Archive of Our Own ^beta

Kevin Owens knew it was going to be a shitty day from the moment the alarm went off on his phone and a peppy, cheerful ska beat filled the air. “Fuck,” he growled, getting snarled up in the covers as he struggled out of bed to grope for the phone. “Stop. Stop playing. Shut up. Go away.” He was gonna kill Ziggler, or whoever it was that had fucked with his phone. But it was probably Ziggler.

He blinked blearily at his reflection in the mirror as he brushed his teeth, unable for a moment to remember what city he was in. Minneapolis, right. Raw tonight. He was fighting John Cena. At that thought, he caught his reflection smiling. Then he remembered he had to hit the gym and his reflection stopped smiling. Eh, no way around it. He threw on a t-shirt and shorts, squinting at the early-morning sunshine flooding through the curtains.

He stepped into the hall at exactly the same time the next door opened and Sami Zayn walked out.

Sami flinched.

Kevin took a step backwards (not the same as a flinch). “What the hell are you doing here?” he snapped. “You’re not on the main roster.” The sentence started to twist up toward a question and he grabbed it and shoved it back down into an assertion.

“Believe it or not, I’ve got friends there,” Sami said. “I came to see Neville. Trust me, I don’t want to see you any more than you want to see me.” He turned quickly and walked off, stiff-legged and wary as if he thought Kevin might attack him from behind.

Not worth his time.

Kevin took the stairs down to the lobby, which was filled with wrestlers. Rusev and Lana were yelling in Bulgarorussian or something, and Kevin winced and sighed as Lana’s voice became more shrill. God. Dolph Ziggler didn’t look up from his phone, but he started humming Sami Zayn’s theme song as Kevin walked by. Kevin considered getting a cup of coffee to spill on him, but settled with giving him his best dead-eyed Promise of Future Retribution Stare and grabbed a croissant. Shouldering past Rusev, he headed out of the hotel.

The gym was down the block a bit, and as he finished off the croissant in three quick bites he heard a small sound from an alley.

Looking in he saw a cat gazing at him with big green eyes from the top of a dumpster. It was missing part of an ear and had a hairless scar on one side of its head, and as Kevin came closer he realized it only had three legs. “Aw,” he said, reaching out to pet it. It backed away from him with a wary look in its eyes, but then deigned to let Kevin scratch behind its ears. “Good kitty. Tough kitty.”

It purred and stood up, jumping gingerly off the dumpster and going behind it, where--

“Aw man,” said Kevin, squatting down in front of the cardboard box, “You’re a mama?”

The three-legged cat curled up around the tiny mewling kittens and looked up at Kevin, her paws flexing gently.

“Tough little mama,” said Kevin approvingly. “Tell you what, I’ll bring you some sausage tomorrow morning if you’re still here. Deal?”

The cat half-closed its eyes at him, and he decided to take that as a yes.

The gym was crowded with wrestlers, and with civilians trying not to look too awed. Kevin ignored both groups and did the bare minimum workout--boring, boring, why was working out so fucking boring?--before bolting.

As he headed back to his room, the elevator opened and Neville and Sami walked out. All three studiously ignored each other, but Kevin felt jangled and ill at ease. A shitty day already, and it wasn’t even nine yet. He retreated to his room for his usual prep for Raw: blocking trolls and people who liked Sami Zayn on Twitter, visualizing his match, ordering room service pizza, generally avoiding the world. He had to do a stupid meet and greet that night. He hated those.

As he had expected, the meet and greet had the usual suspects: a belligerent guy who wanted to talk smack with Kevin; an overawed girl who spilled Paige’s coffee across her autographs and burst into tears; a child in face paint who shrank away from Kevin in fear. Kevin looked past the whimpering kid at the line behind him. It looked endless.

He sighed and scribbled his signature again.

“All right,” said Hunter, “Let’s go out there and give Minneapolis the best Raw ever!”

It was pretty much the worst Raw ever.

Everything went wrong from the very first match, which was supposed to be a match between Natalya and Paige, but Natalya was sick or something, so they had to go with Naomi and Paige instead or something like that. Then Neville went and broke his fucking ankle in the second match, which brought the whole mood of the crowd down. It always sucked to follow an injury. Damn it.

By the time Cena’s annoying brassy music hit and that “RAPPA DOO” scraped across Kevin’s eardrums, he already knew the show was a flop, and even the brilliance of Kevin Owens couldn’t salvage it. The crowd was dead and there was no energy for Kevin to feed off of. Even worse, Cena went and yapped fucking Chinese at him again, and the crowd lapped it up like sheep (did sheep lap things? Kevin wasn’t sure). His French had improved too, Kevin found out to his chagrin. The match itself sucked--paramedics showed up for someone in the front row and they had to stop the match, and all of Kevin’s rhythm was shot to hell by then. He had to win by getting a low blow in when the ref wasn’t looking--satisfying in one way, but not in another. He was better than Cena, he knew it, he should be good enough to beat Cena clean.

He was brooding in the back during the main event, watching Hunter freaking out at how badly everything was going, when the lights flickered and went out, plunging the arena--and Sheamus and Ambrose in the ring--into blackness. “Ah, the perfect end to a perfect day,” Kevin announced into the darkness.

“It was not perfect for me,” said Rusev’s morose voice nearby. “Lana is angry with me.”

Kevin groped around in the dark to pat him on the shoulder. “It sucked for me too, buddy,” he said. “I’ll teach you about sarcasm sometime. It’ll be great fun.”

He let himself into his hotel room, relieved that he hadn’t run into Sami again--pretty much the only thing that had gone right today. Sami would be upset about Neville. He was probably moping in his room right now, being all sincere and authentic. Oh, and that reminded him...

He took out his phone and set the alarm, making sure to set it to his own theme music this time. Thank God this day was finally over, he thought as he drifted to sleep at last.

“What the fuck?” Kevin sat straight up in bed as the warbling sounds of Sami Zayn’s theme song filled his room. “Gah! Agh! Shut! Up!” He glared at his phone--had he not set it right?

Then he realized, as he looked around the room, that he had bigger problems than Sami Zayn’s theme song .

“Shit!” Hadn’t he packed last night? He was sure he had packed! So why was his gear still strewn around the room and--shit, he thought he’d set the phone for 6:30, but it was 7:00! The bus was going to leave at 7:30!

“God damn it, god damn it, god damn it!” He was still swearing as he threw the door open, dragging his bulging suitcase behind him, and charged out of the room--nearly bowling Sami Zayn over as he came out of his own room.

“Outta my way!” Kevin yelled, righting himself and heading on.

“Where the hell are you going?” Sami yelled after him.

“Some of us are on the main roster and have a bus to catch!” Kevin snarled without looking back.

“Yeah, but…”

Kevin ignored him, jabbing at the elevator button. Was it possible today could be worse than yesterday? It sure was starting off that way.

His first feeling when he got to the lobby was relief--it was full of wrestlers, so the bus hadn’t left yet. Lana and Rusev were still at it. Lana waved her phone angrily in front of Rusev’s face, screaming, and Kevin felt an unsettling sense of deja vu wash over him. Weird.

Kevin went to get his croissant, and as he walked past Dolph Ziggler, Dolph started humming Sami’s theme under his breath. “Okay, asshole,” snapped Kevin, “How’d you manage that two days in a row?” Dolph looked confused, but Kevin didn’t care. “I’m keeping it locked from now on, so don’t think you can do it again.”

“Why do you have all your luggage?” Dolph asked. “Where are you going?”

“Fuck if I know,” said Kevin. “Wherever we’re taping Smackdown, I guess. Madison?”

Dolph smirked. “Shouldn’t you get through Raw first?”

Kevin blinked. “What?”

“Or are you running away from Cena before the match even begins?”

Kevin narrowed his eyes at Dolph. “Ha ha. Very funny.” He looked around the lobby. None of the wrestlers had their luggage with them. “I’m not going to fall for that so easy, Ziggler.” Ziggler shrugged, and Kevin pointed an accusing finger at him. “You’re obviously trying to trick me into missing the bus. Aren’t they done shooting Swerved? Don’t think you can--” He pounced and picked up a newspaper, still with yesterday’s date. “That’s impressive attention to detail, but I’m not going for it.” He tossed the paper at Dolph, who did a good job of looking astonished. Kevin raised his voice and addressed the lobby at large: “I’m not going for it, okay?”

Everyone stared at him.

“Okay, fuck all of you,” said Kevin, feeling self-conscious and angry--he hated being ribbed so fucking much. And something so complex, so involved--

He pushed a growing feeling of panic away. He’d go to the gym, get that out of the way. If it was a rib, he couldn’t give them the satisfaction of seeing him rattled. Right, don’t give them the satisfaction.

He tossed his bag at someone at the front desk and left the hotel, heading to the gym.

He was still going over the weird conversation when he heard a soft mew and looked over to see the three-legged cat from the day before, sitting on the dumpster. “Oh shit,” he said, “I forgot your sausage, didn’t I?” He reached out to pat her and she backed away. “Hey, don’t you remember me?” She sat back down and allowed his touch. “I’ll get you some breakfast tomorrow, promise.”

His workout was perfunctory, broken by weird long stretches of deja vu. Everything looked familiar--were these all the same people as yesterday? Surely not. He hadn’t been paying attention, he couldn’t tell. How could everyone in Minneapolis be in on a rib? It wasn’t possible.

By the end of his workout, he was sweating from more than exertion. He was just going to go to his room. If they wanted him on the bus, they’d just have to call him and admit this had all been a prank. If they left without him--well, they’d have to tape Smackdown without one of their top stars, wouldn’t they? The thought filled him with satisfaction as he pressed the elevator button. It would serve them right, losing one of their big draws and--

The elevator opened and Neville and Sami came out, exactly the same as yesterday, and his gloating dissipated into confusion once more.

