02:02 | to the hills

June 15, 2013
Los Angeles, California

The house seemed a lot smaller, oddly enough, when there were less people in it. As though there was no possibility that you could cram fifty or so friends and friends-of-friends into it, and still leave room to dance, and for another dozen or so stragglers to wander in. Tonight was the usual blend of usual-suspects, total strangers, and hey-haven't-I-met-you-befores, fueled by music and booze and a seemingly-endless supply of snacks that nobody would remember buying when it was all tossed the next day.

There was a burst of laughter from over by the kitchen servery, cutting through the music, and one of those excited, oh-no-you-didn't shrieks from near the TV, where some girl with green hair shaved into a curlicued pattern, was cutting something similar into the razored-back buzz of an apparently drunk-willing volunteer.

"Heeey! There he is!" Bert bounced over, beer in hand, grinning with his usual naked enthusiasm. "Ol' buddy Berlin! I gotcha a beer!" He held it out, waggled the bottle a little.

"Gimme dat, 'fore you jump around and skunk it--" The good natured jab was softened with a ruffle of his bigger tag partner's hair as he took the bottle, black fauxhawk streaked with white immediately headlocked as the third of their trios jumped in and grabbed him.

"BEEEERTYBEETLE!" Jones let out a squeal as he rallied back, holding her grip tight. "I'm heeeere!"

"JONESIE!" Bert's grin was utterly genuine, despite the awkward position Jones had put him in. "Berlin-- save me! Or... something! She's got me!" He twisted, grabbing at the nearest patch of Jones-clothes to try to free himself. "Nope, nope, save yourself, I got this." He didn't. Not with so many people around.

Berlin held up a finger as they struggled in the close space, tipping the bottle up and chugging the contents down fast, ignoring the momentary blur as it joined the other drinks of the night-- tossing it up and quickly catching it by the neck, feinting a swing at her with a put-on old-timey gangster accent. "You let my boy loose, see-- I'll bury ya with Jimmy Hoffa!"

"Yipe!" She let go, tempted for a half-second to shove Bert into the bottle-wielding maniac, instead swiping her target's beer instead. "Nyaaah! Whatchagonnado 'bout it!" The girl's accent was already a heavy enough thing with the Algerian jumble of Arabic and French over it that the addition made her almost incoherent.

"You should..." Bert grunted as he twisted, grabbing for the leg under the baggy cargo pants. "Go for Berlin... he knows where Hoffa is buried. Who knows what all else he knows?" He yanked on her leg, hoping to pull it from under her. "All I got's... I know where the biggest ball of twine is?"

"Yeeeeeah, he's a clever one, dat smartypants--" All the while hopping onelegged and trying to drink the beer down while she had it. "But you know where the drinks're at! Gah." Squirmsquirmdancysquirm. "Where's dat Cherry-girl when I need 'er, battle of the sexes and I gots no partner! EEEEEEMBRY, YER COUSIN'S MOIDERIN' MEEE!"

Embry's head popped up from the back of the couch, shoving his hair out of his eyes with his usual sleepy lack of care. "Huh?"

"No... help..." Bert grinned. "Embers, get her beer. Berlin, get her beer. Somebody get her beer so I can dump her on her ass." He lifted her leg a little higher. "Or drink quicker, li'l Jonesie."

"Dump me on my ass! I dump you on your ass--" She darted a glance behind her and realized a hurricanrana would take out something like five people. "Sheeeiiiiiiite!"

"Going for a ride, Jones?" Berlin popped forward and swiped her beer so fast she was left staring at her hand cartoon-style. "Get 'er!"

"Goooooooootcha!" Without fear of spilling (more) beer on the carpet, Bert was free to simply lift her up, over one shoulder in a clumsy fireman's carry. "Now. Jimmy Hoffa. Balls of twine-- and by the way, there are two biggest balls of twine and we've seen 'em both. What does ol' Jonesie know?"

