Fic - All These Places I Remember (1/1)
Jul. 12th, 2020 03:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
redfiona99Author: Red Fiona
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters; some combination of WWE and they themselves do, and/or possibly other wrestling federations. Most importantly, I don’t. No money being made from this. This is a work of fiction, with no resemblance to reality.
Fandom: Wrestling
Characters: Chris Jericho and CM Punk
Ratings/Warning: 15 – gen fic, the rating is mostly for language, but there are some mentions of the 2011 Jericho vs Punk feud (details here).
Notes: Set early 2011, at the start of the Jericho vs Punk feud described above, and before UFC fired Jon Fitch and all the Reebok nonsense.
The title is taken from the Beatles "In My Life", although the version I had in mind was the Johnny Cash one. I don't own the rights to that either.
Summary: Jericho misses the way it used to be, back when he was starting out. He knows it’s mostly nostalgia-tinted glasses, but he’s organising this trip to try to recapture that feeling. Punk would be more sympathetic if Jericho hadn’t twisted his arm and made Punk his companion on this two-week road trip in the back of a van.
Punk should have known that this was going to blow up in his face. Things always did.
Of course Punk had said yes to the chance of working with Jericho. For one thing, he actually enjoyed watching Jericho's matches, which hadn't always been the case with his recent opponents. Even if he hadn't, a feud against Jericho might remind head office that he existed. He'd been out of the title picture for far too long and this might well be his way back. Jericho always seemed to catch their eye.
Working with Jericho should have been simple enough. Then he found out why Jericho chose him out of all the possible options he could have run this programme with. Jericho had some ridiculous notion of recapturing his youth by going back to the days of travelling in the back of a van between venues, and he decided that Punk would be better able to cope with joining him in doing that than the rest of what Jericho called 'the new kids', because Punk had come up through the indies unlike the guys that had been something else and then rushed through OVW, who'd never done anything like this. According to Jericho, it took a certain kind of someone to do that and then choose to carry on.
Punk had a less romantic view of the whole thing, possibly because he'd been stuck in the back of a van for months on end sometime this millennium.
Punk knew how this was going to go. Jericho would be excessively excited for the first few days, because this was new, or at least different, for him. Then the reality of it would hit Jericho, and he'd be impossible due to frustration, because this wasn't how he remembered it, because you always remember things as being better than they were, and Punk would have to put up with him because he would have no other travel plans. And he couldn't exactly leave Jericho stranded in the middle of nowhere, no matter how much he might have wanted to.
On the first day, Punk waited for Jericho outside the hotel. Jericho arrived at the front, about ten past nine, giving them plenty of time to reach the next venue. He pulled up in a red VW camper van. It wasn't what Punk had expected, but then again, he wasn't sure what he'd expected. He'd hoped that Jericho would have the sense not to get a clapped-out old wreck, but he hadn't been sure, because Jericho might have been the kind of idiot who wanted to go all the way back. Punk was done with wrecks that stunk of other people's used wrestling gear. He'd also hoped vaguely, vainly, that Jericho might have given up on the idea. He couldn't back out, but Jericho could have done it without losing face, and it would have saved them both all the trouble they were undoubtedly going to have.
~~~~
Punk liked being right, but he wished he hadn’t been correct in his prediction about how this was going to go. Jericho was like a kid in a candy store for the first two days, with an imbecilic look of glee on his face at all times. Punk was starting to worry that Jericho was that worst of all things, a perky travel companion. That would have been too much to bear.
Thankfully Jericho calmed down by the third day, but that might have been less to do with his personality and more to do with the heavy chair shot to the back he'd taken the night before. That would knock the happy right out of anyone.
To his credit, Jericho still did his share of the driving, something Punk appreciated. When your back was hurting, the last thing you wanted to was to sit in the same position for hours on end. Jericho wouldn't have been the first guy to find ways of shortening his turn at the wheel, but he didn't. That was the kind of person Punk tried to surround himself with, someone who'd do their part, when they could, who you could trust when they said they couldn't because it meant they really couldn’t, and who'd trust your word when you said you couldn't in turn.
Once he was less manically cheerful, Jericho was a lot easier to get along with. His taste in music still sucked, but road rules were that the driver chose the music.
"At least you can hear what he's singing," Jericho was defending whichever moronic hair band that didn't realise the '80s were thirty years ago.
"Yeah, but they're not saying anything worth hearing." The songs all bled together in a blur of 'yay boobs, booze and twelve-bar blues', and it got wearing, especially after four days where half their time was spent listening to it, because of the sheer amount of time they spent in the van. Travelling by road took far longer than the airplane trips everyone else was taking, not enough longer to ever make them late, or inconvenience them really - Jericho had planned the trip down to the minutest detail because, like all champions, he was intrinsically a control freak - but long enough to make Punk very weary of Black Label Society.
~~~~
It took Jericho five days to realise this was the stupidest idea he'd ever had. Which was longer than he'd expected it to take. He'd known it was a bad idea the minute he'd had it, but it had worked away at him. When was he likely to have this sort of opportunity again, with all the shows for a couple of weeks being close enough to drive, and his body still more or less in one piece? Then came the opportunity to work with Punk, and the thing was, unlike the rest of the kids, Punk had come up through the indies and, well, even when he romanticised it, Jericho knew that it was going to be a shitty experience, and he didn't want to do that to them.
He isn't sure why he's doing it, he's half sure it's a midlife crisis but the other half thinks he's doing it to avoid one. You can't fall into the trap of trying to recapture your youth if you've got recent evidence that it's not as good as you remember it.
Exactly how bad an idea this was was brought home to him when he woke up that fifth morning - he'd landed awkwardly from a slam, no-one's fault, just one of those things and then taken a chair shot on the bruises left by the chair shot two days ago - and his back ached. He could feel it seizing up. He was fine to wrestle and drive, he'd done both carrying far worse damage than this, but it still hurt. He could have done without Punk's ... well he could have done without Punk being himself.
"I know they call it Vitamin I, but that doesn't mean it's one of your five-a-day." Jericho gave that statement the finger it deserved. A little ibuprofen never killed anyone. Anyway, what else did Punk expect him to do? It wasn't like he could sit out the night. He knows it's stupid, but for him it's not even the money, it's the principle of the thing. He wants to, almost needs to, show that there's life in the old dog yet, and he's not just on an honorary nostalgia run. He suspects that, if he weren't still able to keep up in the ring, that desire makes him almost more pathetic than if he had been just running on memory and fumes.
He's glad of Punk's company though.
The emptiness of the roads and the desolation of the view were Jericho’s fault because he set the itinerary. Jericho could have chosen an easier path, or at least one with more highways and rest-stops, but he'd deliberately picked a route that took them through as many backroads as he could. It would be boredom either way, you had a choice between being bored in traffic or being bored going through every no horse town between two points.
Back in the day, they'd made a game of it, seeing if they could find stops in places beginning with every letter of the alphabet. He remembers the photo Eddie and Dean took when they finally managed to stop in a place beginning with X. It was long enough ago that they'd had to get copies made in a photo shop. Jericho didn't know if he still had his copy of that photo.
Maybe that's what he was doing, making new road memories so when it came time to tell stories he didn't have to change some of the details to avoid mentioning people, which only ever caused other people who had been there as well to look at him funny until they realised who would have been in the story if Jericho hadn't changed it. Then again, there were fewer and fewer of those people. Everyone he used to travel with is dead or retired and he doesn't see the retired ones often enough.