“Hey,” he blurted out, staring at Neville, “But--you broke your ankle! Really bad! How are you just walking around and--” He realized Neville was keeping himself between Kevin and Sami and broke off, anger and confusion snarling his words.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Neville said. “Leave him alone.”

Kevin backed into the elevator and the doors closed on Neville’s distaste and Sami’s confusion. By the time he got to his room, his hands were shaking so he could hardly get the door open. Faking a major injury like that just to get at him--he wasn’t sure Neville was clever enough or a good enough actor for that. Okay, Kev, keep it together. Get on Twitter and go on a blocking spree, that always makes you feel better. He managed to hold his hands still long enough to open the app--but once he got a look at the screen the phone fell from his fingers onto the bed.

The tweets were all exactly the same as yesterday. Exactly. The same. It wasn’t--it wasn’t possible. All of Twitter pranking him? No, no. It must be some technical glitch, reloading yesterday’s tweets. It just happened to tie in badly to this horrible rib. Coincidence.

But all his attempts to rationalize what was going on seemed to founder and fail--all the web pages he could look at were dated yesterday. Everything, everything agreed it was yesterday. In a panic, he jammed the phone into his shorts and bolted from the hotel, walking along the river for hours, trying to come up with something to explain what was going on. He tried to call his wife, but there was no answer. Had she forgotten her phone? She did that sometimes. He hadn’t realized until she didn’t pick up how much he had been hoping to hear her voice, like it could have been a lifeline to some kind of sanity.

He kept wandering, staring at the river flowing by endlessly. His mind seemed blank, dazed with shock, and he hadn’t realized how much time had passed until his phone buzzed and he checked to see he had a message reminding him that he was supposed to be at the meet and greet with Paige.

Stunned, confused past his ability to process, he made his way to the meet and greet. He shook hands with the same people as yesterday--the belligerent anti-Kevin fan, the weeping Paige fan, the frightened little fan in face paint--signing their merch mechanically, unable to even be angry anymore. Clearly this was a dream, he was reliving that awful day in his dream again.

He pinched himself. Nothing happened except it hurt.

“Let’s go out there and give Minneapolis the best Raw ever!” said Hunter, and the nightmare continued. The show was the same, the same as last night’s. Kevin watched in mute disbelief as Natalya had to cancel her match, as Neville--oh. Neville slipped on the ropes again and went down hard, his face twisting in agony, unable to stand. I’m dreaming this, Kevin thought as Neville was helped to the back. It’s one of those lucid dream things.

He was so busy trying to convince himself of it that he didn’t respond at all when Neville pulled away from the trainers and grabbed him. “You fucker, how did you know? Did you do this to me?”

“No,” was all Kevin could manage as the trainers pulled Neville away, cursing and gasping in pain. And then his match with Cena was up.

Kevin stood at the top of the ramp, mic in hand, and sleepwalked through the conversation with Cena, staring blankly as Cena jabbered at him in English and Chinese and French, all of it a meaningless gabble.

He lost.

He lost.

He was distracted and confused, and then the paramedics came again for some kid in the front row, and Kevin retreated to the corner and stared. He kept trying to remember what Cena did next, and the next thing he knew he was rolled up and the bell rang and Cena’s music was playing and he had lost.

The crowd jeered him as he staggered to the back, too confused to taunt anyone. He stood there, waiting in dread. Don’t let the lights go off, don’t let the lights go off, what the hell is going on?

The lights malfunctioned, the arena was plunged into darkness.

Kevin Owens stood in the dark, sweating, trying not to panic.

Back in his hotel room, he packed carefully, then took his phone and turned it all the way off. They could just come bang on his door in the morning. His brain was still refusing to process anything. It was impossible, it was all impossible. Tomorrow everything would be fine. Whatever this was would be over and it would be fine.

At the last moment, he got out of bed and laid down on his luggage. Ha. Prank that, bastards.

”Let’s go!” his phone sang out, and Kevin sat up in bed again, too startled to curse. He was back in bed, his stuff was all over the floor, his phone was playing Sami Zayn’s theme song, and someone had broken into his hotel room in the night, that was the only explanation.

“Enough!” he screamed. Even Ziggler wasn’t up to this level of fuckery, it had to be someone in charge fucking with his head. “Fuck this! I don’t need this!” He threw everything back into his bag and flung open the door just as Sami Zayn came out of the room next door.

Sami saw him and flinched, exactly as if he hadn’t run into Kevin three days in a row now.

“Fuck you too!” Kevin snarled, pushing him aside.

Resolutely ignoring Rusev and Lana’s argument, paying no attention to Ziggler’s humming, he headed for the door. He was leaving, he was getting the hell out of here, he was calling Ring of Honor and going back to them. They might have screwed up his booking, but they sure as hell never broke into his hotel room and rearranged his stuff.

His phone buzzed all the way to the airport. He ignored it.

“What do you mean, a computer glitch?”

The ticketing agent shrugged apologetically: computers out all over the Midwest, no flights leaving for the foreseeable future. Fuck. And of course everyone was renting a car now, so he had to wait for hours. By the time he was finally on the road, it was the middle of the day. No matter. At least he was getting away from Minneapolis, away from the WWE. Fuck all of them.

He drove for seven hours straight, his heart pounding as if something were chasing after him, and finally got a room at some random motel in Gary, Indiana. No way could someone track him here. Sitting on the sagging bed, he finally, reluctantly, looked at his phone.

A lot of missed calls. A lot of texts that started concerned, then turned panicked. Then angry.

Kevin wrapped his arms around himself and realized he was shivering. He turned off the phone, then turned down the AC. He was still shivering.

He left the television screen a black square in the dark. He didn’t look at it.

At some point, he fell asleep.

Ska music.

Kevin opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling, then slowly turned his head to see his gear scattered everywhere in the Minneapolis hotel. For a long time he just looked at the sunlight glowing through the windows. A thought came to him, and he packed it up into a very small box and put it away where he didn’t have to think about it.

He sat up and got dressed, mechanically. He went to the door, then stopped with his hand on the door handle.

He waited until he heard the door next to his open, then shut again.

Then he left the room and reported to the WWE doctors.

“I’m telling you,” he said, sitting on the examining table, “It’s brain damage of some sort.” He was sweating. “Concussion. It's like I keep reliving the day over and over again in my head.”

“We’ve run every test, and we don’t see anything wrong,” said the doctor, patiently. Too patiently. “You’ve been here all day, sir. Maybe you should go get some rest.”

“No no no, that’s what starts it again. You gotta listen to me!”

“We understand that you might not want to wrestle, sir, but--”

“Bullshit! I'd love to wrestle! But I got brain damage!” he explained, pointing to his head.

“--But you should at least go to your hotel room and rest.”

“No! Look, watch Raw with me, you’ll see! Neville will break his ankle, just like he does every day! It’ll be on soon, just--just watch it with me!”

The doctor exchanged glances with an orderly, and a television was wheeled into the examination room. “Kevin,” the doctor said (he hated it when doctors called him by his first name). “I have to tell you that you are exhibiting signs of paranoid delusion.”

“It’s not a delusion!” Kevin yelled. “I’m sick!”

“You’ve been here all day, and your refusal to leave despite the fact that your tests are uniformly negative is--”

“--Look, look!” Kevin pointed desperately at the screen as Stardust came to the ring. “This is the match where Neville breaks his ankle. You’ll see.” He was trying to keep his breath even. That thought that he couldn’t bear was nibbling at the box he had trapped it in. No, no, no.

Wade Barrett’s music hit.

“What?” Kevin stared at the screen. “Oh, damn it! I’m not there, they must have moved Neville into the match with Cena and Barrett took his place, that’s--that’s what happened. But it was Neville before, I swear it!” The doctor looked at the orderly, and the orderly nodded and crossed his arms. He was a big orderly, though not as big as Kevin. “Wait,” said Kevin. “This isn’t--I know this sounds--”

On the screen, Wade Barrett went to do a move on the top rope and slipped, crashing to the ground with a bellow of agony. Trainers came running.

“Shit!” said Kevin. “But--that was supposed to be Neville, not--”

“What exactly do you mean, ‘that was supposed to be Neville?’” said the doctor.

Oh shit.

“Let’s go!”

Kevin felt almost relieved as Sami’s theme song whacked against his eardrums and jolted him awake. He was pretty sure they’d pumped enough sedatives into him to knock out a bear--and he hadn’t even hurt anyone, he’d just...well, yelled a bit and tried to run. Here he was, back again. Better here than a psych ward, he supposed.

He reached out and turned off the phone, then sat and stared into space for a while. That thought, the horrible one, loomed up in the back of his mind, and he felt a howl of panic trying to batter its way out of his chest. He tamped it down and tried to be rational.

There was no escaping the fact that--whether he was trapped in some kind of delusion or it was really happening--the day was repeating. Every time he fell asleep, the day reset and played over again, like an infinite loop. Only he was aware of it.

For whatever reason, nothing was moving forward from this Monday. Nothing was ever going to change. Everything was frozen here in this day forever. No progress. No growing older.

No growing up.

And just like that, the thing he had tried so hard not to think about leaped up and smashed into him at last, like a sledgehammer to the sternum:

Owen. Elodie.

"Glorious," announced Sami Zayn to the morning, pulling open the hotel room curtains and letting the sunlight stream in. He imagined Cesaro or Neville's reaction to his pronouncement and wrinkled his nose. "Well, it is," he said a little defensively. The birds were singing, his shoulder didn't hurt, there was a free continental breakfast awaiting him, and he was going to spend the day with his friends--what wasn't glorious about that?

Humming along with the Rancid song he used as his alarm--he didn't care, he could listen to them every damn morning--he got himself together and headed out.

His cheer vanished as he left his room and turned to see Kevin Owens just a few feet away.