Embry somehow managed to get off the couch and make his way around it without appearing to have a single straight bone in his body, all sleepy-shuffle and loose movements. "'Course there's two balls. Of twine." He blinked, cat-like, at Berlin, and caught the bottom of Berlin's bottle. "He was getting me a beer and ya'lls drunk it."

"That's 'cause Embry's a sleepy-sloth!" Squealed from over Bert's shoulder. She wrigglekicked, grabbing him around the waist and using the leverage to pop free sunset-flip style, releasing immediately to get her own feet from under her, feinting an immediate kick towards his middle back. Berlin just shrugged at the chaos as onlookers turned to gawk at the wrestlers, handing the bottle he'd swiped from Jones to Embry.

Utterly unashamed, Bert's cousin slugged back the last of the beer, and nudged Berlin with his elbow. "Dude, it's your place if they break shit," he said companionably before weaving his way through the mass of people.

Bert grabbed at Jones' foot but was too far gone to connect, instead choosing to engulf her in a bear hug of massive proportions. "Group hug! C'mon, Berlin! Show some loooove!"

Berlin shrugged in turn, setting the empty bottle down, planting a foot on the back of the couch to lightly jump and splash the pair, sending everybody to their butt on the carpet. Jones flopped there overdramatically in a bout of giggles as the smaller of the boys delivered another round of noogies on his friend and flopped back-first onto the carpet. One hand shot up in triumph. "Shots! Shots! Shots!"

"All of the shots!" echoed Bert, heaving himself to his feet and offering each of them a hand. From somewhere to his left he heard somebody explaining that they weren't actually fighting, and he beamed. "I gotta teach you how to hug first, though. You're baaaad at it." There was a sort of mischief-loving promise in his expression.

"GHEEEEEEY! So much gay, boys, jeeeeez." She punched Bert lightly in the side, then dashed off for the kitchen, dodging people as she went.

The smaller mohawked man shrugged and took off after her, spotting the bottle of Malibu in her hand, turned to rummage in the fridge for the pineapple he knew to be in the back row behind big jugs of premixed Long Island Iced Tea, a cold burst gusting through the overheated room. Too many bodies, noise from the mass of people almost drowning out the strains of a remixed classic that seemed to be Bowie's Diamond Dogs from the living room. "Zane's got weird taste."

"Everybody's got weird taste," came the reply from the redhead with a Bloody Mary in her hand, hips shifting, dancing in place to bits of the track, grabbing Bert by his shirt as he caught up.

"S'what we bond over," came out of Jones between drinks straight from the bottle.

"That and shitty wasabi peas," snarked Embry, pulling a face before taking the milk from the fridge and slugging directly from the carton, a white line over his upper lip when he let it fall, eyes redder than normal. "Could be worse. You could have Bert's taste in chicks." He nodded across the room, to where some stranger with pixie-cut blonde hair and a sleeve tattoo was trying to weave through the crowd, with definite intentions.

"Hey!" Bert glanced in the indicated direction, a quick game of recognition and dismay crossing his face while Embry cackled.

"Covering fire!" Embry crowed, taking his milk with him while he intercepted.

"I have no idea who that is," lied Bert.

"Of cooourse not. Pinkie-Brain, are you taking up residence in the fridge?" Jones poked his side with a finger and he flinched away, backing out with his face and neck matching his hair from the bite of the cold.

"Nyuuup. The pineapple's gone, but I found mango-orange stuff?"

"Don't judge Bert," their artificially-redheaded friend interjected. "This is the land of questionable hookups. Besides, she's... okay, not that cute, but still." She stuck her tongue out at the taller man. "How drunk were you, buddy?"

