Chapter 1 #3
Ava dropped into Asher’s life shortly after—buzzcut, fishnet stockings, gay-ass carabiners, heart-shaped chokers and all.
Asher first met Ava at one of the Performance Center’s promo classes.
Ava had proceeded to eviscerate Asher with their mic skills, and a friendship was born.
It was Ava—with their mountain of thrifted furniture, houseplants creeping across every available surface, and early morning shower renditions of “Livin’ on a Prayer”—who turned Asher’s apartment into a home.
It was the middle of December, right after GEW’s Winter Wasteland pay-per-view.
Before Christmas provided the roster with a brief reprieve from their relentless touring schedule, they first made a pit stop in New Orleans for scouting week—seven days brimming with high hopes as sparkly-eyed wannabe wrestlers around the world flocked into town for tryouts.
Scouting week was accompanied by training sessions, and Asher had his sights set on one specific name plastered at the top of every flyer: Caleb Knight.
The twenty-two-year-old phenomenon was an immediate media sensation.
Less than three months after making his debut at nineteen, he became the United States Champion—the youngest in history.
The day he turned twenty, he won the Intercontinental Championship, and a little over a year later, he became World Champion.
All Caleb needed was a tag-team title under his belt, and he would join the ranks of Grand Slam champions along the likes of Eddie Guerrero, Chris Jericho, and of course, Morgana Bate.
With an arsenal of sharp moves only rivaled by his sharper tongue, it was no surprise that he skyrocketed to the top.
In other words, Caleb Knight took the world by storm.
If the poster hanging above Asher’s bed was not sufficient evidence, other points could be made for the argument that Caleb Knight took Asher by storm too.
Asher had looked up to Caleb for years, reenacting Caleb’s promos from the safety of his shitty little bedroom.
When Caleb won the GEW World Championship for the first time, it felt like Asher had too; an unrelenting excitement nestled deep in his chest even after days passed.
Hell, Asher probably wouldn’t have gotten this far in his own professional wrestling career if not for a desire to follow in Caleb Knight’s footsteps.
The Caleb Knight that Asher met that fateful night in New Orleans, however, was kind of a jackass.
Asher and Ava had braved New Orleans’s inclement weather for hours, buffeted by the bitter, biting cold winds swirling through the Smoothie King Center’s parking lot as they awaited the start of Caleb’s scheduled session.
“It’s such an honor to meet you,” Asher said when Caleb finally showed up.
Those breathless words, rehearsed a billion times until Ava had threatened to kick him out of their truck and leave him stranded in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, sounded stupid the moment they came out, which, like, was kind of cringe in hindsight given how Caleb Knight, in all honesty, resembled every other basic white guy out there—pale and blond with a swoopy fringe that parted in the middle.
His eyes, bored and tired as they looked, were a striking blue.
Even in the dim artificial light, Asher could make out a couple of scars scattered across the right side of his face, ones that Asher assumed to be an inescapable job hazard.
Asher stood before him, awkward yet—gag—excited.
There was so much he hoped to learn from Caleb.
How did he pull off that kind of ruthless aggression in the ring?
What inspired his finishing move, the way he would hoist his opponents up onto his shoulder, spinning them a full 360 degrees midair to discombobulate them before slamming them down onto the unforgiving mat?
And Caleb? Not only had Caleb Knight shown up over an hour late, but he had—completely unprovoked—scowled down at Asher as though he were a moldy piece of gum stuck to the bottom of his lace-up boots.
It’s a memory that Asher works hard to actively suppress.
Occasionally, though, when it’s late at night and his brain is too wrung out to filter any unwanted thoughts, glimpses slip through the cracks: Caleb’s phone ringing.
An uncomfortable silence. A flicker of life, extinguished almost as rapidly as it sparked to life.
“Is everything all right?” Asher asked. As though with a mind of its own, his right hand found his way to Caleb’s arm. Call it what you want: curiosity, concern, a strange desire to comfort. Whatever. The thought makes Asher want to gouge out his eyeballs.
“Don’t fucking touch me!” Caleb snapped, shrugging Asher’s hand off. “Screw it. This is a waste of my time.” Then he was gone, storming off before Asher could even make it past the hurdle of processing what the hell was happening.
That was it.
That was all a nine-hour overnight drive had been for.
“Waiting for Caleb Knight is like waiting for rain in this drought,” Asher announced as they drove home that night. “Useless and disappointing.”
The poster of Caleb Knight came down the very next day.
Perhaps it’s petty to hold a grudge over something so seemingly trivial, but for Asher, young and impressionable, it’s a unique kind of pain to find out that the person you’ve spent ages looking up to isn’t at all who you thought he was.
It’s one thing to watch a wrestler play a jerk on television, but a whole other kind of hurt to find out that, away from the lights and cameras, they’re just as nasty.
All of that, compounded by the fact that Asher constantly had to fight to be seen while Caleb had it all served to him on a silver platter.
He sees who Caleb truly is: an arrogant, ungrateful golden boy.
From then on, Asher vowed to have nothing more to do with Caleb Knight.
He’d chart his own path in the business. He’d be a better man.
So, as Asher stares up at Caleb’s face flashing across the Titantron, the opportunity of a lifetime lying before him, he thinks, This is it.
This is his moment. He’ll finally prove to Caleb that he’s better than him, that he’s a real threat who should be taken seriously.
For far too long, Caleb’s nose had been stuck in the air, too snobby to notice Asher scratching and clawing his way up.
If only Caleb had seen him coming all those years ago.
And nothing would be sweeter than dethroning the Ice Prince by prying the GEW World Championship title from his cold dead hands.