Sami flinched, taking a step backwards. Kevin didn't respond at all, though. He was slumped with his back to the hotel door, staring into nothingness. As Sami stared, he slid slowly down the door until he was sitting on the floor. There were tears running down his face and his entire body was shaking with sobs.

Walk away, Sami. Just walk away. "Jeez, what's wrong?" he said instead. Idiot.

Kevin squeezed his eyes shut, tears leaking out the corners, and started banging the back of his head against the hotel door: a dismal, hopeless, repetitive thump. "It's no good," he moaned between impacts. "No good."

Sami resisted an utterly irrational impulse to put his hand between Kevin's head and the door. He kicked Kevin lightly instead. "Hey. Stop it."

"I can't get home," sobbed Kevin, ignoring him. "I have to see my kids, and I can’t. I've been trying to get home for so long--so long, and it's impossible, I'll never see them again, never hold them again, oh God, oh God."

"Holy shit." Sami found himself on his knees next to Kevin. "What happened? What--just take off, man, catch a plane, Hunter will understand if it's an emergency--"

"--Computer glitch. No flights today. I don't have a car--" Kevin covered his face with his hands. "I can't steal one--"

Sami laughed, startled. "Yeah, that's not a good idea."

"Yeah, it doesn't fucking work," Kevin sobbed. "There's all this other shit, and it's so far, but I can't give up and I can't get home and I can't give up, and I can't--can't--"

Kevin's voice broke down into an incoherent wail, his body shaking.

After a long moment, Sami grabbed his shoulder. "Come on." Kevin stared at him blankly. "I've got a car, I'll get you home. But I'm not doing this for you," Sami added as he dragged Kevin to his feet. "It's for Owen and Elodie, got it?"

Kevin snuffled loudly and wiped his nose with his hand. "But--it's an eighteen-hour drive," he stammered.

Sami rolled his eyes. "Well, we'd better get started then, huh?"

The elevator doors opened and Sami shouldered Kevin through them. Lana and Rusev broke off what sounded like an argument in Bulgarian to stare as Sami half-led, half-carried Kevin, who was still sobbing, through the lobby. Dolph Ziggler looked up and raised an eyebrow, and Sami shrugged as they headed for the door: nothing to see here, just Sami Zayn helping out his weeping arch-enemy.

They hadn’t made it a block when Kevin broke off suddenly and wheeled around to go back the way they came. “What the hell,” Sami started, but Kevin ignored him, disappearing back into the hotel.

Sami threw up his hands and was about to just leave when Kevin re-emerged, clutching a napkin wrapped around something. “Just a sec,” he said. There were tears running down his face unheeded. “I gotta--”

He ducked into an alley. Sami, hearing a small mew, followed to see Kevin holding out a piece of sausage to a three-legged cat. The cat wolfed it down, then jumped off the dumpster and disappeared behind it.

“She’s got kittens,” Kevin said as he put the napkin filled with sausage down on the ground next to a box from which tiny squeaks were coming. “She’s got kittens, and they’re hungry and scared every day, and they’re never ever going to grow up--” His voice broke off in a sob. “They’re never gonna see their daddy again, not ever. It’s not fair!”

“Okay,” said Sami. “Right.” He waved a hand in the air--he hoped soothingly, as if anything he could ever do around Kevin would be soothing. “Let’s get back to Montreal, all right?”

In the car, Kevin sobbed steadily and hopelessly, one arm thrown over his eyes, for the first three hours straight, and Sami was so unnerved that he let the speedometer creep upward to well over the speed limit.

“Oh shit, watch this corner,” was the first coherent thing Kevin said, emerging abruptly with his eyes red and his face blotchy, his breath still hitching and hiccuping. “If you take it at more than eighty-four miles an hour, you’ll go right over that guardrail. Fiery wreck. From sixty-seven to eighty-four,” he went on, “The car just rolls over a bunch of times and we’ll sustain massive internal injuries, spend the day in the hospital and probably die.”

Sami blinked and eased off on the gas. “So you’re saying slow down, huh?”

“Well,” said Kevin, “Either slow down to less than sixty-seven or floor it above eighty-four. It’s the stuff in the middle that’s really shitty.”

Sami slowed the car down until he got around the corner.

“Shouldn’t you call your wife?” he asked, hoping to find out what the hell was wrong with the kids.

“Can’t,” said Kevin. He seemed to have run out of tears for the moment. “I think she forgot to charge her phone and the Internet’s flaky at my house right now. I can’t get in touch with her--I tried asking other people to go over to the house, but they won’t--”

Most people aren’t stupid enough to drop everything and help you? Sami thought but didn’t say. Amazing.

“So I haven’t talked to them since everything went to hell, I haven’t--oh God, I miss them so much.” He sounded wrung-out, exhausted. “I need to see them again, I’ve tried and tried and tried. If I can just get home I know that’ll be enough, I’ll finally get free of this. I just have to get home.”

“Well, we’ll get there,” Sami said. “I’m betting I can shave a few hours off that eighteen.”

“I’ll take a turn driving,” said Kevin, and Sami laughed without humor.

“You really think I’m stupid enough to let you get behind the wheel of my car?”

“You’ll never make it so long without me taking a turn.” Kevin swallowed, hesitated a moment before going on. “You know damn well you could never drive more than seven or eight at a stretch.”

Sami felt his hands tighten on the wheel, throttling. “Maybe I’ve gotten better at it. Since I’ve been driving alone so much and all.”

Silence fell in the car, and Sami had no inclination to break it. Cities skimmed by outside as the sun climbed the sky. Noon came and went, and Sami was getting hungry, but he wasn’t sure how to break the silence. Kevin would want to stop at a burger place, he always did. Sami could only rarely convince him to go outside his comfort zone and try something even slightly different--after what Sami mentally referred to as the Great Chipotle Disaster of 2010, he hadn’t even tried. And then there was that time they’d stopped at a Pizza Hut in Ypsilanti, which ended in both of them rolling on the ground roaring with laughter in the parking lot--

Sami gritted his teeth and banished all thoughts of food, all thoughts of the past. It was too familiar, was the problem: Kevin in the seat next to him, the road signs flickering by, the sun slipping down the sky. But now they had nothing to say to each other. Or at least nothing that was safe to say in an enclosed and fast-moving space.

Kevin was staring out the window, seemingly lost in thought. At least he wasn’t crying anymore.

They had left Chicago behind and were sailing along I-90, almost to South Bend, when Kevin seemed to come out of a cloud of brooding thoughts and inhaled sharply. “Slow down!” he barked.

“What?” Sami yanked his mind from the past again--stupid, stupid mind--and glared at Kevin. “I’ve had about enough of your yelling commands at me, you know. I’m taking a whole day out of my life to drive you home and all you can do is--”

Blue lights sprang into life behind them, and Kevin made a sound that was poised somewhere between a moan of despair and shriek of fury. “You motherfucker!” he yelled. “I told you to slow down, and now it’s all ruined, I’ll never get home because you’re a fucking moron who doesn’t understand simple directions!” He continued to rant as Sami pulled the car over to the side of the road: “It’s no good running from this Fuentes son of a bitch, Sami. He’s got a taser--” He broke off. Sweat had broken out on his brow. “Jesus, this jail is the worst, and my family’s going to find out, and Karina and the kids will have to spend their one day knowing I got arrested, I’ll have ruined their one day and made them miserable, and it’s all your fault, it’s all your fault--”

Sami slapped Kevin’s chest, hard. “Shut. Up.” he said. “Just keep your mouth shut, okay?”

He rolled down the window and smiled, just as politely and sincerely as he could manage. “Hello, officer…” He looked at the name tag and blinked. “...Officer Fuentes!”

Kevin stared down at the little slip of paper in his hand, then back up at Sami. “How did you do that?” he breathed as Sami edged the car back up just above the speed limit. Sami remembered the first time Kevin had seen Neville pull off the Red Arrow; his face looked almost that awed now.

“Jeez, I just explained we were in a terrible hurry for a family emergency and I was really sorry and accepted the ticket. It’s not rocket science.”

“I’ve never gotten away after he pulls me over,” Kevin said. “You just smiled at him and said you were sorry.” He looked thoughtful. “I suppose a lot of the time I’m driving a stolen car, that’s a big disadvantage. All the Red Bull I drink to keep awake might not have helped either.”

“You’re paying that ticket, jerk,” said Sami, still smarting from Kevin’s unhinged ranting.

“Sure,” said Kevin. “I’ll be happy to pay it tomorrow.” He laughed as if he were amazed. “There might be a tomorrow. I might actually get home and get out of this.”

Sami chewed on his lip. Kevin’s words were starting to catch up to him. “What the hell is going on, Kevin?”

Kevin’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”

“You’re talking really weird. And you knew that guy’s name. I think you owe me--” A lot of things. “--an explanation.”

“You won’t believe me,” Kevin said. “No one does.”

Sami sighed loudly. “I’ve seen a lot of weird things in Florida, man. Try me.”

“...The same day?”

“Every day.”

Sami said nothing for a few miles. “How long’s it been for you?”

“I have no idea.” A gulf of exhaustion yawned beneath Kevin’s words. “I can’t keep track. All I’ve done is try to get home since I realized. But I always crash, or get arrested, or fall asleep.”

“That’s a crazy story.” Sami kept his eyes fixed on the road and felt rather than saw Kevin peering at his face.

“But you believe me,” said Kevin.

Sami scowled at the road. “When we turn off onto 69, I’ll let you take a turn driving,” he said at last. “It’d be pretty dumb if I fell asleep and got us killed.”

“You believe me,” Kevin said again.

“Shut up,” said Sami.

Sami pulled over after they turned off I-90 onto 69 and let Kevin get into the driver’s seat. They always used to joke about getting onto 69 when they drove from Montreal to Chicago. The echo of old lost laughter hung in the air as Sami got into the passenger side and turned his face to the door, closing his eyes.