"Hey, if this is the land of questionable hookups..." Bert grinned, wiggling his eyebrows. "I am your king! No, seriously, I want a scepter and stuff. And bowing and ‘m'lording' and all of that." He squinted towards her, now bailed up with an overpatient expression directed towards Embry, who was probably telling her some horrible ER story. Maybe the one about the guy with gangrene, he tended to pull that out a lot when he wanted to get rid of people. "How drunk... on a scale of tipsy to paralytic?" A thoughtful roll of eyes upward. "I'm going to run with roaring. Roaring sounds accurate." He stuck his tongue back out at her. "Not that I recall her. Y'know. At all."

The redhead-- whose name was Lauren-- plucked the somewhat-wilted celery out of her drink and slurped the mixed drink off the end, presenting him with the dry end and cutting a shockingly-proper curtsey. "Your Majesty, grant me the blessings of your amnesia..."

Berlin swiped the Malibu, toasting with it. "Amnesia for all! We can be the Four Musketeers."

"I declare this to be an excellent idea!" Bert bopped Berlin's forehead with the celery and tossed it in the sink. "I legit love you, man." A blind grab at the assorted liquor on the counter found a sticky Midori bottle and he toasted back, the unsaid ‘no homo' nagging in the back of his head.

As the music cut and blended over to Kanye, overpowered bass in a small space making bottles faintly clink on the counter, Jones hopped and scrambled at a deposed bottle of Jack Daniels on top of the refrigerator. "One for all, and all for one!"

Clink.

---

The phone screen lights up dazzlingly bright, the rooftop high enough that most of the streetlights are underneath its level, only the waning moon hanging above. The vibration makes it dance gently on the loose gravel before he snatches it up. "Hullo?"

"Hey," comes the quiet response--the familiar voice rough about its edges. Even if they hadn't spent much time together, he knew full well the cause. Maybe not the reason it was there, but how. "You alright?"

"I dunno the answer to that question. Heh." The line's silent for a second as he takes a swig off the bottle and rests it back on the building edge again. "I am not the Zero Gravity Champion. Close but horseshoes-hand-grenades-blah-blah. Got my face smashed open pretty good. Apparently it was too early to go drinking, too." His fellow bar patrons had taken the staple-closed gash in his face bleeding spontaneously as well as one would expect. The girl on the other end's experienced enough in wrestling not to be shocked about it, either. That was at least an upside to his formerly large social circle being condensed down-- most everybody in it was in the biz these days. Venting didn't come with long strings of explanation. "Guessing by the way you sound, I'm not the only one having a night."

"You could say that." Her own silence extends for a moment or two, words groped for before she lets out a weak and broken little laugh. "I'm just... worried about things being hereditary, I guess. Sorry to hear about your match, though. Did you leave him something to remember you by, at least?"

"... you could say... I wasn't the only one to lose blood. End of the match, I was powerbombing him off the scaffold-thing and he reached up and brought the belt down with him, basically. Frankly, that idea doesn't help even a little. At this point, pretty much feels like I'm here to make the real stars look good, give 'em a good seven minutes, that's all. Traveling town to town in bumfuck nowhere up here in Canada South, losing matches and killing time in between. Could say I'm a little surprised you called, at this point." Lost connections. "Hereditary, hm..."

"I'm... sorry, for that." The apology sounds awkward, chagrinned-- the other topic abandoned. "I'm not-- people don't usually want anything to do with me after a couple of days like we had. Some small part of me was expecting just to find you here one morning, though. You know how to let yourself in."

"Mmm... I'm not people. Though I guess I try to be a considerate non-people. You might be expecting to just find me there one morning, but you never know how Memories will feel about that sort of thing." A nod to the awkwardly self-named barfly he'd been told about, though his tone is oddly neutral about it. "You could say I've already learned some lessons about trying to hold onto people who don't seem to wanna be held onto. But maybe I overshoot and read things wrong sometimes." The end was almost a question, but not quite.

"She hasn't been back since I... hah, it was the damndest thing. Her boyfriend showed up like I told you about, right?" She pauses just long enough for some sort of affirmation before she continues. "Well, I... I would've made Moira proud with how I told him to piss off. It wasn't until after she left in a fit because I didn't just let ol' Jack in that things... well, you know."

