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When Darby had reached out to Sting and encouraged him to take one last ride, he hadn’t known what to expect.
Debuting in the middle of a pandemic to a mostly empty arena hadn’t been the plan, but there was something very fitting about the silence, about staring Darby down grimly and thinking “This is it; the beginning of the end.”
Tony Khan was good about protecting him, about letting him have his fun without letting him be in too much danger, so he found himself ringside for most of Darby’s title reign, looking on with pride as his… protege? Partner? Made a name for himself between the ropes.
He wasn’t the best with technology, he came from a time when dirt sheets were literal newspaper clippings passed around on the streets instead of links sent to each others phones, so when Darby starts groaning one day about his opponent being chosen in a Twitter poll, Sting doesn’t have the first idea what he’s talking about.
“So… people are voting on the internet for who you should face?” He asks, confused.
“This is worse than an open challenge. This is a popularity contest, and I’m going to have to fight the fuckin’ prom king.” Darby rubs a hand over his face. “Not that I give a shit what people think, but it’ll be a lot harder to get people to like me when I destroy their favorite guy.”
Darby stares down at his phone, expression dark.
“Are you just going to stare at that until the poll closes?” Sting asks after a moment, and Darby lets out a frustrated noise.
“I don’t know what else to do!”
Sting reaches over, takes his phone out of his hands. “Go skate for a few hours. Get out some of that nervous energy. The poll results can wait.”
Darby doesn’t look convinced, and he grumbles something under his breath before pushing to his feet, grabbing his skateboard and slamming the door behind him on his way out. He’s young, and it’s obvious the TNT title means the world to him from how seriously he takes his title defenses, but sitting around and obsessing isn’t going to do him any favors. Sting can remember all the times he’d worked himself into a shoot doing the same, and he’d promised himself he’s not going to let Darby make the same mistakes he did.
When Darby comes back in a few hours later, he’s covered in a layer of sweat and grime and has more scrapes than he’d left with, but he has a smile on his face.
“Alright, old man, where’d we land?”
“See for yourself.” Sting replies, tossing him the phone. Darby thumbs open the screen, stilling as he reads the results. His smile falters, and he looks over at Sting. “Looks like I’ve got Jungle Boy.”
There’s something in that sentence that Sting can’t quite parse out, a thousand things unsaid, but Darby is walking away, propping his skateboard up on the wall and heading into the other room, likely to shower and clean up the wounds he’d collected from the day.
He wonders what it is about Jungle Boy that’s got Darby’s hackles raised. As far as he knows, they’ve never crossed paths, at least not significantly. It’s clear something about him has Darby on high alert, though, and Sting makes a mental note to keep a close eye on their match on Wednesday.
Darby needs all the support he can get.
***
It’s a good match, and Sting knows that’s not what Darby wants to hear, when they’re in their locker room after all is said and done. Sting hadn’t known much about Jungle Boy before this match, but it was clear from the flow of the match that Darby did from how easily he was able to meet Jungle Boy’s offenses, how easily they had met each other move for move and counter for counter.
“Had you fought him before?” Sting asks suddenly and Darby starts.
“What? I mean, we met once, on the indies. Wasn’t even really a match, we didn’t have a ring or anything.” Darby isn’t looking at him, keeping his gaze firmly fixed on where he’s packing his bag. “But his matches have been pretty easy to follow, he’s easy to read, once you know what you’re looking for.”
“You scouted him?”
“I mean. I’ve kept an eye on him, since our match. When we both signed to AEW… us having a match was kind of inevitable. Best to be prepared.”
They’d been doing this for a few months now, Sting liked to think he was getting to know Darby pretty well at this point, but there was still something missing, something that wasn’t adding up in this conversation. Darby pushed to his feet.
“I’m gonna get a shower then get out of here, I think. Sonic?”
“Sure.”
Darby grins, then disappears out the door. It’s a few minutes later that the door pushes open and Sting looks up in surprise, the big brown eyes of Jungle Boy peering back at him. His hair is wet, which means he’s likely just coming back from his own shower and Sting raises an eyebrow.
“Can I help you?”
Jungle Boy frowns. “We got jumped. After the match. I didn’t get to shake his hand.” He looks uncomfortable, like the words are foreign to him.
Sting blinks in surprise. Admittedly, he’d arrived at the last possible second during the beatdown, but it hadn’t occurred to him that Jungle Boy had been a part of the scuffle. It was frankly impressive that after all that, his big concern was making sure to shake his opponents hand. Sting nodded towards the door.
“You just missed him. He’s hitting the showers. Should be back in a few minutes.”
Jungle Boy nods, then looks around the room for a moment before moving to take a seat on the bench across from Sting. He doesn’t seem terribly intimidated by Sting, holding out his hand after a beat.
“Lucha tells me you’re… a legend. An icon.” He says slowly, like he’s not sure of the words, and Sting nods, reaching out to shake the boy’s hand.
“I’ve been doing this probably longer than you’ve been alive.”
The boy’s eyes do widen at that, and Sting lets out a huff, drops his hand. He’s not sure about this one, all wide-eyed uncertainty, but he’s shown that he has a respect for the business, and Sting has to acknowledge that, even if he doesn’t know what his intentions are towards his protege.
The locker room door pushes open and Darby’s eyes go wide instantly, the expression that much more open without the greasepaint hiding it. Jungle Boy pushes to his feet instantly, holds out his hand. Darby looks down at it, then over to Sting with a question on his features. Sting just shrugs, and Darby finally takes the offered hand, shaking it and looking at the other boy with confusion all over his features.