He slept fitfully for a couple of hours as the sunlight shifted slowly from white-gold to orange, but emerged fully when he heard Kevin take a long, shaking breath.

“What’s wrong?” Sami mumbled, rubbing his eyes.

“This is the furthest I’ve ever made it,” Kevin said as a road sign for Sarnia, Ontario flashed by. “I fell asleep about here the one time-- Oh my God, I’m going to at least make it to Canada.”

Sami half-closed his eyes and watched Kevin’s face; it felt weird, looking at an enemy’s face that seemed so familiar. Kevin looked exhausted and miserable in the way Kevin always looked exhausted and miserable when he’d been away from his family too long. He gazed down the road in the same way he always had when they’d talked about being in the WWE together--that same mix of hope and determination. And Sami knew the exact moment they crossed over into Canada from the look on Kevin’s face.

Sami remembered how the Canadian wrestlers would often burst into a mostly-ironic rendition of “O Canada” when they crossed the border: a car full of exhausted, bruised doofuses belting out the notes. He saw Kevin’s lips twitch, then still. The silence in the car remained unbroken. The corners of Kevin’s eyes were wet again.

Sami closed his eyes, turned away, and tried to sleep.

He woke up when something smacked him in the chest; after flailing around he realized it was a paper bag with a McDonald’s logo on it. Burgers, of course. He unwrapped a burger and bit into it, trying not to notice that Kevin had remembered he didn’t like mustard. He stared around the parking lot, avoiding eye contact. The sun had set and everything loomed with shadows.

“I need you to drive from here,” Kevin said in between wolfish bites of his own burger. “I’m going too fast, I’ll crash. That would suck, to get so close and fail again.” His hands were shaking. “God, I hope I don’t fall asleep. I’d hate to have to spend a day on the road with you again.”

“You’re saying I wouldn’t remember this day?”

Kevin inhaled his drink. “Everything resets except me. I run into you almost every morning.”

“I’m surprised you don’t just powerbomb me.”

Kevin shot him a bland look. “I told you, if I get arrested my family finds out and has to spend their one day worrying about me.”

“Right.” Sami polished off his burger and got into the driver’s seat, eyeing Kevin warily.

The last four hours of the drive Kevin spent fidgeting, drumming his hands on the dashboard and breathing heavily. “Can’t fall asleep, can’t fall asleep,” he said. “Talk to me, talk to me.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” said Sami. “You want me to make small talk with you, as if I’m not doing enough?”

“If I fall asleep, I’m just going to have to convince you to do it again tomorrow,” Kevin said. “You’re doing yourself a favor, really.”

“Son of a…” Sami sighed. “Talk to me about Elodie,” he said. “I never got a chance to meet her.”

Kevin’s face lit up and he started talking about his daughter, the words tumbling over each other: stories, memories, descriptions. The texture of her hair, how he’d felt when he first held her, all the things he hoped for her future. “Her future, her future, she’s gotta have a future,” he said. “I gotta get home to her, set things right."

He fell silent when they turned off the highway, his breathing rapid and ragged as the landmarks turned more familiar. He started whispering under his breath for the last few blocks, soft enough that Sami could catch only phrases: Please, God, please and I have to I have to and I’ll do anything, I swear.

As Sami turned into his driveway, Kevin threw open the car door before it even came to a full stop and was charging for the door.

Sami peeked through the open door and heard Kevin bellowing names, heard him tripping over furniture, scrabbling wildly. Lights came on and Karina was standing in the living room door in a bathrobe, her hair mussed and her hands over her mouth in shock. Owen, on the other hand, was screaming with joy: "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!" and throwing his arms around his father, who was hugging him and saying his name over and over again. A little girl was slung over Kevin's shoulder, her thumb in her mouth, looking back at Sami in the doorway. She had her father's serious gray eyes.

Kevin was babbling, weeping, beaming at his family. He'd forgotten Sami Zayn even existed. Karina saw Sami in the door and did a double-take; Sami smiled at her, put a finger to his lips, and slipped out of Kevin's house into the night.

Yawning, he started up the car. It was after midnight now and he didn't want to wake up his own family; he'd just grab some sleep in a cheap hotel and see them in the morning. Kevin would be able to catch a flight to Madison. They were done.

Sami decided not to think too much about Kevin's crazy story about the repeating day. Either he was lying, which was an almost entertainingly impressive lie, or he was telling the truth and it was over anyway. He checked into the hotel, feeling grimy from the road and sore from the stress. A long hot shower would feel really good ri

Before the third note, Kevin knew he was back in Minneapolis, Sami Zayn’s music back on his phone, the same cruel sunlight and the same cruel morning. He lay in bed and looked at the ceiling for a while, finally heaving himself out and pulling on his clothes. Now what? His mind felt bruised and blank.

He opened the door and went out into the hall just as Sami’s door opened as well. “It didn’t work, Sami,” he said. “It didn’t fucking work.”

Sami flinched.

“What the hell,” Sami snapped, looking at Kevin with fear and distrust, and ducked back into his room, slamming the door.

Oh, right. He didn’t remember Kevin’s weeping collapse; he didn’t remember getting past Officer Fuentes; he didn’t remember eating burgers together. He didn’t remember any of that.

Kevin stared at the closed door for a while. Then he went back into his own room and went back to bed.

For six straight days.

Eventually he got disgusted enough with himself that he even gave up on giving up. This day was his life now, and it was time he accepted it. If he got truly desperate he could always convince Sami to give him a ride home--the thought made him feel kind of sick, but knowing he could get home to see his family, if only for an hour or so, was surprisingly comforting. So maybe it was time to take scope of his one-day life and figure out how to have some fun with it.

He waited until he heard Sami leaving his room, then jumped out into the hall and yelled “Pop-Up Powerbomb!” at the top of his lungs. Dodging a punch, he retreated into his own room and yanked the door shut, chortling at the sound of Sami kicking angrily against it. “See you tomorrow, sucker!” he called.

Yeah, there was fun to be had with this.

John Cena blinked in astonishment as Kevin Owens dodged his first move easily, anticipated his second move, side-stepped in an entirely unexpected way, and rolled him up in thirty seconds. The audience booed, disappointed.

“Ha!” yelled Owens at his fallen foe. “Next time I’ll go for twenty seconds!”

Then he beat a hasty retreat, because that kid in the front row was due to choke on his popcorn in three minutes, and he didn’t want to get stuck waiting for the paramedics.

“Break a leg, Neville!” Kevin called as Neville went to Gorilla, then laughed himself almost breathless. Oh man, that never got old.

“What the hell, Owens?” Paige broke off from signing an autograph to stare at Kevin as he shooed a fan away without speaking to him.

“He’s a jerk, trust me. He was just going to pick a fight. He had that kind of face.”

“I guess you’d know,” muttered Paige.

“Trust me, I would.”

Sami Zayn looked out the window as he brushed his teeth, admiring the sunshine--what a glorious day, he could hardly wait to get out into it, spend some time with Neville and Cesaro. Who knows, maybe he’d be on the main roster soon and--

A small, oblong object went sailing out the window next door. It tinged off a lamp post and caromed perfectly into a dumpster. Sami blinked. Was that a phone? And...was it playing his theme song?

{ “...because you’re nothing but a coward!” }

Kevin Owens peered blankly at John Cena. “You know what? I’m getting tired of you spouting off in Chinese,” he announced.

He swaggered down to the ring, came forward when the bell rang, and had Cena pinned almost immediately.

“Twenty-five seconds?” he yelled. “Damn it!”

“Sami? Sami, I need your help. I have to get home. It’s been ages. I know, I know. You hate me, I hate you, it’s a mutual hatefest. But my kids, Sami. I have to see them. Please?”

Without any warning, the lights went out, plunging the arena and the common room into darkness.

“Ow!” yelled Cesaro as someone kicked his shins.

“What the--” snarled Roman Reigns as someone pulled his hair.

Randy Orton growled and swung at whoever had kicked him in the behind.

No one could figure out who had used the cover of darkness to settle some scores, but it must have been three different people, because who could have moved in the dark with such perfect speed and accuracy?

The three-legged cat moved away warily from his touch, like she did every morning. “It’s okay, Asuka,” said Kevin, holding out the sausage, “I don’t take it personally. You’d like me if you had a chance to get to know me, I’m sure. I’m a great guy.” The cat daintily took the sausage from his hand, her eyes still locked on his, ready to bolt. “You like that name? I figured I’d better give you one. It’s not after the NXT lady, though she seems awesome too. It’s after Lioness Asuka, you probably don’t know her. Trust me, it’s a good name for you.”

The cat licked its whiskers and mewed at him, then disappeared behind the dumpster.

“Yeah, see you tomorrow.”

“God damn it!” Kevin shook Rusev as hard as he could. “Why are you still having this stupid argument? Shut up, you idiot!”

Rusev shoved him aside and sent him crashing into the continental breakfast buffet.

Okay, that didn’t go so well, Kevin thought later as he tried to fall asleep as quickly as possible in a holding cell. On the plus side, it was fun to trash the lobby.

On the minus side, my family had a bad day. And Lioness Asuka went hungry.

“I need to stay awake, Sami, don’t let me fall asleep. Talk to me.”

An exasperated sigh. “What about?”

“I dunno, whatever. Tell me the story of your life or something. I mean, I know a lot of it, but fill in the details. It’s got to be less boring than just looking at Indiana.” Kevin looked out at Indiana, flat and featureless. “I guess.”

“Will you promise to keep your mouth shut and not insult me every other sentence?” Sami waited until Kevin had stopped laughing to roll his eyes and start: “I was born in Hill Valley, Quebec--”

”Nowheresville!”

“Says the asshole from Marieville, for God’s sake! Are you going to let me finish one sentence?”