But no matter what else changed, Jericho could be sure of one thing, Reflex would still be open after tonight's show was finished, and that's where they'd all be. He couldn't understand it. Chris had seen arenas knocked down, rebuilt, names changed out of all recognition, he'd seen roadside dinners open and close, he'd seen villages die out, but no matter what, Reflex survived. Which was a pain, because it was a shitty club. And he'd end up in there. Despite hating it, the terrible DJ and the uncomfortable seats. But it was where they always went after shows here, because it was always there, always open and had cheap drink. Wrestlers travelled around so much that they liked any stability they could find, even if it did come with neon lights that hadn't been updated since before the first time Jericho got dragged in there.
Jericho passed Punk a drink. Punk sniffed it carefully before taking a drink from it. "What?!" Jericho was offended by the implication that he'd spike Punk's drink. "I'm a dick, not an asshole."
"There's enough people that are both." Punk paused and took another drink. "I bet you've got that whole film memorised."
Jericho had to grin. "Most of it. But that one was an accident." Punk laughed, like he didn't believe him, but it was friendly enough. Jericho really wasn't enough of an asshole to spike someone's drink, but he knew Punk was right and enough people were.
Different kinds of asshole is something of a speciality of Jericho's, it was how you stayed relevant as a heel and didn't become some tired old relic. It's what he didn't like about a lot of the kids today, they were so busy chasing being liked by the crowd for being clever that they weren't willing to be hated. He didn't understand it. Because, yes, there was nothing that felt quite as good as the adoration of an audience, but getting them to hate you came a close second. If you're the bad guy, and the crowd are chanting your catchphrase, you change it or hope that the front office want you to be the good guy soon.
Being Punk's opponent made his job even more difficult. Punk was awkward, spiky and half the crowd would always hate Punk more than whoever he was facing. Then again, the other half would love Punk no matter what he did.
Jericho had to find a way to counteract that and make sure everyone cheered for Punk. Or hated Jericho more than him. The end result wasn't the same but either would do.
And it was in Reflex's shitty VIP section, with its faded light show, looking at Punk holding a Pepsi that Jericho got an idea for how to do it.
He didn't say anything at the time, because he wanted to work through his idea, and he knew that ideas after the third double vodka and coke weren't always the best.
Jericho was still thinking it over the next morning, which made him quieter than usual.
"I told you not to have that last drink, old man."
"Who are you calling old man? You're like, what, eight years younger than me."
"Yeah, but wrestling years are like dog years. Each one counts for ten. You're old." Jericho did the only sensible thing and flipped Punk the bird, even if Punk wasn't wrong. If this had been ten years ago, it would have been different. Jericho wouldn't have hesitated to suggest this angle to the bookers, but now, now he was less sure about what was and wasn't appropriate.
Of course, he'd have to run it by Punk first before he even thought of telling the boss. But Jericho thought Punk would be okay with it, because he'd come up through the indies and he understood that the fans have to have something to get their teeth into, something they can buy into, if you want them to feel anything. Two guys going for a belt gets you less of a response than evil fucker with the belt versus try hard guy who has never won it before. They couldn't use that, Jericho had never been interested in playing out-and-out evil, it got cartoony too easily, and Punk just didn't feel like a hard-luck-case guy. When Punk did try to play that, it came off insincere and was more likely to make him into the bad guy in any given situation.
If this had been before, when he was one of the guys, and not the old man, Jericho would have known how to ask Punk himself. Because the other problem was that he didn't know if Punk was straight-edge because he liked the idea or because someone in his family had an alcohol problem or what. It was stupid, after nearly a week of travelling with Punk, Jericho could tell you his views on politics, sport, music and the invasive threat of kudzu in the south, but he couldn't tell you anything about Punk's personal life. Punk was a private person, and Jericho dug that, but it made moving towards the question even harder.
"Hey, Punk, can I run something past you?"
"Yeah, sure."
"So, we agree that we need to give people something to buy into."
"Yeah." Punk already didn't like where this was going. Jericho could tell because Punk's eyebrows were doing that thing, where they arched making Punk look even more sarcastic than usual, which was plenty.
"So we give them something." And okay, Punk's eyebrows had a point, Jericho was stating the obvious, and even Jericho felt like he was pussyfooting about when he should just get it over with. "I make it seem like the straight edge thing is because your family is full of drinkers and addicts, and you're always one step away from a fall. Then I say I want to be the one that pushes you into the fall." Punk looked like he was thinking it over. Which was good. Even if Punk said no, which he was entitled to do, it didn't look like he'd hate Jericho for making the suggestion. Jericho didn't need more enemies in the business.
Time to sweeten the deal. "There'll be a safeword, of course."
"I can take anything you can throw at me." Jericho had forgotten that at the heart of every wrestler lay someone in thrall to macho bullshit. Then again, Punk hid that better than most.
"Don't make me give the whole 'dick not asshole' speech. 'Cause I will."
Punk snorted. "There's no way that the office will go for it, but feel free to try."
"I've been thinking about that. The way this will go, I think it'll sound better if we suggest it together."
"Yeah, 'cause the office really listen to me." Jericho hadn't intended to set Punk off on one of his rants about the front office, because everyone had issues with them, everyone always did, but it was one of Punk's main topics of conversation.
Despite that, Punk did go in to bat for the angle with Jericho at the meeting they had with the writers. The writers were undecided. Steph, who was her father's daughter in all the best and worst ways, was sitting in on the meeting and her eyes lit up. She got why they were suggesting it, understood that you had to engage the crowd on a visceral level.
"You okay with it?" she asked Punk.
"Yeah."
"Then I don't see why not." Suddenly all the writers also felt it was the best idea ever. Pussies!
~~~~
It worked.
Jericho had thought it would, wouldn't have pitched the idea if he hadn't, but there was a difference between thinking something would work and seeing it happen. The way the crowd responded, their ‘oohs’ and ‘ahhs’ at his and Punk's set to, the intake of breath as people thought he'd touched a nerve, and were worried that he'd gone that little bit too far. It was exactly what he'd been after.
It was exhilarating. He'd proved he'd still got it, could still work the crowd, have them respond when he wanted and how he wanted.
Punk wasn't as buzzed as he was but right then, you could have charged the electric grid off Jericho, so he didn't notice so much.
The next morning, he noticed. Punk was still down, it seemed like he was worn and tired. It wasn't the tired of a hard night's work, or the down of the morning after the night before. Jericho knew that kind of tired well.
Nor was it just the strain of the road trip. Jericho was willing to admit it was by far the stupidest idea he'd ever had, but he thinks sharing the van was worth it. Would he have been able to come up with the bare bones of this angle if he'd not spent time with Punk, and would they have been able to plan it together the way they had if they hadn't known each other like this?
Probably not. Maybe that was part of what Jericho missed. Knowing his opponents that well because you've seen them at their three a.m. toilet stop worst.
Looking at Punk, it didn't look like the travel that was the cause of his weariness. Jericho tried not to think of other people he'd seen looking this kind of tired.
Something was eating at Punk, and having listened to what the guy had to say for the past eight days, Jericho thought he knew what it was.
Jericho also knew what he wanted to say to Punk, he wanted to tell Punk that wrestling was not everything in the world, only he knew that Punk wouldn't listen, and wouldn't thank him for trying to help. Because wrestling wasn't everything, but it was, because it had to be for you to be any good at it. Punk was good, Jericho would be the first to admit it, so it was everything to him. But it shouldn't be everything, because it wasn't anything like stable enough to hang your life on, even if you got the opportunity to. So much of the industry, and your success in it, wasn't under your control, that you shouldn't dare to.
