finger, finding the smooth divot still there where that old ring used to rest. Six months since he'd had it on and it was still there, branded into his skin like a scarlet letter of his past mistakes. He'd proposed in Vegas and married her less than two weeks later. A little over a month from the time they'd started flirting on Twitter to when they'd tied the knot – what a fucking joke that entire mess had been.

Bowing his head, he closed his eyes, wishing he had a cigarette, a bottle of booze, a few of the probably now-expired Demerol he'd left behind in Reno after last year's root canal. Anything to soothe the ache would be perfect and the big day was already looming. Less than twenty-four hours away and he hadn't bothered to purchase a single thing. No card. No flowers. No candy.

He'd told himself that he was going to keep himself reined in this time. No rooms full of flowers and balloons. No grandiose gestures. No skywriting. No newspaper ads. All of those amounted to the same thing, that desperate need to throw material goods in the face of that feeling of not good enough in the back of his head. It was so damned hard to keep himself from marching back inside and picking up his phone. He was already walking the mental tightrope, expecting Missy to be angry when she found out he'd managed to almost overlap bookings between OWF and Carnage – almost back-to-back Main Events across the goddamned country from each other.

Go back inside and delete that stupid blog before she reads what you wrote. Don't make the same mistakes again. She's not a surrogate. She's not the next one in the string of next ones. You need to communicate that to her before someone puts that bug in her ear. She could have any guy out there, the fuck does she want with a broken down piece of shit like you?

Tears prickled even though he knew it was true and he was only so close to the emotional edge because he was so goddamned tired. Those cold fingertips pressed against his eyelids until he saw sparks in the dark, until the tears fucked off back into hiding.

You're nothing. She's still here and you are nothing. There are no belts. You gave that one away. You had the other one stolen. She watched you when you could barely wrestle for ten minutes without botching everything. She watched you claw your way back into the limelight. That means something. It has to mean something.

Such a little noise, his phone hitting the floor was enough to get her to wake up a little bit, blinking as she looked up at the ceiling. Her hand went instinctively to the side, seeking his warmth but no Jax. Missy sat up and rubbed her eyes, expecting to see him sitting there in his chair, drawing maybe instead of sleeping but again, no Jax. Her lips parted in a jaw-cracking yawn and then she slipped out of bed, wondering where he might be. She saw his phone on the floor in front of his chair and shuffled over to pick it up, wondering why he'd left it. She didn't as a habit go through his phone because she trusted him. He showed her things that weren't public and they often shared laughs at other people's expense, sure but still. His blog was up, and she took a breath. He'd used it to purge some of the worst venom inside him, which was a good thing but sometimes... she let that breath out on a sigh and started to read. Every word hit her right in the chest, leaving a warm glowing feeling and she didn't even remember when that picture... when she was done she held the phone over her heart and had no idea her cheeks were wet.

He turned around, almost as though he felt some change inside the room, catching sight of her silhouette through the glass, almost backlit by the glow of the iPod dock. Dragging in a deep breath, he crossed to the door and let himself back inside, bringing the cool air with him. "Hey," he murmured, his voice a little raspy, "did I wake you up?"

Missy's head shot up and she started to say something, one hand lifting up to rub over her cheek and she looked at it, surprised at the fact it had come away with tears. "Sort of..." she paused and her lip was bitten and released before she started again. "I picked up your phone off the floor, and I read...it was the most beautiful thing, Jax. God I fucking love you."

"Miss," he heard that little quiver in her voice and the guilt he felt on the heels of that made him shake his head. "No. That was... just a cheap ramble." Backpedal. Stall. "Babe, I'm not... that's not the only thing I'm gonna give you, okay? There's gonna be some other... stuff." Closing the space between them, he pulled her into his embrace even though he knew he was gonna make her cold since he'd been standing outside in nothing but a pair of boxers.

Missy melted against him, she didn't care he was cold to the touch because she'd warm him up. "No, baby... I don't need anything but you. Stuff... it's not, Jax. I don't need that, I just need you. It's not a cheap ramble, I loved it. It's perfect. I'm not making any sense am I? But I fucking love you. You're all I want. Ever."

"You've got me." It took him three tries to even force those words out, his voice almost giving out on him. "No matter what..." there was a hell of a lot of subtext in that vagueness, subtext he knew she could read even in the dark. He swallowed hard, arms tightening around her, "I'm yours, Miss. No lines."

She smiled soft, exhaling as he held her tighter. "No lines." She could remember so clearly when he'd asked her where the line was and she'd first told him that. She knew what he was telling her, what he was giving her without words and her voice held a gentle note as she gathered up her thoughts. "Then I have everything."