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They’re not high enough on the card to have their own locker room. It means there are a lot of eyes on Mapicc as he paces, and then sits down, and then stands up like he can’t contain himself.
“We’ll get ‘em,” Ro says.
“Every dirtsheet I’ve read thinks otherwise,” Mapicc retorts. “I just gotta kill someone to get a win around here. It’s fine.”
“We,” Ro corrects. He fiddles with the laces on his ring boots for the hundredth time. “We gotta kill someone. Don’t worry about it. We’re gonna.”
Audible over the chatter of the locker room, someone snorts. It’s Spoke. Of course it is. They’re fighting tonight. Mapicc freezes, then whips toward the sound like a hunting dog. Heat boils in Ro’s chest, an unpleasant mix of anger and embarrassment and anxiety.
“Let them be,” Ro says. “Hey! Mapicc. Mapicc, listen to me, we’ll do it in the ring.”
“You always tell me to settle down,” Mapicc says. He plops down next to Ro anyway. “Don’t you have face paint to get on?”
“You’re just trying to stress me out, now, man.” Ro knocks one knee against Mapicc. “So mean. You’re so lucky I put up with you, you know.”
“I don’t know, maybe if we were wrestling singles we could get something done.” But Mapicc knocks his knee back against Ro, so they’re good. They are. Ro would be able to tell if something were coming. Neither of them are good enough at lying to betray each other.
Ro rolls his shoulders out. He’s so tense lately, between — everything. “There’s gotta be a bathroom around here somewhere, c’mon. I’m not doing my face with you phone camera again. I am not.”
“It looked fine!” Mapicc shakes his head. “I didn’t mean it, about wrestling singles. There’s a bathroom down the left hall.”
Ro starts shoveling supplies into his little tote bag, because it has to happen, and this way he doesn’t have to look at Mapicc. “Warehouses, man. Stupid layouts. It’s gonna be like a hundred in there today.”
“I’ll show you where it is,” Mapicc says. He’s picking at a thread on his trunks, right where the end at mid-thigh. Ro can see the white flash of his wrist tape moving. That feels like a bad sign, even if Ro can’t put his finger on why.
“Thanks,” Ro says, then, “sorry,” and he sort of knows why he’s saying it. He pokes at Mapicc’s hand. “You’ll unravel it if you keep doing that, and I know you aren’t good enough at sewing to fix it.”
“It’s fine if it breaks. It’ll be edgy,” Mapicc says. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”
It’s always struck Ro as weirdly intimate to have someone watch him do his face paint. He’s turning from one person into another. One minute, he can live his life, walk through the grocery store and have to try three times to flag down an employee when the self-checkout machine stops working. The next, his face isn’t his own at all.
This is the in-between: broad smears of purple and white. Slash of black. Eyes blinking out of a face that’s less human. The thick feeling of paint on skin, the residual itch of sponge and brush.
“Looks good,” Mapicc says. He hasn’t looked away from the mirror once, not that Ro saw.
“You say that every time.” Ro takes a deep breath, steadies his hand for the thinner lines. Even though he can see Mapicc just fine, it feels like exposing his back. Like Mapicc could tear down both halves of him, person and persona, and Ro wouldn’t be able to stop him.
“I mean it,” Mapicc says. “It’s cool. How you can do that.”
“It’s just paint,” Ro says, like he knows what Mapicc means. It’s unpleasant feeling at cross-purposes with his partner. “Shh, I can’t talk and do this.”
“You could try.” Mapicc quiets down afterwards, though. Ro tries very hard to focus on his own face. The two of them have been here before — Mapicc likes to watch him do this, for reasons he’s never explained — but it never seems to get easier.
The smallest lines are the hardest. Ro can almost forget about everything but the pull of the brush on his face. His hands don’t shake. They don’t. Mapicc keeps watching.
He never asks to help.
Then again, Ro never asks him to help.
