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The note arrives in the middle of the night, in a grey box that’s just a hair bigger than Roman’s palm, attached to a round rock-shaped paper weight.
I know you’re not all hard edges
It was the kind of thing a man didn’t want to hear when he was fighting for his life against the worst this company had to offer. He definitely didn’t want to hear it as he thought about his plans to put his cousin down, make him see everything Roman’s way, before it was too late. But the note was there, and it was as heavy as a brick in Roman’s grip. Not all hard edges. He knew who had written it and why, and the notion made his stomach churn.
Tribal chiefs, naturally, do not let people get to them. They buckle down and ignore the horrors of what lies before them and they make plans to pillage weak countries. He knew from experience that Bray was no weak link. He was in fact the strongest link that Roman had ever tried to break.
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“You have to stop worrying about those notes,” Heyman had said, all bluster and brains. Roman liked the guy, though he was frankly a pain in the butt more often than not. But he was a good negotiator, and good at keeping the underlings in line. Heyman didn’t know about Roman’s need to push a thumb into the very tempting pie that was the note. So Roman lied and kept on pace, trying not to get his ass murdered by Edge.
The second note was not a note at all, but a package delivered to his suite while he and Heyman were entertaining a group of influential NBC executives in his suite. The package was wrapped in faded wallpaper speckled with multicolored balloons. He almost called Jey to force him to open it, but he was too curious to stop himself from opening the paper.
It was a jack in the box.
This was the kind of thing that usually resulted in someone dying in a horror movie. It usually ended with a head being popped off or a throat being slit. Roman nonetheless reached for and started cranking the little plastic handle.
The jack in the box was Roman all over. Literally. He was pretty sure that the little figure in the box sported a thick thatch of his hair. And he was also stark naked, his arms held over his head and a banner clutched between his fists.
The phallus between its legs was carved in a very very generous manner.
“Holy God,” Heyman declared, staring over Roman’s shoulder. “Burn that thing before anyone else finds it.”
“No. I’m keeping it,” Roman said, stuffing the figure back down into the box. He’d seen the legend clutched in its chubby hands.
“Respect is not the only hunger,” read the legend.
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Roman did not hear from Bray again until he was past the match with Edge, with a broken ankle and his entire future as world champion in danger. His cousins offered to defend the belt for him, but that wasn’t as much fun as busting heads on his own. It certainly wasn’t good as forcing people to bow and scrape and respect him. Which he could cause nearly any man to do now.
Any man except for the one who so intrigued him.
The next message arrived in a box of candy, among the piles of get-well gifts he received while he recuperated. And all of the candy was shaped in perfectly accurate anatomical sculptures which represented human organs. When he tried them, they tasted like childhood memories, childhood chocolate bars.
To the sweet in the bitter. The note said.
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It was Roman who went into the swamp next time. He needed to be there, and he needed to find what had been buried under his skin. The taunting-suggestive reams of notes. The sense that he was being watched and supported and yet mocked right down to the roots of his hair.
This was a form of discipline. Unsubtle and yet tantalizing. Dodging roots and jumping over vines. Trying to remember the place where the cabin had been, though he had only been there in his mind.
In a thicket of weeds, in a particularly swampy patch, floated something that resembled a large vegetable pod – a pea that was rotting, or an alien watermelon. Roman realized it was a human body, and walked toward it with silent determination. He realized it was vines and swampgrass, wrapped around the body. He took a deep breath and ripped it open.
Lying under the weeds was Bray. Like Sleeping Beauty. Only rounder and a little more hairy. Roman stepped back, entirely unsure if he had been led into a trap.
Wyatt sat up slowly, he yawned and smiled. “Yowwie wowwie, that was quite a nap! Why, Roman, you’re here! You must’ve heard my heart song!”
“I heard the junk you sent to my place, yeah.”
Bray smiled. “You know it’s not junk. You know what it means to you. And to me…”
Roman winced. This man…he didn’t see him as a leader. Even as an enemy. He saw him as an equal.
“I missed you, you know,” Wyatt said. “There’s nobody like you in the whole wide world.”
“You either,” Roman admitted, and couldn’t believe he was saying that, but it was so very true. He had feelings for this man. And this man had buttered him up, brought him here, courted him, for reasons that had nothing to do with their old rivalry over a belt that wasn’t even Roman’s to hold anymore.
“You found me,” Bray said. He wiped the restorative mask from his face, and an unscarred visage glimmered back, two eyes bright and eager staring right up into his. “What are you going to do with me?”
Roman smiled, and took a step forward, his hands finding warm flesh. If he got blipped off to some negative zone after this, at least he’d know that he’d satisfied the burning desire that this tease of a courtship had sparked up in him.
He sank into the warm water with his mouth fastened to Bray’s, forgetting everything, forgetting his need to rule – only knowing that he had to give himself over to Bray immediately. And so he did.
sweetcarolanne Thu 05 Aug 2021 06:08AM UTC
Last Edited Fri 06 Aug 2021 06:55AM UTC
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Missy Tue 10 Aug 2021 06:45PM UTC
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