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Nathan had asked Seth about it, once. About the thing he never really wanted to talk about. Seth had laughed it off, diverted the conversation, and Nathan would like to say he hadn’t pressed harder in response. If he was a better person, he probably wouldn’t have. But that’s kind of what he does, pushes so hard he fears something will break, and eventually Seth coughed up a few stories about the betrayal of the Shield.
He never really talked about the night itself. Didn’t seem to want to, and Nathan had watched it unfold live in front of a television screen anyway. He also never talked about the others, not really- mentioned their role in the story, but he would get this weird foggy look if he dwelled too long on Ambrose, would grow stone-faced when talking about Reigns. But he told Nathan about the lead up.
He told Nathan about the weeks of instability, leading up to it all. The way they would bicker, Dean and Roman especially. The way Seth would play mediator, desperately, to little avail until he turned them both against himself as a common enemy. It worked too well, he said- maybe that’s what pushed him to slam that chair into their backs.
Only once, in a late night at the training ring, Seth had admitted to the fear. That’s what drove it, he said. The fear was insidious- the realisation that he might not be enough for his tag partners, that the success they had might not save him from being cut like dead weight. The nightmares of abandonment felt a little too much like premonitions. If he didn’t take the swing, he would be turning his back to an oncoming knife forever.
That’s what it had felt like at the time, anyway. Nathan asked him if he thought anything different now. His mentor had stayed silent, sending him for a cooldown right after.
Nathan hadn’t known what to make of that, at the time, but he thinks he gets it now. He understands how that fear creeps in, filling the gaps in your nervous system. He knows what it drives you to.
He held that chair, staring at Axiom, and he had known he didn’t have it in him to swing it. He’d let the jokes of him being ‘just like his father’ roll off him, laughing and snarking back, but the truth of it was sticking in the back of this throat. Maybe he was just like Seth, because he knew that if he wasn’t the one to pull the trigger, Axiom would be. And he doesn’t think he can take the waiting game.
—
“I know I fucked up, okay, but just hear me out-”
“I am ALWAYS hearing you out!” Axiom doesn’t even look at him as they storm through the corridors, Nathan trailing him haphazardly. He’s still dragging his bags, still with his hair mussed and his jeans scuffed from the fight. He probably did the worst parking job ever with his car, and should expect a ticket later. He doesn’t even pay any of it any mind, though.
“Look, we won! We’re fine, Fraxiom is fine!”
Axiom growls, something deep in his throat that makes Nathan’s heart skip a beat. For… Anxiety related reasons, he’s sure. “We’re fine? Fine? This is all fine to you?”
He takes off with more speed, and Nathan, for all his catchphrases and gimmick gear, struggles to keep up. He only stops to breathe when they pull into their locker room, a glorified storage closet. Nathan is suddenly glad Axiom was leading, because he obviously didn’t know where it was. He wasn’t even aware of the match until it was about to begin, and he opened his phone to a pile of missed calls and messages.
Kicking his bags into the corner, Nathan exhales, smoothing his hair into place, before turning to his partner. “Look, so it wasn’t ideal, but that doesn’t mean we should-”
His excuse dies in his throat. Axiom is standing stock still in the centre of the room, hands tensing into fists at his sides. His shoulders rise and drop in shuddering rhythms. Nathan can’t see his face, but he can tell his eyes are closed, that he’s trying to school himself.
Shit. Axiom is angry.
And not the funny angry they play up for the cameras, or the frustrated angry that they can blow off by getting into a stupid fight about a comic book character, but the kind of anger that leaves him unnaturally still and postured. The kind that means something.
All of a sudden, Seth comes to mind again, alongside a dozen fan tweets spelling out the doom of the best thing that has happened to him in a long time. He thinks of steel chairs and curb stomps, and arguments played up for the camera with kernels of truth at their core.
Oh.
Oh, so this is where Axiom pulls the trigger.
It feels obvious in hindsight, that it would be something like this. Of course Nathan would let him down, and he would have had enough of dealing with him, but it’s just- Come on, this is what breaks them? A house show? A missed match at a house show, not even anything worthwhile, not a title defence or a bigger opportunity or a dramatic betrayal? Just Nathan once again not being enough.
“Axiom, buddy, I-”
“I need a moment to think.” His voice is schooled, controlled. Not giving away anything more than he wants to. Nathan always wished he could be like that, wished he could hold himself together. He is a hothead, always was. Axiom had scolded him about his tendency to pick fights, his inability to just let it go, and he was starting to see the truth in it.
“... Yeah, okay.”
He isn’t any good at doing nothing, keeps fidgeting and tapping his fingers together and thinking about whether it would be weird to sit on one of the low wooden benches, but finally Axiom speaks.
“I’m not mad about the match.” God, would it kill him to take off the mask for just a moment? Just for one serious conversation? Nathan feels unfairly exposed with no way to hide how his face twists, his eyebrows furrowing in confusion.
“Uh, okay? So… Are we, uh, good?”
Wrong thing to say. Axiom tenses visibly, running a hand over his mask as if trying to grasp at his hair. “No! No, Nathan, we are not good!”
