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It was in the split second between shoving AJ out of the way of Kofi’s Trouble in Paradise finisher and himself getting kicked in the head that Chris Jericho realized he was in love with AJ Styles.
--
He hadn’t been looking to fall in love, so he’d never stopped to think about how he really felt about AJ during their feud. The guy was supposedly great, called himself phenomenal, but from the moment he’d seen AJ debut and heard the crowd cheer, he knew he wanted to get in the ring with AJ. He wanted to get his hands on him, grapple with him, take him to the limits, see just how phenomenal he was on the ground, and shit, how had it not clicked in his head before now just what those feelings were.
Maybe it was the trend of the times. A decade and a half ago when he’d made his own debut, things were different. You could feel for someone, sure. You could reorient your entire life to focus on that one man, to make him think about you as much as you thought about him, to make his world revolve around crushing you the way yours revolved around him. But at the end of the day, you went home to your girlfriend or your wife, heart checked at the door like so much baggage.
Now, though. The world was so different, and wrestling with it. Those kind of feelings could be talked about, felt out, hoped that they could be shared. Even if they couldn’t let it leave backstage, few people batted an eye when tag team partners sat a little too close, when feuding parties shut out the rest of the world that wasn’t them, when things tipped over a little too much and people were just known to go together.
Jericho had seen the extent of the dynamic change firsthand when Ambrose had asked him to partner up with himself and Reigns for Night of Champions. Back in the day, the two of them wouldn’t have stood so close together backstage, leaning into each other’s space like it was nothing. No amount of certainty about out-of-the-way hallways and secret closest would have let anyone be as relaxed as they were when he arrived, more like intruded, in their hideaway.
He even saw it when he came back for good in January: Reigns and Ambrose walking through backstage, titles slung over their far shoulders, near ones bumping together the way a couple’s dangling hands might. Some people just went together. He simply hadn’t realized how much the language of love had changed in his time away.
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That wasn’t to say that nobody else had noticed just because he hadn’t. More than a few people’s reactions suddenly made more sense now, had turned from gibberish to crystal clear knowing. Ambrose himself, for one. Little nods of approval, pointing him in AJ’s direction more than a few times, the way he’d sat beside him after his loss to AJ and, with a sad smile, went off on about how it was a shame the next pay-per-view was Fastlane now and no longer Elimination Chamber. It hadn’t made sense then, but the Chamber was a large cage and Ambrose…well, he spoke the old words like his native tongue, spoke of love sublimated into violence and masked by hatred. He knew better than most how to scream ‘burn in hell’ but mean ‘I love you’.
The Miz made more sense too now, the way he’d tried to fight AJ, with just cause, but hadn’t made a play for something bigger. Hadn’t tried to push for a triple threat match. No, Miz had taken up the spaces where Jericho pulled away, when he’d been playing hard to get without even knowing, and let his grievances with the man who broke his teeth settle so Jericho could have him all to himself. Smart man. Shame about the ego, though.
Even the Social Outcasts’ interruption that Monday took on new light. Their taunt about interrupting a near hug? Not a joke, not entirely, not with the way Jericho saw himself looking at AJ on the tapes. Calling them ”Y2AJ” hadn’t just been a tag team name, but had been meant in the same vein that Xavier Woods had implied when Kofi had said “Ambreigns” weeks ago.
And looking back, as Jericho did that night, only stopping to send simple texts back when his phone lit up with a message from AJ, it wasn’t the only moment that his half of Y2AJ had been on display.
He had admitted to staying up at night thinking about AJ. Had sung AJ’s praises, but tacked on a line about not liking him so transparent that it was a wonder he hadn’t been told to perhaps fight someone else. Had taken three days to get back to AJ about his request for a match at Fastlane, as if the three day rule applied to calling people out, not just calling them, and tried to say no because he didn’t think he could handle another loss, didn’t think his pride would let him.
His once wild pride had rolled over and showed its belly to AJ like a circus lion to its tamer. And if he’d seen his look that Monday on anyone else’s face—the plea for AJ to come to the ring, to talk to him face-to-face, that hope that their time together wasn’t over and the sorrow that it might have been—he would have called it love without hesitation. Now, seeing it on his own, he wondered how out of practice he really was at all this.
Perhaps he’d just been protecting himself without realizing. After all, he had less of a chance in this than Reigns had had at defending his title in AJ’s debut Rumble.
--
AJ was from Georgia, heart of the South. Xavier Woods was equally Georgia-born, but not from Georgia from Georgia. Xavier was unashamed to walk out to the ring in pink, to style his hair special for special occasions, to call himself a unicorn, and to say stupid things like that he bathed with the other members of the New Day. AJ was bible belt South, stereotypical-Christian South, base of the Appalachians South. The type that saw Xavier’s type and judged even though he wasn’t supposed to lest he be judged. It made sense in retrospect why AJ kept his distance backstage not just from Ambrose, the marketing-styled lunatic who may or may not actually be one, but from Ambrose and Reigns, when most people would let out a sigh of relief that the man with the one key to the Ambrose Asylum was close enough to stop anything serious.
Jericho knew his not-secret was safe because AJ didn’t speak the language. AJ was ignorant to it to the point that he didn’t recognize when it was being metaphorically shouted to the rafters of arenas across the country. And sitting in a dark hotel room, his own face on the television screen giving the room its only illumination, Jericho realized there were three things he was absolutely positive about.
First, AJ Styles was a deep South Christian. Second, there was a part of AJ—how potent a part, he didn’t know—that would hate him if he ever learned the truth. And third, Jericho was unconditionally, unchangeably, uncontrollably in love with him.
That was going to make this whole ‘being a tag team’ thing a hell of a lot harder, but c’est la vie. Le cours de l'amour vrai n'a jamais fait courir lisse.