The next day was much the same, Punk being withdrawn, even for him. Jericho chattered away. It was a trick he'd learnt, for when he was travelling with people he didn’t feel comfortable enough with to be silent. Which is most people. He missed Lance on those occasions more than usual. He's not sure what it was about Lance, maybe just because they'd done their travelling when they were both young so it was okay to be scared about what they were getting into and about where things were going. Now, not so much. Wrestling was a shoal of sharks, and people pounced on any sign of weakness like blood in the water. So when he got nervous, he chatted. He talked when he wasn't driving so that he'd stay awake. Some of the time when he was driving, he talked for the same reason. He'd got a line of patter and by now he could do it without even thinking all that much about what he was saying. Punk wasn't listening anyhow.
Jericho tried to think of an in. Some way of starting a conversation that he could lead into how everyone needs a thing that isn't wrestling in their lives.
He gave up trying to be subtle two rest stops and three cans of Monster later. He just blurted it out, hoping that Punk would assume he's road-bored. Road-bored is responsible for more stupid conversations than alcohol and about as many stupid pranks. ‘Just going for it’ is how he deals with things when he’s pushed into having to do something. It's got him into more good things than trouble in his life. "So what's your thing?"
"Huh?"
"Your thing. You know. Everyone's got one, mine's music," which should have been obvious, "Batista's got his lunch boxes. Seriously, don't get him started, he'll talk for hours." Jericho told a tale about Batista and his lunchboxes that wasn't one of Jericho’s own stories, but Rey had told him, and it was the kind of story that didn't really need to be yours for you to tell it. "So, what's your thing?"
Punk, for maybe the only time in the time Jericho had known him, looked embarrassed. Jericho was expecting women's underwear from his reaction, but it wasn't anything like that. "MMA."
"Cage fighting?"
"Yeah." There was enough aggression in Punk's voice that Jericho could hear the unsaid "that's why I don't tell people."
"Oh ... I mean, I would've thought you were too clever to want your brains boxed about like that."
"Like we're not constantly beat up." Jericho shrugged, sure, Punk had a point. "It's the getting punched in the face you don't like."
"Yeah. This face is my money-maker." Yes, Jericho was incurably vain, and didn't mind admitting it.
"You do know they get time off. Like, actual time to train. And health checks. Imagine not having to compete injured, more than that, not being allowed to compete injured." Jericho let Punk carry on. He recognised that he hadn't reached the kernel of why MMA was Punk's thing. He didn't doubt that all of these things mattered to Punk, but they weren't *the* thing. It was like if people asked him ‘why music?’. He'd give a long list of reasons, fun, joy, self-expression, but it'd take a while, and some digging, before he'd tell the truth, that for him it was the sheer kick of getting adulation for being himself, in a way you didn't get for wrestling. Everyone in that audience had paid to see him, which is something you don't get from a wrestling crowd. He knows he ought to say the music is the best thing but honestly, that's only part of it.
"And it's real, you know, you're in charge of your own destiny." Jericho knew that that was it, from the look in Punk's eyes and the way he was holding the steering wheel, left hand gripped tighter than he'd ever seen Punk hold the wheel before, and right index finger lifted the way Punk did when he was making a point.
Which made sense for Punk. And his on-going, never-ending and maybe justified paranoia about not getting his due despite his talent. Jericho was just pleased that Punk had an outlet, even if it made no sense to Jericho. He tried to make sure that he gave Punk room to talk about it as they drove. It was easy enough; Jericho only knew the basics and everyone knew that Punk liked to play the know-it-all. And because Jericho didn't know that much, Punk wasn't too insufferable about it, because there weren't any points they disagreed upon, where Punk felt he had to prove he was right even when he was wrong.
~~~~
A couple of days later, Punk was mostly blaming Jericho for the cold he had. Maybe he was right about that, because Jericho had had the cold two days before Punk had caught it. No one slept well in the back of a van, and being beat up and half asleep was a sure-fire way to catch every bug going. And there was always a bug going round. You got it and got over it just in time to catch it going round again after it had mutated enough to infect you again.
Jericho knew how tired Punk felt. Mostly because he'd spent the last two nights being kept awake by Punk's catarrh-induced snoring. Sometime around four o'clock in the morning, he'd realised he'd spent half the night trying to decide if suffocating Punk would count as manslaughter rather than murder.
In any sane world, they'd be allowed to go home until they were over the worst of a bad cold, or at least not pass it on to their unfortunate co-workers, but who ever accused wrestling of being sane world? Being able to take time off when you were ill was a sign that you were high up on the list, but it also said you were coming down it, because you weren't so vital to the man that he couldn't afford to have you miss a couple of shows. Jericho could see McMahon giving him a week off, but not someone like Cena. And if Cena wasn't missing shows, you knew Punk wouldn't want to, because Cena had the position Punk wanted. Jericho understood it, maybe. For him there was always the Rock and Helmsley, and as a rock star he recognised that the Rock had a special charisma that several small suns couldn't compete with, and Helmsley deserved all of the conspiracy theory rants that Punk sent Cena's way. Jericho could afford to be philosophical; he knew he would be remembered, maybe not the greatest of all time, but hey, he already had people doing the Armbar routine at him so yeah, he'd be remembered, and he was okay with that. He was a guy who did his best whatever the situation. There were worse ways to be remembered.
There's too many of his friends that are only being remembered, and this road trip is only making him miss them more. It's not Punk's fault. Jericho just realised that, if things were different and they'd come through the ranks together, they wouldn't have been friends. That fact was also not Punk's fault. Punk does have friends, so it's not that he's incapable, he's just not the sort of guy Jericho gets on with, and never had done. Punk's a know-it-all and convinced he's right. He's also one of the most stubborn people Jericho knows and everyone Jericho knows is stubborn.
That was going to be the real problem. Jericho was sick of this trip, sick of the mattress at the back of this van, sick of his back on that mattress, all vans, and this turning out to be exactly as bad idea as he thought it might. And Jericho had a way out of it, if only Punk would take it.
Yes, it was cheating, but they could just take motel rooms, and no one would need to know. Hell, Jericho would even pay for it all. The other option was that Jericho admitted to Punk that he was wrong, and ask him to break the trip as a favour, but he was going to hold that option in reserve unless he couldn't find any other way out.
Of course, Punk didn't agree. "What, can't keep up, old man?" Faced with that kind of statement, how could Jericho do anything but try to carry on. He couldn't back down. If Punk had wavered for even a second, then maybe Jericho would have made his suggestion, but Punk hadn't. Punk never wavered, it was part of the reason Punk was difficult to get on with, he had no give in him. It wasn't that he was grasping, or all take, no, it was an unforgiving steel. There was no bend, nothing pliable. And that was hard to deal with.
The other thing that Jericho found it hard to deal with was that he worried that maybe Punk was right. Maybe Chris couldn't hack it any more, maybe he was too old to deal with wrestling and sleepless nights. When he was younger, when he travelled like this with people all the time, they travelled in hope. Hope that this would be the match that got them noticed by a bigger promotion, the next step up the ladder, that they might actually get paid tonight. Now, there wasn't that hope, and he wasn't going to complain about having made it, but it changed the equation. And he shouldn’t complain about starting to come down the other side of having made it, due to his age, because that happened to everyone who was lucky enough to survive that long, but he could complain about the stupid way his knee ached when he'd done the same stunt millions of times and it never used to ache this way.
Jericho was in a gas stop coffee shop, picking up supplies for the afternoon drive, listening to some kid cry because he'd wet his pants, when he just hit his limit. He doesn't want to be here. He wanted to be in whichever airport lounge everyone else is in. It might be boring but at least it wasn’t this, the endless road and half-frozen scenery.
