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Orange Cassidy waited. He did a lot of that. To be perfectly honest he forgot about 5 minutes ago what he was waiting for. He knew he was at Daily’s Place, the thought flitted through his head. Was it Wednesday? He could be waiting for Dynamite to start. He rolled this thought around in his head for a while, taking a non-committal lean against the wall while he did so. That didn't feel right. Usually on show days, he can take the cues from his body. The low-level electric hum keeping him tethered and balanced. So probably not a Wednesday, or a Saturday for that matter.
He crossed his arms across his chest, eyebrows barely furrowing behind his sunglasses. He remembered he was waiting. Was he waiting for a person? A thing? A meeting he had somehow forgotten about? When Orange was a kid, his teachers had all called him a “space case”. But that phrase never rang true to him. The phrase implies some level of exploration. To have followed some rabbit hole and ended up not paying attention. In his experience, it was more like a dimmer switch on his ability to be in his own body. Sometimes the switch would be on, and he would be able to move through the world - remembering things, having opinions, generally being a person. Sometimes the switch would be on halfway - and it would be like everything was on a screen. Interacting with the world would be like trying to follow a very boring art-house film. You're not sure what's going on, and it's hard to pay attention, and it feels like everything around you is 10 layers deep in some sort of Lynchian subtext. And on the worst moments? When the switch is all the way off? It was almost like getting your bell rung. Nothing made clear sense- nothing felt real. He felt like he floated along, surrounded by mannequins. He didn't talk on the bad days.
But this still left the problem of why he was here. So it wasn't a show, was it a person? Orange didn't have too many friends that he would wait on. So it made the list small enough to run down quickly. Toni. Toni was good to be around on the days where the world felt separated from him by plexiglass. Thick, muffling, and preventative. She had a way of finding the cracks, or forcing her way though. Her big movements and expressions easy to read, even through the fog. Willow was good on the days where he felt surrounded by a bubble, casting iridescent shimmer on the whole world. Those were good days- but fragile. It was easy to tumble headlong into panic and over-stimulation. Willow kept it light but was good at finding a quiet place to chill if the situation arose. On the average day, the world felt separated by fish tank glass. Thin and clear, but sturdy. Enough to make everything sound just a little off, or amplify little bothers into bone-shaking frustrations with a tap. And that's why he had Roddy. Roderick was perfect for the everyday. Somehow understanding his brain better than he could at times. Was he waiting on Roddy? Shit he might have been.
Orange felt his phone buzz in his pocket, he would have heard it too, if he didn't have his earbuds in. Not the ringtone, his phone was always on vibrate, but the vibration was turned up strong enough to hear. It made sure he felt it on his bad days. Checking it, sure enough, he saw a text from Roddy. Oh- apparently he had gone on a coffee run. Orange felt the memory of them signing their official tag team papers knitting itself together loosely. Right. And then Roderick offered to go grab them coffee from down the block to celebrate. A voice whispered from the back of his mind that he should be able to remember things like this. But running trying to catch up to your body all the time made it hard for memories to stick. He tried not to be too hard on himself. His hand not holding his phone found its way into his jacket pocket, curling into a fist; nails digging crescent moons into his palm. The pain grounded him. It made Orange feel more like a human being and less like a cardboard cutout. Pain-seeking was something he had struggled with his whole life, it's what led him to wrestling. If you feel like you're constantly floating behind your body, no better way to fix that than to get slammed back into it by force. He felt the skin under his nails creak and thin. Maybe a good friend wouldn't have forgotten Roddy. He squeezed a little harder.