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Adam hasn’t done this as long as Kenny has. He didn’t lose someone as fundamental, didn’t harden himself as surely, didn’t slip so far so fast. There are still places inside of him that are soft.
Were. Places that were soft. Maybe. He isn’t sure. Beating Kenny changed something inside of him, broke something essential, but he hasn’t quite figured out what.
This place used to feel peaceful. Reminded him of home. The quiet gave him a sense of calm, and he could roam underneath clear blue skies and feel the sunlight warm on his skin. Now it just feels… lonely. Not even the capital-L kind, that has the undercurrent of secondhand satisfaction. The kind that makes him want a drink.
He’s known for ages that this was his domain, something inherent to himself that meant he couldn’t touch other people, let them touch him, the way that everyone else did. That he could act and pose and posture for a camera but he couldn’t be sincere when face to face with a real living person. That it was just another thing he failed at while others so easily connected. Being somewhere by himself, with just himself, only existing for himself, was a comfort.
And then the Elite. Kenny. And everything that came with that.
He feels like a newborn calf, sticky eyed and gumming for its mother’s udder, braying desperately for connection and warmth, but he’s deep in the emptiness and there’s no one, and his shouts are silent even to his own ears. He used to be able to jump in and out pretty easily, but it’s gotten harder and harder to leave lately. Maybe that’s a sign. He’s not sure of what, other than that he should probably stop coming here in case one day he just can’t find a doorway back. Before, he had a motivation to leave. He could think of fingers on the back of his neck, curved warm and sure as they drove between one city and the next. Hands finding tension in his shoulders and back and working it all away. A quirked grin and hooded, sleepy eyes looking at him from behind messy curls. A parade of ridiculous facial hair choices before the razor revealed clean, soft skin. Lips, chapped but plush, against his, smiling and pushing laughter back into his mouth.
He’d thought it was real for Kenny.
(He’d thought it was real for him, too.)
(He’s not sure what real is anymore.)
He didn’t mean to come here, to this empty place that used to be a sanctuary and now feels like a prison. He isn’t sure why he’s here now, until he crests a hill and sees Kenny laid out in a bed of soft grass, soaking up the ever-warm sunshine.
“This,” Kenny says with eyes closed and curls drifting lazily in a noiseless breeze, “is worse than the fog."
It’s the only noise Adam’s heard in - it feels like hours, but time always runs strangely in this place, he can lose minutes or hours in the real world and feel like he’s spent hours or minutes here. It’s certainly the only noise that’s ever been in these fields, and it echoes like a shotgun blast. Adam doesn’t cover his ears, but it’s a near thing. He can’t make himself speak, and even if he could, he doesn’t think he’d make a sound.
Kenny sighs, and blinks, and Adam’s world falls away around him. He finds himself on his back in a bed, the sheets under him salt-air sticky and gritty with sand around his feet. He sits up, breath catching. There’s fog thick as fresh cream outside the window, drifting through the open door to hover around the ceiling, and he can hear the ocean rolling and unrolling itself against beach outside.
This. This is lonely.
But it’s not empty.
Adam scrambles out of the bed and out the door, skidding in the sand. Kenny is standing on the edge of the surf, letting the waves lap at his toes. He’s gotten rid of the ridiculous facial hair and looks like himself again, and Adam just -
Runs.
Jumps.
They go crashing together into the water, and it’s freezing cold, enough to make him gasp. For a moment he panics when his head goes under and his throat fills with water. He thrashes, and Kenny grabs him by the hair and lifts him out.
"Asshole,” Adam spits around a mouthful of seawater, teeth chattering.
“You tackled me!"
Adam tackles him again, a big bear hug that thankfully takes them towards the sand this time. They tussle in the foam and seaweed, nothing like their match, everything like - how it used to be. He lets Kenny take the upper hand, pin his shoulders against the wet sand.
"Why are we here?” Adam asks.
“You didn’t answer your phone."
"You didn’t give me a reason to."
Kenny hums. "Here’s one, I’m by myself, I just woke up from a dream about the time we fucked so many times in one night that we ran out of lube, and both are inconvenient for me. I’m calling you again."
And like that, Adam opens his eyes in his own hotel room. His skin still prickles with cold, and he can still hear the distant echo of waves in his ear, feel the salty sand sticking to his skin. The back of his shirt has the memory of dampness.
His phone rings, loud in the gray pre-dawn. There’s no fog outside the window, just a morning, dawning clear. He reaches for his phone before he can think himself out of it.
"That was a good night,” he says, and on the other end, miles away and closer than he’s been in months, Kenny laughs.
*
(The beach is not Kenny’s domain. There is a city. It’s not empty. It’s far from empty. There are noises, and voices, and laughter, all behind closed doors that will not open no matter how much he knocks. He’s woken with bloody knuckles from how desperately he pounds down the doors of people he knows - Matt and Nick, Cole, the AEW roster, everyone he left in Japan. Hangman. Kota. He can hear them chattering away, happy in spite of his absence. Happy without him. Happy, in a way that they can’t be with him.
If a door does open, it’s to an empty room, no matter how many people occupied it until he forced his way in. That’s the way it is. The way he is. He can be surrounded by people and still alone. He doesn’t subject anyone else to that. The beach is for when other people need to be Lonely, when he needs to serve someone up to his god. He’s considerate in that way. Even when he wants to hurt people, he won’t hurt them the same way he hurts himself. The city is his his own punishment, his own private hell. A place all his own and just for him.
The Lonely doesn’t bring him joy. It’s simply a factor of who he is. How he can’t be all things to everyone the way he wants, so he makes himself nothing to anyone.)
(If he asked, he knows people would tell him that that’s not true, that there are so many people for whom he’s everything, who could be everything to him if he let them in.)
(He wishes he could believe that.)
(He wishes it were real.)
(He’s glad Adam answered his phone.)