Jericho drove that afternoon, but it was almost on autopilot. He had no idea if Punk noticed that he hadn't responded to anything he'd said, but Jericho was past caring if Punk had noticed. He had a goal in mind.
Because they were nearing the end of their little idiots' tour, they were almost matching the path the rest of the guys were taking, and somewhere along this road there was a hotel. Jericho was sure of it, he thought he remembered staying in it, although he couldn't quite remember which company he was with at the time. He was driving along, hoping it was still there.
Jericho pulled into the parking lot of the hotel before Punk knew what was up.
Punk hadn't been paying much attention, he'd reached that state of zen boredom you get from too many miles on the road. He sat there for a few moments, thinking that they'd pulled into yet another gas station, before he looked around and realised what was going on.
"What the fuck, Chris? What are you doing?"
And wasn't that the killer question. "I am going to book into that hotel, so I can get actual sleep, on an actual bed."
"No, no, no. You are not doing that. You are staying here, in this van. You are having two more terrible nights on these mattresses. Because I am not wasting another fourteen days of my life next time you have the same stupid idea."
"I won't."
Jericho sounded like he meant it, and maybe he did, now. But Punk knew it wouldn't stay that way. "Yeah, right!"
"I won't. I admit I'm an idiot. I thought of this, I am the king of the idiots, but even I have my limits."
Punk would have been willing to accept that when they started out but he now knew Jericho well enough to know his blindspots too. "I'm not saying you'll think this is a good idea again tomorrow, or next month, or even next year. But you will, and you'll go, 'you know what, Punk wasn't a half-bad travelling companion, sure he snored, but that's not the worst thing ever,' and we'll be here again. Or if not here, some other set of back roads in a van too similar to this."
"I won't."
"We'll be in a hotel, and someone who doesn't know any better will say something about it not being very good, and you'll think, 'oh if only they knew', and you'll think back on every shitty motel you ever slept it, eight people to a two-person room, and you won't remember the way the springs hurt your back, if you were lucky enough to be one of the people in the bed that time, or how many times people trod on you going to and from the bathroom, if you were one of people on the floor. You'll remember the laughter and the jokes, and how it seemed like such fun then and then you'll think."
"I won't."
"You will. Because it's not the travelling you miss, it's not even the people," although Punk sometimes missed Joe so much it almost hurt, the way he was silent sometimes, not because he'd run out of things to say but because now was a time to be silent, "you miss being twenty. We all miss being twenty. All this is gonna prove is that we're not twenty anymore." Punk was only thirty-four, but he felt every extra year from twenty. When his back ached, or his wrist hurt, or a leg tweak that would have been gone in a week was still sore a month later. It was hard to be as optimistic now as then, and it wasn't like he'd been blessed with optimism anyhow. Every match that isn't for a title, the title, is another match off his wrestling lifespan. Punk can’t see himself in Jericho’s shoes. He’s not going to be the old man still wrestling at forty-two, trying to keep up with people who still have what Jericho is chasing on this trip. If Punk was going to be that guy, there are worse ways of doing it than the way Jericho is, but that’s not him, and he already knows that. He’s not Jericho, and he's not Terry Funk, Punk won’t hear a word said against him, but that isn’t him. One day, there’ll be an end to it.
"I was an idiot when I was twenty," Jericho hadn’t noticed the way Punk’s thought’s drifted.
"You're an idiot now."
"Some things never change." Jericho laughed. And laughed. He wouldn't stop laughing, and there was a more than slightly hysterical edge to it.
Punk found himself joining in, uncontrollably. It was a fair few minutes before he could do anything other than laugh. When he finally got himself back under control, sort of, his rib aching and face sore from it, and through the occasional aftershock of laughter, he turned to Jericho. "Do you wanna park us up somewhere else? I don't feel like being arrested for loitering outside a hotel or whatever they call it in this state." Punk's not sure what would be worse, getting arrested while laughing enough that people might think he was on hippie crack, or being arrested with Jericho. Probably being arrested with Jericho. It's not like it'd be the death of kayfabe all over again, but, for some reason, it mattered.
Jericho got himself together enough to put the van into drive and they found somewhere better to park. They didn't go to sleep, not straight away. Jericho talked, about nothing important, till he fell asleep, pretty much mid-sentence. Punk let him ramble, he might even have joined in at various points. Where they’d been stressed before, the laughter had broken something. They'd reached that point, somewhere past tiredness and frustration, where you just turn into a pile of 'sure, whatever'.
Neither of them were at their best the next day. Not angry or anything like that but distractible. They were setting each other off laughing at all the wrong times. Mark Henry was speaking for lots of people when he said, "if this is Punk happy, I'll take him pissed off."
The night that followed that goofball day was the last night of the trip. They actually slept quite well. It wasn’t that they’d finally got used to it in time for it to stop, it was sheer end-of-time exhaustion. They'd parked near the arena so they could drop the van off at the rental place early the next morning and then catch the same plane as everyone else.
Jericho looked at the van after they'd handed the keys over. "You know, if it hadn't been for the fact that I will have to rent from them again, that thing would have been up in flames." Punk thought that was going too far, the van had done its job, it wasn't like it was its fault that they hated most of the minutes in it, and he said so. "What, feeling sentimental about a van! I thought I had problems," was Jericho’s reply.
Jericho was still laughing at him when they drove off to the airport.
After two weeks straight of his company, there was no-one Punk wanted to sit next to less than Jericho, so of course, some joker had given them adjoining seats on the flight. Punk didn't know who was to blame, but he'd find out ... and get them back. That's the way it went, a rib for a rib, like an eye for an eye.
Jericho wasn't exactly silent for the flight, but Punk had got much better at tuning him out, and the occasional bit of crooning under his breath really wasn't the worst thing Jericho could have done. Punk felt reasonably relaxed, maybe the old saying about change being as good as a rest was right, or maybe it was nice to have someone else do the driving instead of doing it yourself. Airline pilot was another career he was ruling out.
If Punk could blame someone else for having to sit next to Jericho on the plane, he had no such excuse for hanging with Jericho after that night's show. For someone straight edge, he spent far too much of his time in bars, and this one was a pretty basic example of the type. It was like all bars that wrestlers frequented, boring, safe and cheap. Even cheaper if you were on Pepsi, if they had it, or cola, if they didn't.
Jericho was holding court, surrounded by a bunch of the other guys, who were enjoying his tales of life on the road. Sure, Jericho was ten, fifteen years older than them, but in the half-light of the bar, it wasn't so obvious. Jericho was in his element, and Punk could see that - the joy of telling stories - helped by having someone nodding along that had been there too, acting as living proof that whatever story you were telling was true, or true enough. Right now, Jericho was saying how much fun it had been, and he recommend everyone try it. There were enough idiots in the crowd that might actually have listened to him. Jericho got up to go the bar and left them to their thoughts.
"You're evil, you know," said Punk.
Jericho smiled. "If they're stupid enough to listen to me then they deserve it. And it's not like you weren't nodding along." Jericho passed him a drink, and Punk drank it. He didn't notice he hadn't sniffed it to check for alcohol till it was too late and he'd swallowed. Except, even with that, he knew he didn't have to check. Jericho wouldn't do that to him, wouldn't do it to anyone, because he wasn't that kind of asshole. It was nice to know that, know that for sure, about someone here, even if Jericho was the only person in the bar that Punk could say that about. Trust might have been the other thing they both missed from back in the day. Trust and time and everything else they’d run out of along the way to being here now.
