Chapter 24 #2
“Eh.” Caleb threads his fingers into Asher’s hair and draws him into a kiss. Just like Asher’s overly sugary vitamins, it is sweet and fizzy with a hint of orange. “I’ve got everything I need right here.”
At that, a smirk curls around Asher’s mouth. His eyes darken, heat flaring in them. He drags two fingers across Caleb’s jaw, making his way down south, slipping them just past the waistband of Caleb’s tights, enough to tease. “But I have such creative ideas on how we can desecrate those belts too.”
“Oi!” Thea swats the backs of both their heads. “No hanky-panky in my church.”
“Of course,” Caleb replies, giving her his sweetest, most angelic smile. He’s gotten Asher to do a lot of things because of that smile.
Asher scowls as though he isn’t a stray touch away from a one-way ticket to HR. “You’re not even religious.”
“Keep it in your pants for one night,” Bailey scolds as she flounces past. The bells in her hair jingle merrily. She’s a full Lisa Frank nightmare for her and Thea’s main event match. “And don’t forget Ava’s welcome celebration later. We’re taking them out!”
“Like with a gun?” Asher deadpans.
“Newsflash, loser: your jokes aren’t funny,” Ava calls from down the hall where Alexei is pouting as Ava playfully wrangles him into a headlock.
They look like a star today, even more so than usual.
They’ve gone full Reputation with a black-and-red serpent dyed into their freshly bleached buzz cut.
Wherever Caleb is backstage, he can hear their laugh ricocheting of the walls.
He can’t think of anyone more deserving of being GEW’s newest debut. “We’re going to drag bingo!”
That’s another new thing: while they still have to abide by kayfabe rules in the ring, they get to travel together now. Asher’s been trying to convince Thea to rent a minivan for them to all pile into, but she remains adamant that she will not be a soccer mom, albeit a smoking hot one.
Pressing his fingertips against his chest, Caleb stares up at the arena’s cracked ceiling.
His whole life, there has been a constant longing engraved inside of him, a family he dreamt of but didn’t have, littered like fragments of memories of a lost love.
Family, he mouths to himself. The shape of that word no longer feels foreign on his tongue.
He looks at down at his feet, at the solid ground he stands on presently, then across the hall where Asher waits for him, smiling, eyes warm like a bonfire.
A reminder of everything beautiful and everything that isn’t, once was, and that never was, one day will be.
Because this right here? This is his family.
Scrappy and messy in a way that might not make sense to some, but it doesn’t matter.
While they aren’t bound by blood, they choose each other day after day—a bond that is undeniable and unbreakable.
“Knight. Ross. Ready on standby” comes Bate’s voice over the backstage intercom.
At this, Caleb shuffles himself and Asher aside, readying to open up the show.
“So. First queer storyline ever.” Asher grins. “What happened to not wanting to make history?”
Caleb shrugs. “Guess I found someone worth fighting for.”
“Oh yeah? Who’s that?”
“Me.”
Asher cradles Caleb’s face with both hands, looking deep in his eyes. “That’s the cheesiest thing I’ve ever heard,” he says and presses a kiss to the corner of Caleb’s mouth. “I love you. You are so, so incredibly easy to love. It’s all muscle memory.”
Leaning back, Caleb searches Asher’s face and finds his gaze steady on him, eyes clear and warm and full of boundless affection. “I love you too,” he says. “Forever. We’ve got forever. I’m going to keep loving you.”
They’re going to make it. Caleb can see it now.
Caleb bends closer, and Asher tilts his head up to meet him again. By now, he’s kissed Asher a countless number of times, and though he doesn’t intend to stop savoring each one, this should be no different. But it is.
This is Caleb, fearless and untethered, free to pour all his love into Asher with soft lips and calloused fingers built to forge a home for themselves, to give Asher the world.
“Be professional,” Caleb warns, smirking against his lips.
With that and a signaling beep from the intercom above, the speakers begin to blast Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer,” and in a moment that will go down in the history books, Asher and Caleb step out from behind the curtains together.
The roar they are met with says it all. A frenzied explosion of color for as far as the eye can see filling the arena from the barricades to the popcorn stands and spilling out the doors of the Desert Diamond Arena.
Feet stamp so hard that the ground beneath Caleb’s boots shakes.
The crowd is a sea of pride flags, fans with streaks of pink, purple, and blue on their cheeks, glitter and rainbows in their hair.
A group of grandmothers in the middle of the colorful sea catch his eye with matching handmade T-shirts—a dragon and crown emblem sewn with rainbow-colored thread.
Up front by the ramp, handmade signs that say things like THE ONLY THING KENNEDY PRICHARD IS FUCKING IS STUPID.
A group of drag queens down by the announcer table hoist a sign that proclaims, WRESTLING IS INHERENTLY GAY.
Letter cards bob up and down through the crowd, ones that spell ALL HAIL THE UNDERDOGS.
A young boy leans over the barricade, waving Funko Pop figurines of Asher and Caleb.
The crowd screams for histories lost and histories being written, and Caleb can’t help but yell with them. He feeds off the energy thrumming through the air, lets it pour into his heart and lungs, swelling in his rib cage until they threaten to burst.
He takes a moment to look over his shoulder at every person he’s been before—the good, the bad, the ugly.
The skin he’s shed. The sour taste in his mouth when he looks back at where he broke.
And eventually, the sweet victory of knowing that every version of him that has existed in the past leads to who he is now—the road to being the person he wants to be.
A whole decade. Years of feeling alone, only to see that he isn’t. Not really.
He sees how he’s a part of something bigger, connected to every fist raised in the air. Sees that they’ve always existed. And so hope has always existed. Always has, always will.
Caleb reaches a hand out between the two of them only to find Asher’s hand already outstretched and waiting.
Looking into Asher’s eyes, for a moment, the world melts away.
It's just the two of them once more. Safe, warm, comforting.
Two hearts beating as one. A forever home.
And just like that, with nothing said or done, Caleb falls in love again, the way he constantly does.
It happens so easily, so magically. Like fireworks on the Fourth of July. Like moonlight on water.
“Ready for the rest of our lives?” Asher asks.
Their fingers intertwine, slotting together perfectly. Together, they are unstoppable. Asher grins, eyes crinkling, dimples showing. It’s the most beautiful sight Caleb has ever seen.
“Always.”