“Whu- hey! You just said you weren’t mad about the match! What am I meant to-”
“I am mad,” Axiom says, enunciating each word clearly, “that you weren’t there.”
Nathan knows he looks even more confused, because he feels it, and Axiom presses two fingers to the bridge of his nose like he’s giving him a headache. He just… Doesn’t see how that’s any different from being mad about the match! He’s mad that Nathan wasn’t there, that he nearly missed the match. Is that not the same thing?
“God, you can be dense. I don’t care how the match went, not really! We won, and the titles were never on the line, and whether we won or lost people would still respect us. Okay?”
Nathan nods, taking the obvious cue to shut up and listen for once. Axiom continues.
“What I am mad about is that- is that you weren’t there for me. You weren’t in my corner, amigo. You didn’t have my back. We’re tag partners, and how can we be partners if I can’t know you’ll be there when I need it? I- They took my mask, Nathan. They took my mask and you weren’t there.” His voice falters on the last part, something like genuine anguish leaking into his tone.
Fuck, he’s right. Nathan had run in, not even geared up, to Axiom curled prone on the ground and covering his face desperately from any onlookers. Nathan hadn’t thought about the moments leading up to that, too busy going into autopilot defending his friend, but he knows how much Axiom values his mask. Hell, he wears it even with just the two of them. Nathan isn’t sure if its the anonymity, or the layer of protection against the outside world, or if he just doesn’t like his face or something, but he knows it must have been horrible to have that torn away in front of a crowd.
Still, Nathan has never been good at shutting up when he should. “But… But I did get there! I was there, I was just late, and I got your mask back, and I helped you put it back on, and we won. What’s the problem?”
To his partner's credit, he doesn’t punch Nathan, which he would probably be in the right to do. He simply turns his face away slightly, tensing again, before biting out, “You were there at the end. But you weren’t when I needed you. And I thought you wouldn’t come at all. How am I meant to trust that?”
The words hang in the air between them, and Nathan takes a step closer on instinct. “You don’t… Trust me?”
Axiom exhales heavily. “I didn’t say that.”
But the implication was there. Nathan doesn’t know what to do. He knows what he should do, which is apologise. He should drop to his knees, beg forgiveness from the most important person in his life, prove he can be trusted again in any way possible. He should promise to be better. But the words are stuck in his throat, and he feels short of breath and nauseous and ten different kinds of wrong- like stagefright and a badly taken bump and a little too much beer all at once. Which, really, is just the indie wrestling scene, but that’s beside the point.
He wants to say something, but he doesn’t know what. He can’t create the one word he needs to say. He can’t promise to be better, when he doesn’t believe that he can be.
Apparently, this is answer enough to Axiom, who turns towards the door of the locker room.
He takes a long stride towards it, and for a moment Nathan is sure this is it. They’re over. This is the moment where Axiom does what he should have done months ago, and decides to up and leave. This is when he realises Nathan will never be able to fix whatever is wrong with him, this part of him that lets down the people who need him most, the part that won’t even let him apologise for it.
Nathan knows, intimately, that if that door closes behind him it’s never opening again. And then where would they be? Where would he be, without his best friend at his side?
He had always been sure that the tag belts would be enough. As long as they had the belts, Axiom would see his worth. Axiom would stay with him. He would be forced to, after all- tag team champions need each other to succeed. He would have to trust him, if they had titles together.
But what if that wasn't enough? What if Nathan had pushed him over a line? What if he’s proven he can’t be trusted, just like Axiom said, and there’s no way to come back from it?
Oblivious to the storm in Nathan’s head, Axiom speaks quietly. “I need a moment. I’m going to-”
Nathan doesn’t let Axiom finish, grabbing his wrist in a snap movement and pulling him back. Axiom stumbles, not expecting the interruption, and turns to eye the blond. Nathan can’t tell what his expression is under the mask, and he doesn’t know whether he’s glad about that or not.
“WAIT!” His voice is louder than he wants it to be, and he sees Axiom flinch at the volume. He tries again, calmer this time. “Wait. Let me- just let me re-tie your mask.”
He doesn’t know why that’s what he asks, why that’s what comes to mind to stall the inevitable, but he finds he means it. He saw the sloppily tied strings while chasing Axiom back, done in a panic in the ring, and something about it bothered him. Something about the physical reminder he had let Axiom down didn’t sit right.
Axiom shakes his head, moving back a step as if to try once again to leave. Nathan can’t let that happen. Acting on reflex, he cups a hand behind Axiom’s head, cradling it in his palm and keeping the man squarely in front of him. He wonders, for a moment, how it would feel without the thick fabric in the way- how Axiom’s hair would feel against his skin. His face might be heating up, but he ignores it and stands up a little straighter. All bravado- all he wants to do right now is wilt.
Axiom sighs, barely audible. But he does not pull away, and Nathan takes that as a victory. “Amigo, just leave me alone for-”
“Come on, Axiom, please.” Cutting the man off might be Nathan’s greatest skill. But he just knows that if he lets Axiom say anything now, this might be it. Nathan cannot let this be it. “Let me re-tie it. I did it wrong earlier. I was in a rush. Just- let me fix it.”