End notes: I also don’t own “Team America: World Police”.
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters; some combination of WWE and they themselves do, and/or possibly other wrestling federations. Most importantly, I don’t. No money being made from this. This is a work of fiction, with no resemblance to reality.
Fandom: Wrestling
Characters: Chris Jericho and CM Punk
Ratings/Warning: 15 – gen fic, the rating is mostly for language, but there are some mentions of the 2011 Jericho vs Punk feud (details here).
Notes: Set early 2011, at the start of the Jericho vs Punk feud described above, and before UFC fired Jon Fitch and all the Reebok nonsense.
The title is taken from the Beatles "In My Life", although the version I had in mind was the Johnny Cash one. I don't own the rights to that either.
Summary: Jericho misses the way it used to be, back when he was starting out. He knows it’s mostly nostalgia-tinted glasses, but he’s organising this trip to try to recapture that feeling. Punk would be more sympathetic if Jericho hadn’t twisted his arm and made Punk his companion on this two-week road trip in the back of a van.
Punk should have known that this was going to blow up in his face. Things always did.
Of course Punk had said yes to the chance of working with Jericho. For one thing, he actually enjoyed watching Jericho's matches, which hadn't always been the case with his recent opponents. Even if he hadn't, a feud against Jericho might remind head office that he existed. He'd been out of the title picture for far too long and this might well be his way back. Jericho always seemed to catch their eye.
Working with Jericho should have been simple enough. Then he found out why Jericho chose him out of all the possible options he could have run this programme with. Jericho had some ridiculous notion of recapturing his youth by going back to the days of travelling in the back of a van between venues, and he decided that Punk would be better able to cope with joining him in doing that than the rest of what Jericho called 'the new kids', because Punk had come up through the indies unlike the guys that had been something else and then rushed through OVW, who'd never done anything like this. According to Jericho, it took a certain kind of someone to do that and then choose to carry on.
Punk had a less romantic view of the whole thing, possibly because he'd been stuck in the back of a van for months on end sometime this millennium.
Punk knew how this was going to go. Jericho would be excessively excited for the first few days, because this was new, or at least different, for him. Then the reality of it would hit Jericho, and he'd be impossible due to frustration, because this wasn't how he remembered it, because you always remember things as being better than they were, and Punk would have to put up with him because he would have no other travel plans. And he couldn't exactly leave Jericho stranded in the middle of nowhere, no matter how much he might have wanted to.
On the first day, Punk waited for Jericho outside the hotel. Jericho arrived at the front, about ten past nine, giving them plenty of time to reach the next venue. He pulled up in a red VW camper van. It wasn't what Punk had expected, but then again, he wasn't sure what he'd expected. He'd hoped that Jericho would have the sense not to get a clapped-out old wreck, but he hadn't been sure, because Jericho might have been the kind of idiot who wanted to go all the way back. Punk was done with wrecks that stunk of other people's used wrestling gear. He'd also hoped vaguely, vainly, that Jericho might have given up on the idea. He couldn't back out, but Jericho could have done it without losing face, and it would have saved them both all the trouble they were undoubtedly going to have.
~~~~
Punk liked being right, but he wished he hadn’t been correct in his prediction about how this was going to go. Jericho was like a kid in a candy store for the first two days, with an imbecilic look of glee on his face at all times. Punk was starting to worry that Jericho was that worst of all things, a perky travel companion. That would have been too much to bear.
Thankfully Jericho calmed down by the third day, but that might have been less to do with his personality and more to do with the heavy chair shot to the back he'd taken the night before. That would knock the happy right out of anyone.
To his credit, Jericho still did his share of the driving, something Punk appreciated. When your back was hurting, the last thing you wanted to was to sit in the same position for hours on end. Jericho wouldn't have been the first guy to find ways of shortening his turn at the wheel, but he didn't. That was the kind of person Punk tried to surround himself with, someone who'd do their part, when they could, who you could trust when they said they couldn't because it meant they really couldn’t, and who'd trust your word when you said you couldn't in turn.
Once he was less manically cheerful, Jericho was a lot easier to get along with. His taste in music still sucked, but road rules were that the driver chose the music.
"At least you can hear what he's singing," Jericho was defending whichever moronic hair band that didn't realise the '80s were thirty years ago.
"Yeah, but they're not saying anything worth hearing." The songs all bled together in a blur of 'yay boobs, booze and twelve-bar blues', and it got wearing, especially after four days where half their time was spent listening to it, because of the sheer amount of time they spent in the van. Travelling by road took far longer than the airplane trips everyone else was taking, not enough longer to ever make them late, or inconvenience them really - Jericho had planned the trip down to the minutest detail because, like all champions, he was intrinsically a control freak - but long enough to make Punk very weary of Black Label Society.
~~~~
It took Jericho five days to realise this was the stupidest idea he'd ever had. Which was longer than he'd expected it to take. He'd known it was a bad idea the minute he'd had it, but it had worked away at him. When was he likely to have this sort of opportunity again, with all the shows for a couple of weeks being close enough to drive, and his body still more or less in one piece? Then came the opportunity to work with Punk, and the thing was, unlike the rest of the kids, Punk had come up through the indies and, well, even when he romanticised it, Jericho knew that it was going to be a shitty experience, and he didn't want to do that to them.
He isn't sure why he's doing it, he's half sure it's a midlife crisis but the other half thinks he's doing it to avoid one. You can't fall into the trap of trying to recapture your youth if you've got recent evidence that it's not as good as you remember it.
Exactly how bad an idea this was was brought home to him when he woke up that fifth morning - he'd landed awkwardly from a slam, no-one's fault, just one of those things and then taken a chair shot on the bruises left by the chair shot two days ago - and his back ached. He could feel it seizing up. He was fine to wrestle and drive, he'd done both carrying far worse damage than this, but it still hurt. He could have done without Punk's ... well he could have done without Punk being himself.
"I know they call it Vitamin I, but that doesn't mean it's one of your five-a-day." Jericho gave that statement the finger it deserved. A little ibuprofen never killed anyone. Anyway, what else did Punk expect him to do? It wasn't like he could sit out the night. He knows it's stupid, but for him it's not even the money, it's the principle of the thing. He wants to, almost needs to, show that there's life in the old dog yet, and he's not just on an honorary nostalgia run. He suspects that, if he weren't still able to keep up in the ring, that desire makes him almost more pathetic than if he had been just running on memory and fumes.
He's glad of Punk's company though.
The emptiness of the roads and the desolation of the view were Jericho’s fault because he set the itinerary. Jericho could have chosen an easier path, or at least one with more highways and rest-stops, but he'd deliberately picked a route that took them through as many backroads as he could. It would be boredom either way, you had a choice between being bored in traffic or being bored going through every no horse town between two points.
Back in the day, they'd made a game of it, seeing if they could find stops in places beginning with every letter of the alphabet. He remembers the photo Eddie and Dean took when they finally managed to stop in a place beginning with X. It was long enough ago that they'd had to get copies made in a photo shop. Jericho didn't know if he still had his copy of that photo.
Maybe that's what he was doing, making new road memories so when it came time to tell stories he didn't have to change some of the details to avoid mentioning people, which only ever caused other people who had been there as well to look at him funny until they realised who would have been in the story if Jericho hadn't changed it. Then again, there were fewer and fewer of those people. Everyone he used to travel with is dead or retired and he doesn't see the retired ones often enough.