“I’ll...try.”

{ “...because you’re nothing but a coward!” }

Kevin Owens squinted at John Cena. { “You used the wrong inflection on ‘respect,’” } he said.

Then he rolled into the ring, laughing, as Cena stared.

“Clothesline,” he sang out as Cena came out him, dodging it. “Irish whip, suplex, dropkick, kip-up!” The crowd booed as he dodged each move after calling them. “All right then, I guess I’ll just win, you ingrates,” he announced, and swung around just as Cena came at him, tossing him into a pop-up powerbomb.

The ref raised his hand and he soaked up the hatred of the audience.

“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” he said a moment later, leaning over the ropes and glaring at the kid who had started choking on his popcorn. “Why you always gotta steal my thunder, huh? He’s gonna be fine, jeez,” he said to the child’s panicking parents as the paramedics came running. “You always freak out.”

“Oh, so I’m ugly? This from a guy who wore a fedora in his senior yearbook photo, what a loser.”

Both Paige and the belligerent guy gaped at Kevin.

“They’re all right there on the Internet, Ian!” Kevin snapped. “Now get out of here, I got better things to do. You!” he yelled, pointing at the small child in face paint in his father’s arms. ”Stop being afraid of me, you sniveling snot!”

The child burst into tears.

“Good grief,” sighed Kevin. “That wasn’t as much fun as I’d imagined.”

“You’re going to get fired,” Paige said.

“I doubt it,” Kevin said, signing a few more autographs. “OK, I’m done, I gotta run, I’ve got just enough time to get to the bakery before tonight’s show.”

“The bakery?”

“Yeah, I gotta buy a chocolate cream pie for Michael Cole.”

“Oh,” said Paige. “That’s...nice?”

“Oh, it definitely will be,” said Kevin with a grin.

“Are you studying Chinese?” Sami asked in bemusement from the driver’s seat, sneaking a look at the book Kevin had open.

“Mm,” said Kevin absently. “There’s no such thing as ‘Chinese,’ actually. I’m studying Mandarin. Good thing the hotel’s near a bookstore so I can buy this first thing every morning.”

“All...right.”

“Eh, I’m too tired to study anymore,” Kevin said, slamming the book shut. “Let’s get back to the Boring Story of Boring Sami Zayn’s Boring Life. You can just skip to third grade, I know all about the first day of school and how you accidentally tripped the school bully and he decided he was going to torment you all year.” Sami turned to stare at him, and Kevin waved brusquely. “Eyes on the road, don’t slow down until thirty miles outside South Bend, we don’t want to have to deal with Fuentes this time. So this bully, Wes. How’d you end up dealing with him? I bet you just handed over your lunch money.”

“I did not.” Sami sounded outraged. “I’m a little better at dealing with bullies than that, as you should know.”

“Huh?” Kevin met his meaningful look, puzzled. “What do you mean?”

“I mean--” Sami broke off and looked annoyed at himself. “Never mind,” he muttered. “You want to stop for food somewhere?”

“Yeah, in two exits there’s a--”

“--a burger place.”

Kevin sat up straighter in his seat. “You remember it?”

“Remember? Kev, in all the years I’ve known you, you always stop at a burger place.”

“Oh.” Kevin was a little surprised at the stab of disappointment that went through him. Why would he care if Sami remembered any of these stupid boring road trips? “Well, I like burgers. So sue me.” He laughed. “The one and only good thing about this mess is that I can eat whatever I want, and fuck going to the gym.”

Sami sighed as if Kevin wasn’t making any sense. “You won’t even explain what the hell is going on, what the emergency is?”

“Nope,” Kevin said. “I don’t have to, you’ll help out anyway.”

Sami looked like he wanted to argue, then bit his lip and didn’t say anything.

Kevin looked down at the textbook in his hands, turning it over a couple of times. He was getting better--he’d bobbled the Mandarin for “ugly face” last time and he wanted to get it right--but what was the point if no one but him remembered it the next day?

“Hey,” he said after a couple of miles. “Hey.”

“What?” Sami snapped when he didn’t go on, and Kevin realized he wasn’t sure quite what to say. Oh well, it didn’t matter if he sounded like an idiot, Sami wouldn’t remember anyway.

“Okay, this is kind of weird, but...if you had only one day, if you knew this day was the only one you had--”

“--Is this some kind of threat?”

“What? No!” Kevin shook his head, trying to get his train of thought back. “I mean, if this was the only day you had, what would you do with it?”

Sami chewed on his lip, the way he always did when he was thinking over something too complex for him. (He did this a lot). Kevin waited patiently, only drumming his hands on the dashboard a little bit. Sami shot him a look and he stopped.

“I guess,” Sami said after a while, “That I’d try to make it the best day possible.”

Kevin sighed. “I’ve done that,” he said. “I’ve gone home and seen my family, I’ve eaten in every decent restaurant within reach, I’ve insulted that big blowhard at the signing in every way I could manage, I’ve gotten revenge on Ziggler for setting my alarm to your theme song--” He raised his voice and talked over Sami’s giggle. “I’ve smashed every imaginable kind of pastry into Michael Cole’s face, I’ve humiliated Cena in Mandarin, I’ve beaten him in twenty-five seconds--”

“--Kev, you idiot,” said Sami, “I didn’t mean make it the best possible day just for you, I meant make it the best possible day in general. For everyone. Like--” He took both hands off the wheel for a second to gesture vaguely at the air. “OK, I don’t understand half of what you’re talking about, but if you could beat Cena in thirty seconds--”

“Of course I can,” said Kevin, stung.

“Sure, beating Cena in less than a minute is good for you, but what about all those fans? They came hoping to see a fantastic match. Lots of them came hoping to see the great Kevin Owens dig down deep and beat the mighty John Cena. They came to see drama and excitement before the victory.”

Kevin turned that over in his head. It didn’t make a lot of sense. But he had to admit hearing Sami say “the great Kevin Owens”--that was kind of enjoyable.

“--I mean, that’s just my opinion. I’m pretty sure you don’t agree,” Sami was saying, and Kevin pulled his attention back to the conversation. “But here’s the thing, we’re all in this web of connections, and we all affect each other. If I had one chance to get things right, I’d use it trying to maximize the joy in the world.” He shrugged. “Pretty corny, I know.”

“Yeah,” Kevin agreed. He sat in silence for a while. “You never did tell me how you dealt with that bully in third grade.”

“Wes? Eh, I got to know him better and he wasn’t that bad. He ended up being pretty much my best friend until he moved to Halifax a few years later.”

Kevin thought about this as Indiana went by. Then he sighed.

“Sami Zayn,” he said with deep feeling, “I hate you so much.”

He woke up the next (the same) morning and lay with his eyes closed for a long moment, trying to conjure the scent of the fresh-cut grass on his lawn, the sound of Owen’s sleepy, disbelieving voice welcoming him home. He held on to every detail in his mind for as long as he could.

Then he got up and turned off Sami Zayn’s theme song and looked out at the interminable sunlight. Always sunlight. He hadn’t seen rain since this started. Why’d he have to get stuck in a sunny day, anyway? He’d always loved rainy days, the way rain veiled the world and made you feel safe and secure. But no, it was always brilliant now, always bright. He hated it.

Maximize the joy in the world, what bullshit. He didn’t want to make the world a more wonderful place for everyone. Fuck, it was hard enough to make the world a better place for himself and his family. Making things better was...not a Kevin Owens strength. He was good at ruining other people’s days, it was kind of his thing. He didn’t want to change that. He wasn’t even sure he could.

Think of it as a new challenge for the great Kevin Owens. The voice was so clear that Kevin swung around without thinking, his fists up. No-one was there, of course. Are you up to it, Kev?

Kevin leaned his forehead against the windowpane. “I hate you,” he whispered to the ruthlessly hopeful sunshine. “I hate you so much.”

Okay, thought Kevin Owens as he prepared to greet the new old day. Time to make the world better for everyone. I just do everything like Sami would. How hard can it be?

”And that’s why I’m the man!” Kevin Owens yelled. Then he stopped and leaned over the ropes to address a small child in the front row. “Hey, kid,” he said. “You need to remember to chew your food well. You could choke on it, you know? Please be careful.”

The child stared at him, terrified, and Cena took advantage of the distraction to get him in the STF. Owens tapped out immediately and the crowd booed.

“Yeah, yeah,” Kevin muttered, “as if I need to put up with that kind of crap.” As he struggled to his feet, the kid started choking on his popcorn, right on schedule. “God damn it.”

Sami Zayn stepped into the hall--and flinched to find Kevin Owens there. “Morning,” Kevin said, waving absently. “I’m working on it.”

“What?”

“Working on it!” Kevin called back, already far down the corridor. “See you tomorrow!”

“I’m telling you, Nattie, something in that salad is gonna make you break out in awful spots,” Kevin said. “I think maybe you’re allergic to something in it? You shouldn’t eat it. I’d hate to have you get sick and miss your match.” He smiled at her, friendly and non-threatening.

Natalya stared at him with her fork poised halfway to her mouth. Then she deliberately put the salad into her mouth, chewing as if to taunt him.

“Right,” sighed Kevin.

Sami Zayn stepped into the hall--and flinched to find Kevin Owens there. Then he stared.

“Kevin, are you...skanking?

Kevin stopped. “It’s not obvious? Is my form that far off?”

The door slammed.

“Okay. See you tomorrow,” Kevin said to the closed door.

“You should be more careful with your coffee,” Kevin informed Paige. “Someone might spill it.”

Paige stared at him and didn’t move her coffee.

“No, I’m serious,” said Kevin. “A fan could spill that on your autograph and she’d be upset and her day would be ruined. You should probably put it somewhere else.”

Paige raised an eyebrow, but didn’t move her coffee.

“Damn it,” muttered Kevin.