So maybe they’re both well-placed to be singles wrestlers. Maybe the second they win a real match, instead of just getting carried through a sloppy eight-man tag, or winning on a flimsy roll-up pin after Leo decided he didn’t feel like teaming with Mid anymore, maybe then Mapicc will pull the trigger. Finally betray him. Ro kind of hopes he won’t. But he always does his own face paint.
“Ta-da,” Ro says, and turns.
Mapicc claps, only mostly sarcastic. “Let’s get out there. Tonight’s the night. I can feel it.”
“Tonight’s the night.” Ro bounces on his toes. He’s not a person right now, he’s a wrestler. “Tonight is the night. The night!”
“Let’s kill ‘em.” Mapicc fist-bumps him. “We need this.”
They need it.
Their entrance music hits. The crowd is lukewarm at best, but it’s more positive than the cascade of boos that greets Leo and Spoke. Ro tags in first, gets thrown around a little, tags out. Mapicc gets thrown around a little, pulls off a terrifying fisherman’s suplex. Ro’s heart leaps into his throat because — maybe — nope. Not a pin. Not a win. Nothing like what they need.
Mapicc tags out. Ro leaps in. Momentum, that’s what it’s about, and he’s just gearing up to throw an elbow when he catches Leo’s shoulder to the gut. He doubles over, lungs protesting. His feet aren’t on the ground anymore. Leo has him stretched over his shoulders like he weighs nothing at all. Ro meets Mapicc’s eyes, reaches out with a futile hand.
Mapicc stretches back for the tag. There’s so much useless distance between them.
“Please,” Ro mumbles. “Please, please —“
The world spins. Ro’s head collides with the canvas, then his shoulders, then the rest of his body. His whole body is heavy, like instead of being a wrestler, he’s back to just being a person. Someone plucked off the street and shoved in the spotlight.
Leo pins him, nice and clinical, all of Ro’s weight on bruised shoulders. Ro fails to worm his way out. Useless. It’s useless. Another loss. They can’t afford this.
The crowd boos as the ref counts three. Leo stands, victorious, and Ro is finally free. He casts around desperately for Mapicc, but there’s no one standing in their corner.
“Ro!” Mapicc says. He’s down on the outside so that, even lying down, Ro only has to look up a little to meet his eyes. As Ro watches, he rolls his way onto the canvas near Ro. His jaw is clenched, brow tight.
“I’m sorry,” Ro whispers.
Mapicc shakes his head. “I couldn’t get past Spoke. I — I should have — “ he shakes his head again, sharp.
“Next time?” Ro offers. “I think I literally died just now.”
“I think that sums it up,” Mapicc says.
They limp out together as Leo and Spoke gloat. The crowd boos just the same whether they’re there or not.
“I’m sorry,” Ro says again, as they duck behind the entrance curtain. “I got pinned.”
“I didn’t do any better,” Mapicc says. “I should have done something drastic. There were spare chairs under the ring. I saw them.”
“You’ll get us disqualified.” Ro laughs. It sounds fake. “Are you sure?”
“They started it,” Mapicc shrugs. He sounds rehearsed, tired. “Are you with me or not?”
That’s not fair. Then again, none of this is. They won’t get anywhere if they can’t rig the odds a little.
Maybe Ro should be less worried about what Mapicc will do if they win, and more worried about what he’ll do if they keep losing.
“I’m in,” Ro says. “You know I am.”
“That means a lot,” Mapicc says. “And we’ll be doing it in the ring, just like you want.”
“Yeah,” Ro says. He runs his hands through his hair. The heels of them come away purple and black. They should stop lingering behind the curtain. Leo and Spoke will come through and minute.
“Hey,” Mapicc says.
Ro’s eyes snap to him. Guilt hasn’t set into his stomach yet, but it will soon. Worry is already starting to churn there, the kind that means he’ll be staying up late making contingency plans for which referees crack down hardest on cheating. He’ll make it work for both of them. The cold truth is that they need a win. The bitter truth is that Ro would rather win dirty together than win cleanly apart.
Mapicc smiles, toothy and genuine and just a little heartbreaking. “Next time, let me help with your paint.”