But no matter what else changed, Jericho could be sure of one thing, Reflex would still be open after tonight's show was finished, and that's where they'd all be. He couldn't understand it. Chris had seen arenas knocked down, rebuilt, names changed out of all recognition, he'd seen roadside dinners open and close, he'd seen villages die out, but no matter what, Reflex survived. Which was a pain, because it was a shitty club. And he'd end up in there. Despite hating it, the terrible DJ and the uncomfortable seats. But it was where they always went after shows here, because it was always there, always open and had cheap drink. Wrestlers travelled around so much that they liked any stability they could find, even if it did come with neon lights that hadn't been updated since before the first time Jericho got dragged in there.
Jericho passed Punk a drink. Punk sniffed it carefully before taking a drink from it. "What?!" Jericho was offended by the implication that he'd spike Punk's drink. "I'm a dick, not an asshole."
"There's enough people that are both." Punk paused and took another drink. "I bet you've got that whole film memorised."
Jericho had to grin. "Most of it. But that one was an accident." Punk laughed, like he didn't believe him, but it was friendly enough. Jericho really wasn't enough of an asshole to spike someone's drink, but he knew Punk was right and enough people were.
Different kinds of asshole is something of a speciality of Jericho's, it was how you stayed relevant as a heel and didn't become some tired old relic. It's what he didn't like about a lot of the kids today, they were so busy chasing being liked by the crowd for being clever that they weren't willing to be hated. He didn't understand it. Because, yes, there was nothing that felt quite as good as the adoration of an audience, but getting them to hate you came a close second. If you're the bad guy, and the crowd are chanting your catchphrase, you change it or hope that the front office want you to be the good guy soon.
Being Punk's opponent made his job even more difficult. Punk was awkward, spiky and half the crowd would always hate Punk more than whoever he was facing. Then again, the other half would love Punk no matter what he did.
Jericho had to find a way to counteract that and make sure everyone cheered for Punk. Or hated Jericho more than him. The end result wasn't the same but either would do.
And it was in Reflex's shitty VIP section, with its faded light show, looking at Punk holding a Pepsi that Jericho got an idea for how to do it.
He didn't say anything at the time, because he wanted to work through his idea, and he knew that ideas after the third double vodka and coke weren't always the best.
Jericho was still thinking it over the next morning, which made him quieter than usual.
"I told you not to have that last drink, old man."
"Who are you calling old man? You're like, what, eight years younger than me."
"Yeah, but wrestling years are like dog years. Each one counts for ten. You're old." Jericho did the only sensible thing and flipped Punk the bird, even if Punk wasn't wrong. If this had been ten years ago, it would have been different. Jericho wouldn't have hesitated to suggest this angle to the bookers, but now, now he was less sure about what was and wasn't appropriate.
Of course, he'd have to run it by Punk first before he even thought of telling the boss. But Jericho thought Punk would be okay with it, because he'd come up through the indies and he understood that the fans have to have something to get their teeth into, something they can buy into, if you want them to feel anything. Two guys going for a belt gets you less of a response than evil fucker with the belt versus try hard guy who has never won it before. They couldn't use that, Jericho had never been interested in playing out-and-out evil, it got cartoony too easily, and Punk just didn't feel like a hard-luck-case guy. When Punk did try to play that, it came off insincere and was more likely to make him into the bad guy in any given situation.
If this had been before, when he was one of the guys, and not the old man, Jericho would have known how to ask Punk himself. Because the other problem was that he didn't know if Punk was straight-edge because he liked the idea or because someone in his family had an alcohol problem or what. It was stupid, after nearly a week of travelling with Punk, Jericho could tell you his views on politics, sport, music and the invasive threat of kudzu in the south, but he couldn't tell you anything about Punk's personal life. Punk was a private person, and Jericho dug that, but it made moving towards the question even harder.
"Hey, Punk, can I run something past you?"
"Yeah, sure."
"So, we agree that we need to give people something to buy into."
"Yeah." Punk already didn't like where this was going. Jericho could tell because Punk's eyebrows were doing that thing, where they arched making Punk look even more sarcastic than usual, which was plenty.
"So we give them something." And okay, Punk's eyebrows had a point, Jericho was stating the obvious, and even Jericho felt like he was pussyfooting about when he should just get it over with. "I make it seem like the straight edge thing is because your family is full of drinkers and addicts, and you're always one step away from a fall. Then I say I want to be the one that pushes you into the fall." Punk looked like he was thinking it over. Which was good. Even if Punk said no, which he was entitled to do, it didn't look like he'd hate Jericho for making the suggestion. Jericho didn't need more enemies in the business.
Time to sweeten the deal. "There'll be a safeword, of course."
"I can take anything you can throw at me." Jericho had forgotten that at the heart of every wrestler lay someone in thrall to macho bullshit. Then again, Punk hid that better than most.
"Don't make me give the whole 'dick not asshole' speech. 'Cause I will."
Punk snorted. "There's no way that the office will go for it, but feel free to try."
"I've been thinking about that. The way this will go, I think it'll sound better if we suggest it together."
"Yeah, 'cause the office really listen to me." Jericho hadn't intended to set Punk off on one of his rants about the front office, because everyone had issues with them, everyone always did, but it was one of Punk's main topics of conversation.
Despite that, Punk did go in to bat for the angle with Jericho at the meeting they had with the writers. The writers were undecided. Steph, who was her father's daughter in all the best and worst ways, was sitting in on the meeting and her eyes lit up. She got why they were suggesting it, understood that you had to engage the crowd on a visceral level.
"You okay with it?" she asked Punk.
"Yeah."
"Then I don't see why not." Suddenly all the writers also felt it was the best idea ever. Pussies!
~~~~
It worked.
Jericho had thought it would, wouldn't have pitched the idea if he hadn't, but there was a difference between thinking something would work and seeing it happen. The way the crowd responded, their ‘oohs’ and ‘ahhs’ at his and Punk's set to, the intake of breath as people thought he'd touched a nerve, and were worried that he'd gone that little bit too far. It was exactly what he'd been after.
It was exhilarating. He'd proved he'd still got it, could still work the crowd, have them respond when he wanted and how he wanted.
Punk wasn't as buzzed as he was but right then, you could have charged the electric grid off Jericho, so he didn't notice so much.
The next morning, he noticed. Punk was still down, it seemed like he was worn and tired. It wasn't the tired of a hard night's work, or the down of the morning after the night before. Jericho knew that kind of tired well.
Nor was it just the strain of the road trip. Jericho was willing to admit it was by far the stupidest idea he'd ever had, but he thinks sharing the van was worth it. Would he have been able to come up with the bare bones of this angle if he'd not spent time with Punk, and would they have been able to plan it together the way they had if they hadn't known each other like this?
Probably not. Maybe that was part of what Jericho missed. Knowing his opponents that well because you've seen them at their three a.m. toilet stop worst.
Looking at Punk, it didn't look like the travel that was the cause of his weariness. Jericho tried not to think of other people he'd seen looking this kind of tired.
Something was eating at Punk, and having listened to what the guy had to say for the past eight days, Jericho thought he knew what it was.
Jericho also knew what he wanted to say to Punk, he wanted to tell Punk that wrestling was not everything in the world, only he knew that Punk wouldn't listen, and wouldn't thank him for trying to help. Because wrestling wasn't everything, but it was, because it had to be for you to be any good at it. Punk was good, Jericho would be the first to admit it, so it was everything to him. But it shouldn't be everything, because it wasn't anything like stable enough to hang your life on, even if you got the opportunity to. So much of the industry, and your success in it, wasn't under your control, that you shouldn't dare to.