Sami Zayn stepped into the hall--and flinched to find Kevin Owens there.

“How do you do this?” Kevin yelled. “I can’t--”

Slam.

“Yeah, yeah!” Kevin shouted at the door. “See you tomorrow, idiot.”

Neville’s ankle was a particular challenge. He watched the match closely but for the longest time couldn’t figure out what had gone wrong with that top rope move. Then he suddenly realized he needed to be looking, not at what Neville had done wrong, but at the environment. Why was that top rope particularly slippery?

“Ah ha!” Everyone stared as Kevin Owens stood up and pointed at the monitor where Naomi and Paige were wrestling in the ring. “Right there at the end! Naomi gets thrown against the ropes and nobody wipes them down, it’s still slick with her sweat! I’ve got it!” He punched the air. “That’s it!”

He jumped up and grabbed the ref for Neville’s match--or started to, but stopped himself. Wait, how would Sami do this? “Sir,” he said politely, “You really need to make sure you wipe down that top rope before the next match.”

“Are you saying I don’t know how to do my job?”

“No, no, I’m not--I just--someone could get hurt, you know?”

The ref raised an eyebrow at him and turned away, and Kevin felt a sinking feeling in his gut. He wasn’t going to do it.

“Argh!” he kicked a box as hard as he could, then forced his hands to unclench. He’d go talk to Neville, he’d tell him not to do any moves off that rope, he’d--

He imagined Neville’s face as Kevin politely explained how he should be wrestling. His shoulders slumped, and he didn’t even try it.

“I don’t know, Asuka,” Kevin said, sitting behind the dumpster with his back to the brick wall. “Nobody listens to me even when I’m right. When I go out and try to wipe the rope down, security grabs me. It’s like they don’t trust me or something!”

One of the kittens--the marmalade tabby--was trying to crawl up his chest, seemingly determined to reach his face. He extricated it gently, untangling tiny claws from his shirt, and put it back in the box.

“And then everyone gets freaked out and angry when the bad thing happens anyway,” he grumbled. That was especially discouraging--annoying, he meant annoying. Kevin Owens didn’t get discouraged, he got annoyed. “It’s just like I thought, I suck at helping people. This is stupid. This is stupid, Asuka.”

Lioness Asuka looked like she agreed.

“No, I’m not giving up,” Kevin snapped, pointing angrily at her. Asuka blinked her big green eyes as Kevin went on, “I’m sure they’d all expect me to. Cesaro and Neville and and Dean and Sami. They’d say I wasn’t smart enough to figure out how to fix things. They’d say I was just a big fat moron who was only good at pissing people off.”

The marmalade kitten was back, struggling up his chest with single-minded tenacity.

“But how do I fix things if all I’m good at is making people mad at me?” Kevin complained to the kitten. “How do I…”

His voice trailed off thoughtfully, and after a moment he smiled.

“Yeah,” he said to the kitten, which had finally made its way up to his face. “Yeah, that might work.”

The ginger kitten stared at him solemnly. Then it fastened its tiny teeth onto his nose.

“I knew you were going to do that,” Kevin said without moving.

Kevin grabbed the last bouquet of flowers from the vendor in the lobby just before the nervous young man could make his hands stop shaking long enough to count out his change. “Hey!” said the angry customer, but Kevin ignored him (his girlfriend was allergic to lilies, but the kid didn’t know that). Brandishing the flowers like a battering ram, he brushed between Rusev and Lana, then stopped and smacked Rusev in the chest with them. Petals showered everywhere.

“Just apologize to her, you moron!” he snapped. “Do you have any fucking idea how lucky you are to get to spend this whole day with her?” He looked down at the flowers as if he was surprised to find himself holding them. “And throw these out for me,” he snapped, shoving the bouquet into Rusev’s hands and storming toward the buffet.

As he left with sausage in hand, he saw Rusev extricating one red rose from the mangled bouquet and handing it to Lana with a sheepish expression on his face.

“Hey!” Paige tried to grab her coffee back from Kevin, but Kevin just sneered at her. He took a long, taunting sip of it and bit back a grimace--ugh, he hated coffee.

“Yum,” he gloated, and put it down far away from a fuming Paige.

Kevin Owens swaggered to the ring, stopping to glare at the people booing him. He started to saunter up the stairs, then paused, looking at one particularly vehement child in head-to-toe Cena gear, clutching his popcorn box and screaming at him. He jumped off the stairs, went over to the kid, and slapped the popcorn out of his hand, sending it spraying everywhere. The kid howled. The parents howled. Owens rolled his eyes.

{ “All right, John, } he said to an appalled Cena as he got back in the ring, { “Let’s see if we can go thirty minutes tonight.” }

He got really good at it, running through the day. There was something oddly satisfying about it, even. He even almost looked forward to seeing Sami for that moment every morning, although Sami flinching every time he saw him got...annoying (not discouraging). He caught himself trying to make Sami laugh, trying to bring some flicker of a smile to Sami’s face.

It didn’t work.

But things were generally going smoothly. He’d prevented a bunch of the disasters, although he still hadn’t figured out how to fix some of them.

And then he hit a wall.

Sami Zayn hummed to himself as he got his things together, enjoying the sunlight flooding his hotel room. A beautiful day in Minneapolis, a glorious day.

He stepped into the hall and turned to find Kevin Owens staring at him. Sami flinched. Kevin winced.

{ “I need to get home,” } Kevin said. { “I’ve been trying so hard, and I think I’ve been getting better at it, but I’m stuck, and I’m so frustrated and I need to see my family again. I know you’ve got a busy day ahead of you, but I just-- I just--” }

He sounded tired, but there was no sarcasm in his voice, no hostility, and Sami was so startled by this that it took him a moment to realize Kevin hadn’t spoken English.

Sami merged onto the interstate and glanced over at Kevin. “So when the hell did you pick up Arabic?”

Kevin bared his teeth and Sami realized with some surprise it was a grin. “It was the quickest way to get you to listen to me. Don’t flatter yourself--I learned Mandarin and Bulgarian first.”

“Right,” said Sami when Kevin didn’t explain further. This was going to be a weird day, he could tell.

They were barely out of Minneapolis before Kevin pulled the little pad of hotel stationary out of his pocket and started writing on it--dense, scribbled notes that looked like a timetable of some sort. “Maybe I could make it if I sprinted?” he muttered under his breath. “I know jumping off the balcony doesn’t work.” He drew some arrows onto the timeline, then flipped the paper over and started scrawling what looked like a map of the Target Center onto it. “No, no!” he snapped. “Getting from 130 to 217, it’s just not--damn it. And then there’s the match. Did I learn all that electrical engineering for nothing?”

Sami listened to him mumble for a while, then asked tentatively, “Kev?”

He expected Kevin to snarl at him, but Kevin just said “What?” without looking up from his map.

“What’s the problem?”

“Oh,” Kevin said, “The timing doesn’t work out. There are a couple of places earlier in the day when it’s tight, but the real problem is my match with Cena. There are seven distinct things that need to be dealt with during the match, and there’s no way I can get to them and still have the match. And it’s like you said, the match is important.” Sami blinked. He didn’t remember saying anything like that. “I know it seems like a trivial thing compared to making sure Mercy accepts Trina’s proposal or that Robert doesn’t miss that text that he needs to see, but...it’s my job to give them all a great show. I feel like that’s somehow the heart of it all, it’s not something I can skip.” He smacked the dashboard. “But I can’t be everywhere at once! If only there were two of me--do you think there’s a way to duplicate myself? Maybe if I learned some quantum physics?”

“Maybe you should just ask someone to help you.”

Kevin threw his hands in the air. “You dummy, no one is stupid enough to trust me! I mean, what kind of moron would be willing to drop everything and help me with no questions asked, just take my word for it that…” His voice trailed off as Sami lifted his hands in a sweeping gesture that encompassed the two of them, the car, the Chicago suburbs sliding past. “No,” he said. Sami kept his eyes on the road. “Shit.”

Sami shrugged. “None of that sounds like something I’d refuse to help with.”

“You idiot,” said Kevin. He sounded sad rather than angry. “Let’s talk about something else.” He hesitated, then said, “How’ve you been?”

Sami shot him a look. “Well, the shoulder you injured is healing up well.”

“That’s good,” said Kevin. He looked out the window. “God, that feels like a hundred years ago. And then I remember it’s always like yesterday to you.”

“Well, a few months, but it’s--let’s just say it’s pretty fresh in my mind.”

“I’m--” The word was blurted out, then cut off sharply, as if Kevin had started to say something without thinking and then stopped himself. “Well,” he said instead. “What would you like to talk about?”

“Let’s talk about when we were tagging together,” Sami said before he could stop himself. “You know, I don’t have--I don’t have anyone I can really talk to about those times.” Because Kevin was in all the stories, and when Kevin’s name inevitably came up, the person he was talking with would look at him pityingly, and the conversation would wither and die. Years of his life, vanished into silence and sorrow.

“Yeah,” Kevin said. There was a silence that should have been uncomfortable but somehow wasn’t. “Remember when Colt stole that jack o’lantern and hid it in your trunk?”

Sami snickered. “And we threw all our gear in the back seat and didn’t find it--”

“--for a week,” they finished together. Kevin mimed Colt gagging in horror and Sami found himself laughing until his eyes watered.

Sami pointed at him. “Or that time we were so bored and we went and played miniature golf?”

“Oh God,” Kevin chortled. “I wonder if we’re still banned. The way that ball bounced off the windmill! Ping! Ping ping!”

It was like a dam breaking--Sami knew he shouldn’t relax around Kevin, and yet, and yet--it was such a relief, to just talk, to just act as though they were friends again.

“You’re different,” he said as Kevin finished his hilariously terrible impersonation of Jim Cornette.

Kevin wiped his eyes. “What do you mean?”