“… Do you even know how?” Axiom responds, voice quiet. Weighted.
“I’ve tied your mask dozens of times. Of course I know how.”
Axiom wasn’t asking about the mask, he doesn’t think. But Nathan is going to keel over if he thinks about the other meaning for too long.
The blond stares into the void-like cut out of Axiom’s mask, hoping that something in his face betrays how badly he wants this. How badly he wants to do this one thing right, to prove he can be of use to his partner, to prove he cares. If nothing else, he knows for sure that he cares, sometimes more than he can take.
“... Okay.” And Axiom is turning, and Nathan realises belatedly that he’s been holding the back of his tag partner’s head tenderly this whole time, which is beginning to feel really awkward. He drops his hand as if burnt, suddenly faced with his partner’s broad back, an expanse of tan skin his eyes linger on for a second too long. Focus. There’s something more important here.
Hesitantly, as if waiting for reprimand, as if unsure he’s allowed, Nathan reaches for the knot of the mask strings. He begins to untie it, hands shaking. Axiom is just breathing, slightly too slowly to be anything but intentional. Nathan wants to break the silence, but he doesn’t think he deserves that right. So they stand, something tense between them, while Nathan fiddles with the cord and begins to pull it tight through the eyelets of the material.
‘I’m sorry’, he doesn’t say, because Nathan barely ever manages to force those words out, and he certainly hasn’t worked out how to say it in a way that doesn’t sound sarcastic or petulant. Every time he says those words, he makes things worse somehow, and he doesn’t want to make this worse. This is too important to ruin.
It’s okay, though. Nathan doesn’t say it, just pulls the strings tighter and begins to tie the slack into a neat knot, and Axiom understands anyway. Because that’s what he does. Nathan fucks up, and Axiom understands it, understands him. Better than anyone else ever has. He worries someday he’ll understand Nathan too well, that he’ll come to see all of his flaws in full view. That Nathan will be deemed too exhausting, too inconsistent, too much trouble, and that Axiom will have enough of this. That he’ll have enough of being understanding to Nathan, when Nathan is incapable of changing who he is at his core.
Axiom never had that problem, after all. Axiom took to his new identity as easily as he does a new mask colour, but Nathan had always been made of more stubborn stuff.
The worst parts of him are inflexible, prone to snapping under the pressure like brittle wood instead of bending to accommodate the strain. He was just as flammable as kindling, too, easily heated up and far harder to cool down.
As he double knots the cord, he stares at his partner for a long moment, and wonders what he’s thinking. He traces the small scars and spots across his skin with his eyes, the curve of his shoulders and the dip of his waist. He lets himself take what could be a last, long look.
Nathan is painfully aware that he’s the weaker of the two of them. Not in the ring- he’s proven he can match up to, even outmatch Axiom. But here, side of stage, where his words are what matters, where he needs to put down the character and be a real person for a moment, he falters. He feels things so intensely that they consume him, and yet faced with someone else’s feelings, he feels truly out of his depth. Even when it is someone that means the world to him.
He’s brittle wood when it counts, and Axiom is the one that’s going to have to bear the weight when he splinters. If Axiom will even still be there to help him carry it. As far as Nathan knows, he’s going to blink and this moment will be gone, and his best friend with it.
“I think it’s tied, Nathan.”
“Oh.” Nathan stares at his hands, resting just against Axiom’s neck. “Yeah. Yeah, it’s tied.”
And so Nathan steps back, braces himself, and waits. Waits for the chair shot, for the knife blade, for the bullet from the loaded gun he has handed to Axiom. If this is how he goes, at least he got one last chance to savour it.
And Axiom, because he has never done exactly what Nathan would expect from him, rolls his shoulders and turns to him. He looks more relaxed than he was before, like he came to some conclusion in those long moments of silence. He looks at Nathan, and doesn’t look away. “Let’s get out of here, yeah?” He holds out a hand, a proverbial olive branch, into the space between them.
Nathan doesn’t know what he did to get so lucky, to find someone so willing to give him second chance after second chance. But he is a weak man, so he will not question it, will not maintain what he knows is true- that Axiom deserves a better partner, a better friend. Instead, he takes Axiom’s hand, intertwines their fingers together, squeezes for a long moment. Axiom matches it, and Nathan thinks that he’s probably smiling under the mask. He doesn’t know how he knows, he just does, and he realises he’s never been this good at reading people until the masked wrestler had stumbled into a tag team with him. Maybe that is its own kind of trust- to let Nathan read him, despite the mask. For Nathan to respond in kind, giving Axiom all of his unfiltered intensity. Maybe there are other ways he can make this up to him.
Nothing is fixed. Nathan still does not know how to apologise, not for what counts. Axiom still holds a gun he could fire at any moment, and the panic Nathan must have inherited from his mentor hangs over him. But that doesn’t matter, when Axiom is leading him by their linked fingers back to their cars, back to a hotel room where they can play a video game and just exist with each other. No titles, no matches, no stress- and no question of trust. Nathan knows he speaks for both of them when he says it’s absolute, for better or for worse.