The next day was much the same, Punk being withdrawn, even for him. Jericho chattered away. It was a trick he'd learnt, for when he was travelling with people he didn’t feel comfortable enough with to be silent. Which is most people. He missed Lance on those occasions more than usual. He's not sure what it was about Lance, maybe just because they'd done their travelling when they were both young so it was okay to be scared about what they were getting into and about where things were going. Now, not so much. Wrestling was a shoal of sharks, and people pounced on any sign of weakness like blood in the water. So when he got nervous, he chatted. He talked when he wasn't driving so that he'd stay awake. Some of the time when he was driving, he talked for the same reason. He'd got a line of patter and by now he could do it without even thinking all that much about what he was saying. Punk wasn't listening anyhow.
Jericho tried to think of an in. Some way of starting a conversation that he could lead into how everyone needs a thing that isn't wrestling in their lives.
He gave up trying to be subtle two rest stops and three cans of Monster later. He just blurted it out, hoping that Punk would assume he's road-bored. Road-bored is responsible for more stupid conversations than alcohol and about as many stupid pranks. ‘Just going for it’ is how he deals with things when he’s pushed into having to do something. It's got him into more good things than trouble in his life. "So what's your thing?"
"Huh?"
"Your thing. You know. Everyone's got one, mine's music," which should have been obvious, "Batista's got his lunch boxes. Seriously, don't get him started, he'll talk for hours." Jericho told a tale about Batista and his lunchboxes that wasn't one of Jericho’s own stories, but Rey had told him, and it was the kind of story that didn't really need to be yours for you to tell it. "So, what's your thing?"
Punk, for maybe the only time in the time Jericho had known him, looked embarrassed. Jericho was expecting women's underwear from his reaction, but it wasn't anything like that. "MMA."
"Cage fighting?"
"Yeah." There was enough aggression in Punk's voice that Jericho could hear the unsaid "that's why I don't tell people."
"Oh ... I mean, I would've thought you were too clever to want your brains boxed about like that."
"Like we're not constantly beat up." Jericho shrugged, sure, Punk had a point. "It's the getting punched in the face you don't like."
"Yeah. This face is my money-maker." Yes, Jericho was incurably vain, and didn't mind admitting it.
"You do know they get time off. Like, actual time to train. And health checks. Imagine not having to compete injured, more than that, not being allowed to compete injured." Jericho let Punk carry on. He recognised that he hadn't reached the kernel of why MMA was Punk's thing. He didn't doubt that all of these things mattered to Punk, but they weren't *the* thing. It was like if people asked him ‘why music?’. He'd give a long list of reasons, fun, joy, self-expression, but it'd take a while, and some digging, before he'd tell the truth, that for him it was the sheer kick of getting adulation for being himself, in a way you didn't get for wrestling. Everyone in that audience had paid to see him, which is something you don't get from a wrestling crowd. He knows he ought to say the music is the best thing but honestly, that's only part of it.
"And it's real, you know, you're in charge of your own destiny." Jericho knew that that was it, from the look in Punk's eyes and the way he was holding the steering wheel, left hand gripped tighter than he'd ever seen Punk hold the wheel before, and right index finger lifted the way Punk did when he was making a point.
Which made sense for Punk. And his on-going, never-ending and maybe justified paranoia about not getting his due despite his talent. Jericho was just pleased that Punk had an outlet, even if it made no sense to Jericho. He tried to make sure that he gave Punk room to talk about it as they drove. It was easy enough; Jericho only knew the basics and everyone knew that Punk liked to play the know-it-all. And because Jericho didn't know that much, Punk wasn't too insufferable about it, because there weren't any points they disagreed upon, where Punk felt he had to prove he was right even when he was wrong.
~~~~
A couple of days later, Punk was mostly blaming Jericho for the cold he had. Maybe he was right about that, because Jericho had had the cold two days before Punk had caught it. No one slept well in the back of a van, and being beat up and half asleep was a sure-fire way to catch every bug going. And there was always a bug going round. You got it and got over it just in time to catch it going round again after it had mutated enough to infect you again.
Jericho knew how tired Punk felt. Mostly because he'd spent the last two nights being kept awake by Punk's catarrh-induced snoring. Sometime around four o'clock in the morning, he'd realised he'd spent half the night trying to decide if suffocating Punk would count as manslaughter rather than murder.
In any sane world, they'd be allowed to go home until they were over the worst of a bad cold, or at least not pass it on to their unfortunate co-workers, but who ever accused wrestling of being sane world? Being able to take time off when you were ill was a sign that you were high up on the list, but it also said you were coming down it, because you weren't so vital to the man that he couldn't afford to have you miss a couple of shows. Jericho could see McMahon giving him a week off, but not someone like Cena. And if Cena wasn't missing shows, you knew Punk wouldn't want to, because Cena had the position Punk wanted. Jericho understood it, maybe. For him there was always the Rock and Helmsley, and as a rock star he recognised that the Rock had a special charisma that several small suns couldn't compete with, and Helmsley deserved all of the conspiracy theory rants that Punk sent Cena's way. Jericho could afford to be philosophical; he knew he would be remembered, maybe not the greatest of all time, but hey, he already had people doing the Armbar routine at him so yeah, he'd be remembered, and he was okay with that. He was a guy who did his best whatever the situation. There were worse ways to be remembered.
There's too many of his friends that are only being remembered, and this road trip is only making him miss them more. It's not Punk's fault. Jericho just realised that, if things were different and they'd come through the ranks together, they wouldn't have been friends. That fact was also not Punk's fault. Punk does have friends, so it's not that he's incapable, he's just not the sort of guy Jericho gets on with, and never had done. Punk's a know-it-all and convinced he's right. He's also one of the most stubborn people Jericho knows and everyone Jericho knows is stubborn.
That was going to be the real problem. Jericho was sick of this trip, sick of the mattress at the back of this van, sick of his back on that mattress, all vans, and this turning out to be exactly as bad idea as he thought it might. And Jericho had a way out of it, if only Punk would take it.
Yes, it was cheating, but they could just take motel rooms, and no one would need to know. Hell, Jericho would even pay for it all. The other option was that Jericho admitted to Punk that he was wrong, and ask him to break the trip as a favour, but he was going to hold that option in reserve unless he couldn't find any other way out.
Of course, Punk didn't agree. "What, can't keep up, old man?" Faced with that kind of statement, how could Jericho do anything but try to carry on. He couldn't back down. If Punk had wavered for even a second, then maybe Jericho would have made his suggestion, but Punk hadn't. Punk never wavered, it was part of the reason Punk was difficult to get on with, he had no give in him. It wasn't that he was grasping, or all take, no, it was an unforgiving steel. There was no bend, nothing pliable. And that was hard to deal with.
The other thing that Jericho found it hard to deal with was that he worried that maybe Punk was right. Maybe Chris couldn't hack it any more, maybe he was too old to deal with wrestling and sleepless nights. When he was younger, when he travelled like this with people all the time, they travelled in hope. Hope that this would be the match that got them noticed by a bigger promotion, the next step up the ladder, that they might actually get paid tonight. Now, there wasn't that hope, and he wasn't going to complain about having made it, but it changed the equation. And he shouldn’t complain about starting to come down the other side of having made it, due to his age, because that happened to everyone who was lucky enough to survive that long, but he could complain about the stupid way his knee ached when he'd done the same stunt millions of times and it never used to ache this way.
Jericho was in a gas stop coffee shop, picking up supplies for the afternoon drive, listening to some kid cry because he'd wet his pants, when he just hit his limit. He doesn't want to be here. He wanted to be in whichever airport lounge everyone else is in. It might be boring but at least it wasn’t this, the endless road and half-frozen scenery.