“You don’t hate me,” Sami said, then wished he could bite his tongue out. Stupid, stupid…

Kevin fell silent for a long stretch of road. “I guess I don’t anymore,” he said eventually. “I mean, I know I did, but I don’t even remember why, exactly. It seems...kind of dumb, now.” He rapped on the window with his knuckles, absent-mindedly. “I’m sure you still hate me,” he said. “I mean, how could you not?”

“I never hated you,” Sami said. Kevin frowned at him. “Oh, I’ve been angry, sure. Furious, even. But life’s too short for hate.”

“Too short or too long,” Kevin said softly. “Hey, do you want to stop and get some food soon? There’s a--”

“--Let me guess, a burger place,” said Sami.

Kevin smiled at him. “Actually,” he said, “You don’t remember it, but one time we found this really good falafel place in South Bend. You want to stop there?”

“Home,” Kevin whispered as Sami turned the last corner. “Home home home.” He opened the car door, then let it swing shut without latching, silently. “It feels good every time,” he said to Sami. “Every time.”

Smiling as though he were about to share a beautiful secret, he beckoned to Sami and slipped in the front door.

“Let’s not wake Karina up this time,” Kevin whispered as he made his way unerringly through the dark house. “It scares her, you know? Maybe next time.”

He went into one the rooms; Sami followed to look in and see Kevin press a kiss into Owen’s hair by the light of a Pac-Man nightlight. Kevin looked down at his son for a long time, then turned and left without waking him, going down the darkened corridor to another room.

“I’m never quiet enough to keep you from waking up, am I?” Kevin murmured as they slipped into the room, and Sami saw a solemn-eyed little girl standing up in her crib, too young to realize that it was impossible for her father to be home. She held up her arms for Kevin to pick her up, and Kevin swung her onto his hip. “Sami,” he said with grave formality, “This is Elodie. Elodie, this is your Uncle Sami. He’s the one who brings me home so I can see you, sweetheart,” he went on as Sami felt sudden tears stinging his eyes and blinked hard.

“She’s beautiful,” Sami said.

“You always say that,” Kevin smirked. “And you’re always right.”

He held Elodie in his arms, rocking her back and forth and whispering to her until her eyes slid shut again, then placed her gently in her crib. His own eyes were heavy, and he yawned as he turned away and left the room.

Together they went into the living room, and Kevin sat down on the couch in the middle of the room. Sami stood behind the couch, not really comfortable enough to sit down in Kevin’s living room, but unwilling to just leave, either.

Kevin blinked and yawned again. “No,” he said softly. “I don’t want to fall asleep.” But he slumped over slowly, nodding, until he was lying down. “It’s so good to be home,” he whispered. “Even just for a little while.”

His eyes closed.

“Hey,” said Sami after a moment, just a bare whisper. “Are you asleep?”

No answer.

Sami leaned over the back of the couch, looking down at Kevin’s sleeping face. “Kev,” he murmured. “It was good to travel with you again today. To laugh with you again. So...thanks for that.” He ran a hand through his hair and sighed sharply, annoyed at himself. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I--I miss you. I miss us. I miss us...being a team.”

He looked down at Kevin and thought about the past, and about the future, and whether there was any chance tha

The warbling notes of Sami Zayn’s theme song woke Kevin up, and for a long time he lay in bed and looked at the ceiling. Sami had never said anything like that in all their trips to Montreal. He wondered what he’d done to get that result.

You should just ask someone to help you.

Sami’s theme song looped once, then twice. “Let’s go!”

Kevin got up and started to plan.

“Glorious,” Sami Zayn announced to the sunlight, looking out of his hotel window. For a second he couldn’t help but imagine how Cesaro or Neville might respond to that, and he wrinkled his nose. “Well it is,” he said as if they could hear him.

Yawning and scratching his chest, he started toward the bathroom and--

His phone chimed with an incoming text, and he swung by to scoop it up off the nightstand. Squinting at it, he stopped in shock as he read Sami, this is Kevin.

What the hell?

He knew he should just delete it, but his eyes followed the words anyway in utter disbelief.

I know this is crazy, and I wish I could explain it all to you, but I don’t have time. So please just know that I need your help today, I truly do.

I swear it on the lives of my children.

Sami sat down on the bed abruptly. Kevin was a horrible person, but the one thing he held sacred…

If you’re willing to help me, I think together we can help a lot of other people. I need you to do the following things at the following times.

Sami looked at the list below, bewildered. He should just delete the text and go on with his day, he knew that. He really should.

After a moment, he got up and threw on a t-shirt hastily. It was going to be a busy day and he had to get started.

“Excuse me? Ms Jones?” Sami smiled at the woman who opened the door and hoisted the box in his arms. Small mewing sounds came from it. “I heard that you might be willing to adopt some kittens?”

“We...just decided last night, how did you--” The woman was already looking in the box, exclaiming with delight over the tiny balls of fluff.

Sami pulled out his phone to check. The note was quite clear that he wasn’t to forget this part. “Okay, the mother cat is named Lioness Asuka. The black one is Diesel. The black and white one is Shawn. The fluffy one is Miss Elizabeth. The big brown one with the stripes is Andre.”

There was one kitten left in the box, but the note was out of names. Sami picked up the little marmalade tabby and scratched behind its ears. The nameless kitten purred, and Sami handed him over to Ms Jones.

“I guess you can call him Generico,” he said with a smile.

There were a lot of items on the list, and while some of the tasks seemed obvious, others were more opaque. Putting change in five different expired parking meters, okay. Stopping to tell a stranger on the street to make sure not to forget his wife’s birthday--bizarre but okay. But why would he need to move a specific recycling bin six inches to the left, after nine-thirty but before nine fifty-seven? Why would he need to stop and tell a street musician that they should change corners to one three blocks to the west? (The note didn’t say to leave any money, but Sami slipped a dollar in his hat anyway). Why was it necessary to cross an intersection at exactly twelve-sixteen? Sami shrugged and kept going through the list; it wasn’t hurting him, after all.

By the time he reached the early evening, he was worn out and frazzled, but so far he was pretty sure he’d gotten every item on the list right. The next one was a bit of a challenge, but he arrived at the meet and greet just in time, confused companion in tow, and went in to where Paige and Kevin were sitting and signing autographs.

It was the first time Sami had seen Kevin since coming to Minneapolis, and he braced himself for the first impact of Kevin’s hostile gaze meeting his. But to his surprise, Kevin saw him and smiled, a look of pure relief that lit up his face and illuminated his gray eyes.

Cautiously, keeping one eye on Kevin just in case his mood shifted, Sami led his companion to where a child with one half of his face painted waited in line. “Hi,” Sami said to the father as the child gasped in delight, “I was wondering if your son might like to meet Jimmy Uso?” It hadn’t been easy to convince Jimmy to come to the meet and greet--and Kevin hadn’t been very helpful, the text said only “I’m sure you’ll come up with a way”--but it was worth it all to see the child laughing with joy.

“Psst!” Sami looked away from the thrilled kid and saw Kevin desperately pointing with his eyebrows at the third person in line. Oh, right.

“Are you Ian?” Sami said to the angry-looking man. “Hi. I’m Sami.”

“I know who you are,” growled Ian.

“Oh, thanks,” said Sami. “Look, you look really worried about something. Are you okay?” He didn’t look worried, he looked belligerent, but that’s what the text said to say.

“I’m--yeah, I’m fine,” Ian muttered. The line moved forward. He was two people away from Kevin now.

“I gotta say, man, you look like I did when I was worried about my mother’s surgery.” Sami was having a hard time sounding sincere--his mother had never had surgery--but Ian didn’t seem to notice.

“How did you--is it--yeah,” Ian stammered. “It’s heart surgery. Tomorrow night.” He was up next to see Kevin, but he was looking at Sami now.

“I’m sure it’ll go fine,” Sami reassured him. The text hadn’t told him what to say after the line about the surgery, but it wasn’t hard to guess what Ian needed to hear. “Just relax, enjoy the show tonight. You’ll be there for your mother tomorrow and it’ll be fine.”

Ian was welling up. “Thanks man,” he said, wiping his eyes. “I just--I’ve been so worried, and I couldn’t talk to anyone, and it’s been driving me crazy--” He was up next to meet Kevin, but he was so busy telling Sami about his mother that he hardly seemed to notice, just nodding when Kevin scribbled his name down on a piece of paper. Sami listened as Ian poured his heart out, nodding sympathetically with one eye on the far side of the room. He frowned as he watched Kevin steal Paige’s coffee--Kev hated coffee, what was up with that?

Eventually Ian went away, still thanking Sami for listening to him. Sami glanced down at his phone--he didn’t have anywhere he had to be for another twenty-two minutes--and when he looked up Kevin was standing in front of him, grinning. “You came,” he said. “I wasn’t sure you would. I’ve spent all day running around doing my side, wondering if--” He exhaled sharply, scrubbed a hand through his hair. “Anyway. You have no idea how many times I had to take Ian out for some drinks before I could find out what was bothering him,” he said. “And even then I didn’t know what to say to get him to chill the fuck out. I was pretty sure you could figure it out, though.”

“Kevin, why are we doing this?”

Kevin started walking toward catering, stopping to throw away a can lying on the ground, then to move an electrical cord out of the way with economical movements that seemed almost unconscious. “We’re helping people, right? Making their days better?”

“Okay, let me rephrase the question. Why are you doing this?”

Kevin stopped and looked at him. He shook his head with a lopsided smile. “A wise man once told me that if I had a chance, I should maximize the joy in the world.”

Sami laughed out loud. “That’s the corniest thing I’ve ever heard. That sounds like something I’d say.”