Jungle Boy, on the other hand, is beaming, a bright smile despite the beat down they’d received at the end of their match, despite the fact that he’d lost the match against Darby in the first place. Looking entirely too pleased with himself, he drops Darby’s hand, giving a brief wave before leaving the locker room entirely.
“What the fuck was that?” Darby asks, sounding out of breath.
“Your guess is as good as mine, kid. He’s a weird one. Probably worth keeping an eye on.”
“Yeah.” Darby nods, but he sounds far away, his mind obviously elsewhere.
***
Jungle Boy– Jack – becoming a near-constant companion for Darby was not what Sting had been expecting out of that title match. He’d been in this business a long time, he’d seen chemistry like that before manifest in some of the greatest rivalries of all time– hadn’t he and Flair been explosive both in and out of the ring?--but he’d never seen anything like this. Darby wasn’t the friendliest of people, it had taken Sting months to break through even the outermost layers of Darby’s shell, but Jack had managed to worm his way past all of Darby’s defenses seemingly without even trying.
Sting only asks his intentions once, in a roundabout way, asking if he’s going after Darby’s title. Jack makes a face in response, and Darby… reads perfectly what he’s saying without Jack having to actually say as much as a word. Jack bats his eyelashes and Darby makes a quip about how he’s gathering intel for the next title challenge. Darby is laughing and Jack is grinning, and Sting thinks oh, these young men are in love .
It’s a little easier, then, to let Jack hang around, to be less on edge when he’s backstage with Darby before a title defense. He wonders if Darby has realized it, yet, if it’s occurred to him that the reason he’s so viciously protective over this thing he has with the boy from the jungle is because it’s his heart, beating and bleeding and vulnerable .
Jack is there, though, week in and week out. The world has shut down, shifted on its axis, and Jack is still there.
Darby loses his title, and Jack is there, too, with a hand on Darby’s elbow, too-expressive face twisted with worry. Sting waves them both off, sends them away, knowing that Jack can do more to soothe the ache of the loss than Sting can. Sting has lost more titles than he cares to think about, sure, but… Jack has Darby’s heart, likely has since their match all those weeks ago, if not even before that, as Sting is starting to suspect.
When Darby appears in their locker room the night of the first pay per view in over a year with his makeup suspiciously smeared off and a large grin on his face, Sting knows they’ve finally figured things out, finally put the pieces together.
He just hopes this won’t end in disaster.
***
It ends in disaster.
Darby shows up to Dynamite looking like he hasn’t slept in days, dark circles under his eyes and a haunted expression that Sting recognizes from his own demons.
“How did you do it? When it all went to shit?” Darby asks. He doesn’t explain; he doesn’t have to. Jack is nowhere to be found, and they’ve been teaming together long enough for Sting to see the undeniable signs of heartbreak on his partner.
“I drank myself stupid.” Sting replies honestly. “You don’t do that, though, and I don’t either. Not anymore.”
“How do you deal with it now?” Darby asks, looking at him. Sting looks back, taking in Darby’s expression. They’re partners, sure, but Darby is still so young . He doesn’t have to make the mistakes Sting made, doesn’t have to destroy his body with alcohol and drugs because he can’t handle the pain of the life they live, of the heartbreak he’s endured. Sting blows out a breath, reaches out, clasps Darby’s shoulder.
“By remembering I’m not alone. That I don’t have to do this on my own.”
Darby deflates at that, but he nods. “Right. So what comes next?”
Sting can respect that, the need to look forward, to have a next step. Truth be told, he doesn’t know what comes next, what moving forward even looks like. But he’s getting closer and closer to retirement, and this is not how he wants to leave Darby; broken and uncertain about the future. When he retires, he’s going to be damn sure that he leaves Darby all that he can.
He’s going to leave Darby his legacy if he can do nothing else for him.
***
Tag team champions.
It’s not how he expected to retire, but it’s a hell of a high note.
They get Darby to the back, and Sting is shocked at who’s waiting at medical for them.
Jack Perry.
He’s a far cry from the boy who had sat in their locker room and shook Sting’s hand in 2021, his expression guarded where it had once been open and light, but the look of concern is the same, the fingers pressing into Darby’s elbow are the same.
“Fuck, glass ?”
“Cry me a river.” Darby retorts, and when Jack laughs, it sounds wet.
Sting clears his throat, and Jack looks over at him, eyes wide. Darby looks less worried as he meets his gaze, though that could be the blood loss.
“So this is happening again?” Sting asks, and Jack flinches. Darby, though, just stares him down, uncaring of the blood that’s still pouring out of his sides, of the sweat that’s dripping down into his eyes.
“You told me, once, that you knew Sabine was the one because you’d broken your neck and didn’t know if you were ever going to wrestle again but all you could think about was her, because nothing mattered but her. Jack matters .” Darby says, pushing to his feet and immediately swaying, Jack at his side in a second, wrapping an arm around him to steady him.
“Hospital. You went through a goddamn glass table, you are going to a hospital.” Jack mutters. “I can’t believe you wrestled after that, you absolute crazy person.”
“You love me, though.”
“Yeah, I do, and that’s why you’re going to a fucking hospital.”
Jack maneuvers Darby to the door, and it hits Sting, then, how final this all is. This was his last match. His sons are backstage somewhere, waiting for him to be released by Doc Sampson so they can take him to dinner to celebrate. He won’t be stepping foot in a ring again. For better or for worse, he’s done.
Sting has spent the better part of the last four years teaming with Darby, both teaching and learning from the younger man. A year ago, when Jack had broken Darby’s heart, Sting hadn’t been sure what his retirement would look like for Darby. He’d been worried about leaving Darby on his own, after everything.
He watches as Darby limps to the door, his weight largely supported by Jack, and he thinks to himself;
The kids just might be alright, after all.