Names weren't easy for him, but he could connect Moira to the hereditary statement, and Jack to the boyfriend statement. "Taking a stab, but... you started questioning just what you were?"

"Basically." A sigh. "She's... the last thing I want to be like, but she was the only parent I had."

"Well..." He heaves a sigh in return, thought weighing his words slower. "Don't really have that example sort of thing hanging over my head, but sometimes I wonder just how crazy I am. Definitely not a pleasant thought. Not the kind of thing you go tell people about, I guess. But I figure I don't really hurt anybody at it and do my best... which feels like a big pile of garbage right now. My best might buy me a double cheeseburger if I added a buck fifty to it at this point. And maybe I do hurt people and don't realize it." He shakes his head and takes another drink, bouncing his heels against the side of the building. "Maybe you were sharp with your words, but you weren't the person who did something that might've hurt somebody. That'd be Memory, right? Love to know why she'd pick that name, too."

"I told her Mediocre would've been a better choice. That went over about as well as you'd think." A weak chuckle left her, the sound joined by fabric moving in the background. "And... thinking about it, I was hurting me with her and with the couple others that followed. I just-- being here alone is proving to be a lot harder than I thought, you know? I've long since learned to depend on myself, but I'm not able to come up with a substitute for having someone else around even if they're just... present."

"Mmm... yeah. And this is why I move around a lot." There's a bit of amusement in his voice on that. "Harder in these wide open still places. Big cities dull the feeling down. Don't think hanging around Minnesota and the Dakotas," which came out weirdly enunciated on his tongue, syllables heavier, dah-ko-tahs, "is a good idea after all. Not sure New Mexico's a lot better, but 'least I know a couple people around there. Maybe I should just haul you around with me." Also a joke, but not. "Because hanging around somebody who sleeps like the dead for literally half the day would be thrill-a-minute."

The offer, such as it was, had silence reigning for a long moment as things were considered. Her tone was a musing thing when she finally speaks anew, her bemused smirk clear within her voice. "...I'd go through a lot of Sharpie and highlighter, but I'm stuck here for another ten months or so. You could always come crash here?"

"Could be a thing. Though I'd call ahead. I've got stuff to do in Albuquerque, it looks like." Hint dropped.

"...stuff to do--" And for the first time in their conversation, Brenna lets out an actual laugh. Disbelieving, yes-- but genuine. "You're kidding. You signed with iiW?"

"Whoah, not yet, but it might be a thing, we'll see. Not exclusive. Not leaving where I'm at right now either. Need a spot of brightness in things right now. Maybe iiW does too." There's a hint of a grin at it.

"Well... I know I do, so that is how I'm going to treat it."

"I see, I see." It's a parody of a dry tone. "Well, I should be down there for the next show. Think you could put me up for the night?"

"Only if you make me tea." There's no room for argument in her tone. "And other things, but we can negotiate terms when you get here."

"Yes Miss Gordon, I be brewin'. Drive a hard bargain, ma'am."

"You enjoy it."

"Maaaaaybe I do. Things are easier when you feel you've got a place in them."

"And you have a place amidst mine, even if I'm shite at showing it sometimes." A pause. "Shite... ugh, remind me to not use that word again. It's uncomfortable."

"I'll try to remember to remind you. You'll find I'm not the most dependable at these things, though. We've both got our less-strong aspects, and that's okay."

"Mm, yeah. Are you gonna be alright?"

"..." An awkward pause. Maybe a question not used to being heard anymore in general. "Guess we'll see. Got a date in Wisconsin to face another flyer on the twenty-fourth. Head should be better by then." The staples, or the mental state? Both. "You gonna pull through?"