Kevin chuckled. “I can’t believe this is going so smoothly on the first try,” he said. “Come on, we’ve got to get to catering and help Natalya and Cesaro.” He handed a piece of cloth to Sami. “That’s for you. As for me--after extensive hit-and-miss experimentation--” His grin at Sami was wry, Check out my fancy language, “I’ve figured out Natalya is allergic to the new ranch dressing. So I’ll handle that.”

“Hey,” Sami said to Cesaro slightly later. “Look what I found.” He handed the Tyson Kidd armband to Cesaro, who sighed with relief as he slipped it onto his arm.

“I can't believe you found it, thank you! I don’t know, it just doesn’t feel right to go out there without it.”

Behind Cesaro, Kevin was poking around at the salad bar. He paused on the far end, then cleared his throat loudly and spat noisily and dramatically into the ranch dressing.

Outrage. Horror. Kevin laughed as everyone yelled at him, then grabbed a piece of cheesecake and sauntered to his table.

“Now comes the hard part,” he said in a low voice to Sami. “Are you ready? A lot of things are going to happen really fast, and I won’t be able to be there for all of them. I’m counting on you.”

“You’re crazy,” Sami said.

“Hey, Natalya had a different salad dressing, that’s all I care about.” Kevin popped the whole piece of cheesecake in his mouth at once and chewed with gusto. “This is about the only thing in catering I can still stand,” he said with his mouth full.

Natalya had just finished wrestling Paige and the crowd was still going nuts. Good. Kevin watched as Sami politely explained to the ref that he thought that top rope needed to get dried off more carefully. The ref shrugged and went out to wipe it down, and Kevin nearly held his breath; would it be enough to save Neville? Not that he actually cared about saving Neville, it was just another item on his checklist.

Yet at the moment when Neville went for the top rope move and pulled it off, landing safely on his unbroken ankles, Kevin heard himself let out a whoop of joy and jumped in the air, pumping his fist. “Yes!” he hollered. No more shattered bones, no more Neville being angry and Sami being wretched, they’d fixed it. Damn, it felt good.

He caught Sami looking at him, and turned away to hide the relief on his face.

Next was his match with Cena. The cornerstone. Thirty minutes where he couldn’t do anything but wrestle his best, put on the best possible show. Thirty minutes where he had to trust Sami to save everyone. He should be nervous. He should be sure Sami--cautious, slow-witted, deliberate Sami--couldn’t do it all.

Yet when his music hit and he went through the curtain, he found himself feeling almost serene.

His Mandarin was on point, his repartee flawlessly timed and all his inflections just right--he paused in the middle of his speech to slap the popcorn away from the young Cena fan, then climbed into the ring.

The match itself was--perfect, that was the only word for it. He dodged Cena’s attacks by the slightest of thrilling margins, pulled off the most dazzling moves of his own. He knew when he had time to execute a magnificent moonsault, when he had space for the best cannonball ever.

And all the time, he caught glimpses of Sami moving through the crowd, stopping here and there to do something small, something you might hardly notice. He smiled at Mercy and told her to go for it, and Mercy bit her lip and pulled out her diamond ring. He told Robert that he should probably save his phone battery in case he got that text he’d been waiting for, and Robert looked surprised and put his phone away. Kevin could see his silly friendly cap out of the corners of his gaze as he moved through the fight with Cena, and it felt...like they were all working together. Like it was all part of something bigger, something meaningful. The crowd roared, and Kevin felt sweat pouring down his face--thirty minutes was a long match. There was a fierce smile on Cena’s face, the rafters were ringing with duelling “Let’s go Cena” / “Fight Owens Fight” chants, Sami was giving him the thumbs-up from section 217, and everything fit together. He’d always laughed at Cena’s hooey about the ring being a sacred place, but somehow tonight there were tears in his eyes, and everything was right, and the energy of the crowd flowed through him and illuminated everything.

Everything.

And then he was scooping Cena at last into the pop-up powerbomb, sending him crashing to the mat and into his pin.

Because Kevin Owens losing to John Cena was never going to be part of a perfect night.

The bell rang and Kevin vaulted out of the ring, past where Sami was giving the popcorn-less Cena fan a new Cena t-shirt to make up for Kevin’s rudeness (the last thing on Sami’s list). He rushed to the lighting technician and kicked his chair over, yelling “You screwed up the lighting on my entrance, asshole!” Then, under cover of a random temper tantrum, he quickly made the three adjustments necessary to keep the lights from going out later.

He turned to find Sami staring at him, and he shrugged, still breathing hard, soaked with sweat from his match. He was smiling and he couldn’t seem to stop. “Good work,” he panted.

“Great match,” said Sami.

“...and I think it’s safe to say this was one of the best shows we’ve ever put on!” Hunter proclaimed, and applause broke out among the wrestlers and staff. Kevin looked around the room, where Neville was standing uninjured, Natalya was all aglow from her win, Lana was snuggled up to a beaming Rusev with a somewhat-wilted rose still tucked in her hair.

“But as for you,” Hunter said, and Kevin realized he was pointing right at him. “Your behavior was totally out of line today. From beginning to end, you did nothing but torment other wrestlers, fans, staff. You, Owens, were the only flaw in this perfect day.”

Kevin bounced on his heels and grinned. “Yes sir,” he said. “That sounds about right, sir.”

The meeting broke up, tired wrestlers heading back to the hotel or out to bars. Kevin caught sight of Sami standing near Neville and Cesaro, deep in conversation with them. Probably explaining how that asshole lunatic had squandered his day. Sami would go out with them now and have a fun evening out, and that was fine, that was good. That--

“Hey.” Sami loped over to him. Cesaro and Neville were shrugging, turning away. Sami made a vague, nervous gesture, spreading his hands out wide. “Mind if we, uh, talk for a bit?”

“I don’t mind,” said Kevin. He tried not to look too happy. From the confused look on Sami’s face, he was pretty sure he was failing. “I don’t mind,” he said again.

Kevin’s hotel room was so familiar he would almost call it home if it weren’t for the house in Montreal that always waited for him. He dropped onto his bed, yawning.

“So are you going to tell me what the hell that was all about?”

Kevin looked over at where Sami was sprawled out in the uncomfortable hotel chair, his legs propped up on the coffee table. “Maybe some other time,” he said. “For now I’m just happy the day went so well.”

There was a brief silence. “I talked to Hunter yesterday,” said Sami. “He said it was almost time to bring me up to the main roster. Maybe next month.”

Kevin sat up and blurted out “That’s awesome,” before realizing: there would never be any next month for Sami. Never anything but this one day, over and over. He fell back onto the pillow. “That’s...awesome,” he repeated.

“I’ll be honest, I’ve been worried,” Sami said. “About having to deal with you again. But after today...I dunno, I think we can at least co-exist, don’t you? Maybe?”

Kevin closed his eyes and remembered the crazy energy that seemed to be crackling through the arena as he and Sami worked together. “Maybe,” he murmured.

He yawned again, felt exhaustion start to reel him in. He didn’t want to fall asleep, he wanted to stay here, in this moment where Sami believed he had a future, this moment where they had made the world a better place together. It was no good; he felt his body giving in to weariness, his thoughts clouding as drowsiness clasped him. The day was going to end, he was going to lose it all, lose the triumph and the perfect match, lose Sami sitting by his bed almost as if they were friends.

Wait. He could do it again tomorrow, he realized. He could send the same message to Sami, they could do it all over again. Maybe even better next time. As he realized that, he felt peace wash over him. Yes. He could live with that.

Then he realized that he couldn’t fall asleep yet, he couldn’t.

“Wait,” he mumbled, dragging himself back up into awakeness. “Don’t go. I have to-- I have to--”

“What?” Sami’s voice was wary.

Kevin swallowed hard. “I have to-- I have to tell you I’m sorry,” he said.

“What?” Now there was disbelief in Sami’s voice, and something else that Kevin couldn’t think about too much or he might almost believe was hope.

“I’m sorry for everything,” he said instead, blundering on, not letting himself stop. “I’m sorry for hurting you. I’m sorry I was an asshole. You deserved a better friend, and I’m sorry I sucked so much. I just--wanted you to know.”

Sami didn’t say anything. Kevin hadn’t expected him to. Hearing Sami’s response wasn’t necessary.

The apology was.

I finally got that right, he thought as sleep suplexed him at last.

Ska beat. Warbling voices. Sami’s theme.

Kevin was under the blankets. Of course he was. Back at the beginning. He turned his head to look at the empty chair where Sami had been. Ah well.

Let’s go.

He sat up, rubbing his eyes--and froze as two facts hit him.

The first was that someone was moving around in the bathroom.

The second was that it was raining.

It was raining.

He heard a burst of laughter from the bathroom. “What the hell?” Sami appeared around the corner, grinning. “Why the hell is your alarm set to my theme song?” The grin vanished at the look on Kevin’s face. “Hey, I’m sorry, I just fell asleep in the chair, I didn’t think you’d--”

“It’s raining.” Kevin threw the blankets off (and that meant someone had tucked him into bed after he fell asleep, and he didn’t have the ability to think about that right now). “Sami. It’s raining.”

“Yep, it...it happens.” Sami sounded bemused as Kevin went to the windows and opened them wide, looking out at the curtains of rain shrouding Minneapolis. He came up behind Kevin and put a hand on his shoulder. The touch was tentative at first, but then Kevin felt his fingers tighten, warm and reassuring. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” said Kevin. “Yeah, I'm okay.” The song on his phone reached the end, and repeated, and then repeated again, and Kevin stood and watched the rain bead on the window and turn the streets to gleaming silver. Lioness Asuka and her kittens were out of the storm, safe and sound in their new home. Lana and Rusev were probably still asleep, cuddled up together. Neville was waking up whole and unbroken. A city full of people was still resting, exhausted from screaming themselves hoarse at a perfect Raw. And his friend--his friend, Sami--was standing behind him, looking out at the rain with him.

“It’s glorious,” Kevin whispered. “It’s so glorious.”