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Konnan had told him to prepare for this.
“In this business, you don’t make friends,” he’d stated in his typical blunt manner he would come to appreciate and hate in equal measures. This was one of the very first lessons he’d taught Puma. Before the springboard dropkicks, before the 360 splashes. “You’ve only got one friend, and you’re looking at him.”
So when Johnny offers him his hand, even though Puma wins, he’s a little flustered. Konnan’s words may have just served to his own detriment, because it only catches him more off guard when Johnny hits him hard with an easy going smile. He thinks he’s seeing stars. Or that might be the concussion. Either way, Puma falls hard, and fast.
He can see Konnan's wrinkles set a little deeper every time he catches them together, and frankly he couldn’t care less. Not when he could walk on clouds, like an easy tight walk balance on the ring ropes. Konnan couldn’t understand. There are- there are the late nights in the ring, when it’s just them sitting in the pitch darkness after the crowds and the believers are gone, when the only lights spills from the windows of Dario Cueto’s office, and they perch on the steps and Johnny talks about a life in the big leagues that Puma can only dream of. Of the LA parties, of his image blown up in the giant jumbotrons in a stadium of hundreds and thousands while Puma listens silently, utterly captivated.
Johnny invites him for a joyride one night after a mock sparring session, and he’s supposed to have training with Konnan later that evening but he’s itching to get out of the temple for once. He rolls his shoulders back and thinks, why not?
Johnny looks at him over the rim of his sunglasses when he just shrugs and falls into step besides him. "Don't you have training later?" he asks, but the cocky grin offsets the effect.
When he's speeding past his memories of the streets in an expensive sports car with an engine that practically purrs, and Johnny besides him with his shades on, grinning at his excitement, he feels like he’s running wild, something bursting in his heart he can’t get enough of.
He even picks up a bit of Johnny’s showsmanship, posing a little here and there for the benefit of the fans. And maybe, preeningly, a little bit for Johnny too.
He should have known that it wouldn't last.
Because Johnny takes a chair to his head and he isn’t there when he wakes up.
Says it all really.
Konnan doesn’t waste a single second. “I told you, kid. Men like Mundo have been in this business for years. They see a dumb kid like you and think you’re easy pickings.”
And it doesn’t matter if you were grateful when he tossed you an ice cold water bottle after your matches, it doesn’t matter that he tended to the bruises on your back with an apologetic hand and you smiled back.
‘Because his fight ain’t your fight. But you made it that way, and now Cueto’s cronies jumped your ass and you were happy to get your ass beat in his place. He wanted the glory, he used you, get over it.”
So even as he tries to forget the vague memory of a shadow passing over his face and the sound of someone calling his name, his mentor's words sticks like mud in his head, no matter how hard he tries to scrape it out until his mind and heart feels hollow. The ghost sensation haunts him all the way to the ring where he sees Johnny in the ring fucking around with some key about his money. His head rings and rings, and he’s fucking pissed. And if he listens closely, he can almost hear the roaring.
And he’s nodding along, because for once the voices and his heart are in sync.
He starts to hear something that might have been the beginning to an apology, but it’s a week too goddamn late. So he punches, and doesn’t know if he’s vindicated or dismayed when Johnny fires back a punch in only a split second.
It takes ten men to pull them apart. He’s spitting now, red-hot with fury and sees that same intensity reflected in Mundo’s eyes. He’s on top of the world, and just laughs when he sees him snarling back, crooks a finger and beckons him to bring it on.
But in the quiet of the changing room, when he’s licking his wounds and his bruises start to ache, it feels like a hollow victory. He’s left with ugly, purple, flowering bruises down his back, on his neck, on his wrists, pressed in hips, and Puma can’t help but stare at them, stripped to his waist, mask in hand.
Suddenly fatigued, he leans against the cold surface of the lockers, and as he closes his eyes, an automatic recollection of Johnny comes to mind, leaning over him in this exact same place, with one hand splayed against the wall, calling him kid, and before he knows it, he’s pressing the palms of his hands to his eyes, stifling the short, harsh, panting gasps that threatens to escape. It’s hot and heavy and guilty, nestling like dread in the pit of his stomach. He thinks of Johnny pushing him up against the lockers, that dark intensity in his eyes again - cold metal at his back, fingers digging into his hips - and he doesn't know how to feel. His fingers twitch outwards, mapping an outline of the lower edge of a bruised jaw.
He doesn’t notice the shadow lingering in the doorway. He hears the tap of footsteps and his eyes fly open. He sees the silhouette in the doorway and dares to hope, just for a second, madly, wildly, that this is-
“You did well out there, Puma."
Puma slowly returns his hands to his sides and nods once, stiffly. His breathing suddenly sounds too harsh in the silence.
And Konnan's lecturing him again, but Puma couldn't care less. He brushes past him, in search of something, anything, that will distract him from this, but he knows that he'll never find it again.