"I'll manage one way or another. Breaking a couple of dolls should help matters, I think." She chuckles to herself, a rustling sound rising in the background as she shook her head. "Amazing, what people try to pass off as talent these days."

"Oooh, I might resemble that remark lately." A faint shrug, obviously not heard. "I'd comment about some of the special snowflakes you're facing, but I might resemble that one too. Just gotta keep hanging in there, like that poster with the kitten."

"...perhaps a pet would help things." She hums to herself.

"Oh, is that how it's gonna be, really." Tease.

"I'd at least make sure your collar is comfortable."

"Well, good luck at that. I'm housebroken, but I just might chew your shoes."

She laughs, the sound fogged about the edges with incoming sleep. "Just not the black platforms. They're about the only useful thing Memory left behind."

"More Lethe than Mnemosyne. It happens." The bottle's raised again. "You sound tired."

"Mm, yeah. I haven't been sleeping well."

"Trade you for awhile, if I could."

"...rather if you were here."

He's quiet for a space, and then his voice sounds heavy. "... soon enough. And at least I don't snore." Too close to coma for that.

"But you're still warm, and--" She yawns, the sound prolonged by a stretch. "--and you don't hog the covers. What more can a girl ask for?"

"If there's anything, far be it from me to tell you. On a scale of tame to stupid, where does drinking on a roof land me, anyway?" With the implication, of course, that he hadn't gotten up there by traditional stair-like means.

"...a stern glare for not just bringing it here so we could share."

"Somebody's insistent, oooh," spooky-silly voice. "Probably gonna finish this here, though. Stuff about open containers and transporting over state lines, I think. Guess you'll just have to brood all the way over there in the desert. Tch."

"Freddie will be pleased that I'm practicing at it." Another yawn, this one lasting long enough for her to need to cover her mouth. "Call me when you're in town?"

"Will do. Another thing that will please Freddie, I think. More opportunities to spar. You should go to sleep, miss. You're turning into an adorable baby animal meme over there with the yawning, it'll harm your savage rep and stuff."

"Savage reputation, me? Surely you jest." Her smile came through with her parting words. "Take care of yourself in the meantime, alright? I don't want the five pack of pink highlighters I bought to become a sad thing."

He raises his hand boy-scout-esque on the other end. "I solemnly swear I will not splat and die. And I will call when I hit town. Over'n out."

"Goodnight."

---

Here we go.

Sometimes you just need a vacation. I think that's a sentiment a lot of people can understand. You could say I take a vacation every day, but a break only really means something when you go somewhere that helps you get your head straight. Those places are few and far between these days for me, but you know... sometimes it happens.

It's easy to second-guess decisions you made in the moment, I guess. Especially easy to get depressed when they lead to a losing streak, even when you're still getting the big shots as you keep landing on your face. I'm not the type to deny that stung. I'm also not the type to wallow in it long term. So congratulations to Shane Sparx, because tricks or not, you earned it. That's not to say I'm not gonna be on your heels for it, because it coulda been either of us there at the end.

Can't be thinking of that this week, though. Ziu Zhong, depending on who you ask we either have a big honor to be in the semi-main, or we're the deathslot cool-off before the big match on the card. You're returning to competition after being taken out by Brett Carson-- who I'll add, mighta beat me, but still stomps around with a raging case of Chronic Douche Syndrome that makes you wonder if he finds himself inadequate. You-- Ziu, I mean-- 've got a briefcase with a prize of unknown quantities in it. I don't know how you resist the urge to get somebody to jimmy that thing open for you, though maybe management would null it if you did? Between me and you, I'm gonna look at this as a good thing. An opportunity to show I did belong in that main event, and maybe for you that the prize in that case is something big.

I hope it is. Just like I hope your leg's all healed up this week. I hope these things because when we get in the ring, I want it to mean something.

Tonight's proverb: pain is just weakness leaving the body, and then being replaced by pain. Lots of pain.

Good night, Visionaries of Wrestling. Good night.