Jericho drove that afternoon, but it was almost on autopilot. He had no idea if Punk noticed that he hadn't responded to anything he'd said, but Jericho was past caring if Punk had noticed. He had a goal in mind.
Because they were nearing the end of their little idiots' tour, they were almost matching the path the rest of the guys were taking, and somewhere along this road there was a hotel. Jericho was sure of it, he thought he remembered staying in it, although he couldn't quite remember which company he was with at the time. He was driving along, hoping it was still there.
Jericho pulled into the parking lot of the hotel before Punk knew what was up.
Punk hadn't been paying much attention, he'd reached that state of zen boredom you get from too many miles on the road. He sat there for a few moments, thinking that they'd pulled into yet another gas station, before he looked around and realised what was going on.
"What the fuck, Chris? What are you doing?"
And wasn't that the killer question. "I am going to book into that hotel, so I can get actual sleep, on an actual bed."
"No, no, no. You are not doing that. You are staying here, in this van. You are having two more terrible nights on these mattresses. Because I am not wasting another fourteen days of my life next time you have the same stupid idea."
"I won't."
Jericho sounded like he meant it, and maybe he did, now. But Punk knew it wouldn't stay that way. "Yeah, right!"
"I won't. I admit I'm an idiot. I thought of this, I am the king of the idiots, but even I have my limits."
Punk would have been willing to accept that when they started out but he now knew Jericho well enough to know his blindspots too. "I'm not saying you'll think this is a good idea again tomorrow, or next month, or even next year. But you will, and you'll go, 'you know what, Punk wasn't a half-bad travelling companion, sure he snored, but that's not the worst thing ever,' and we'll be here again. Or if not here, some other set of back roads in a van too similar to this."
"I won't."
"We'll be in a hotel, and someone who doesn't know any better will say something about it not being very good, and you'll think, 'oh if only they knew', and you'll think back on every shitty motel you ever slept it, eight people to a two-person room, and you won't remember the way the springs hurt your back, if you were lucky enough to be one of the people in the bed that time, or how many times people trod on you going to and from the bathroom, if you were one of people on the floor. You'll remember the laughter and the jokes, and how it seemed like such fun then and then you'll think."
"I won't."
"You will. Because it's not the travelling you miss, it's not even the people," although Punk sometimes missed Joe so much it almost hurt, the way he was silent sometimes, not because he'd run out of things to say but because now was a time to be silent, "you miss being twenty. We all miss being twenty. All this is gonna prove is that we're not twenty anymore." Punk was only thirty-four, but he felt every extra year from twenty. When his back ached, or his wrist hurt, or a leg tweak that would have been gone in a week was still sore a month later. It was hard to be as optimistic now as then, and it wasn't like he'd been blessed with optimism anyhow. Every match that isn't for a title, the title, is another match off his wrestling lifespan. Punk can’t see himself in Jericho’s shoes. He’s not going to be the old man still wrestling at forty-two, trying to keep up with people who still have what Jericho is chasing on this trip. If Punk was going to be that guy, there are worse ways of doing it than the way Jericho is, but that’s not him, and he already knows that. He’s not Jericho, and he's not Terry Funk, Punk won’t hear a word said against him, but that isn’t him. One day, there’ll be an end to it.
"I was an idiot when I was twenty," Jericho hadn’t noticed the way Punk’s thought’s drifted.
"You're an idiot now."
"Some things never change." Jericho laughed. And laughed. He wouldn't stop laughing, and there was a more than slightly hysterical edge to it.
Punk found himself joining in, uncontrollably. It was a fair few minutes before he could do anything other than laugh. When he finally got himself back under control, sort of, his rib aching and face sore from it, and through the occasional aftershock of laughter, he turned to Jericho. "Do you wanna park us up somewhere else? I don't feel like being arrested for loitering outside a hotel or whatever they call it in this state." Punk's not sure what would be worse, getting arrested while laughing enough that people might think he was on hippie crack, or being arrested with Jericho. Probably being arrested with Jericho. It's not like it'd be the death of kayfabe all over again, but, for some reason, it mattered.
Jericho got himself together enough to put the van into drive and they found somewhere better to park. They didn't go to sleep, not straight away. Jericho talked, about nothing important, till he fell asleep, pretty much mid-sentence. Punk let him ramble, he might even have joined in at various points. Where they’d been stressed before, the laughter had broken something. They'd reached that point, somewhere past tiredness and frustration, where you just turn into a pile of 'sure, whatever'.
Neither of them were at their best the next day. Not angry or anything like that but distractible. They were setting each other off laughing at all the wrong times. Mark Henry was speaking for lots of people when he said, "if this is Punk happy, I'll take him pissed off."
The night that followed that goofball day was the last night of the trip. They actually slept quite well. It wasn’t that they’d finally got used to it in time for it to stop, it was sheer end-of-time exhaustion. They'd parked near the arena so they could drop the van off at the rental place early the next morning and then catch the same plane as everyone else.
Jericho looked at the van after they'd handed the keys over. "You know, if it hadn't been for the fact that I will have to rent from them again, that thing would have been up in flames." Punk thought that was going too far, the van had done its job, it wasn't like it was its fault that they hated most of the minutes in it, and he said so. "What, feeling sentimental about a van! I thought I had problems," was Jericho’s reply.
Jericho was still laughing at him when they drove off to the airport.
After two weeks straight of his company, there was no-one Punk wanted to sit next to less than Jericho, so of course, some joker had given them adjoining seats on the flight. Punk didn't know who was to blame, but he'd find out ... and get them back. That's the way it went, a rib for a rib, like an eye for an eye.
Jericho wasn't exactly silent for the flight, but Punk had got much better at tuning him out, and the occasional bit of crooning under his breath really wasn't the worst thing Jericho could have done. Punk felt reasonably relaxed, maybe the old saying about change being as good as a rest was right, or maybe it was nice to have someone else do the driving instead of doing it yourself. Airline pilot was another career he was ruling out.
If Punk could blame someone else for having to sit next to Jericho on the plane, he had no such excuse for hanging with Jericho after that night's show. For someone straight edge, he spent far too much of his time in bars, and this one was a pretty basic example of the type. It was like all bars that wrestlers frequented, boring, safe and cheap. Even cheaper if you were on Pepsi, if they had it, or cola, if they didn't.
Jericho was holding court, surrounded by a bunch of the other guys, who were enjoying his tales of life on the road. Sure, Jericho was ten, fifteen years older than them, but in the half-light of the bar, it wasn't so obvious. Jericho was in his element, and Punk could see that - the joy of telling stories - helped by having someone nodding along that had been there too, acting as living proof that whatever story you were telling was true, or true enough. Right now, Jericho was saying how much fun it had been, and he recommend everyone try it. There were enough idiots in the crowd that might actually have listened to him. Jericho got up to go the bar and left them to their thoughts.
"You're evil, you know," said Punk.
Jericho smiled. "If they're stupid enough to listen to me then they deserve it. And it's not like you weren't nodding along." Jericho passed him a drink, and Punk drank it. He didn't notice he hadn't sniffed it to check for alcohol till it was too late and he'd swallowed. Except, even with that, he knew he didn't have to check. Jericho wouldn't do that to him, wouldn't do it to anyone, because he wasn't that kind of asshole. It was nice to know that, know that for sure, about someone here, even if Jericho was the only person in the bar that Punk could say that about. Trust might have been the other thing they both missed from back in the day. Trust and time and everything else they’d run out of along the way to being here now.
End notes: I also don’t own “Team America: World Police”.
