Family Business

[“The Better Man” Warren Kidd]

Yesterday 21:37

You: I want to see Damien.

23:49

Sweetness: Wow, okay. Unexpected, but sure.

You: Yeah. Figured we get some bonding time at the park.

Sweetness: Sure. You can pick him up after breakfast tomorrow, if you want.

You: Nah, I’ll pick him up directly from your room.

Today 2:03

Sweetness: Okay, whatever works for you. See you in the morning.

Warren Harper smiled, looking back at the messages. Even now, seven restless hours later, he was proud of himself for having set the terms of meeting Damien and sticking to them. Not just going with what Dean suggested, not just trying to keep Dean happy at his own expense.

Dr Griffiths was right. The smallest steps really did make the biggest differences. The smallest victories deserved to be celebrated, commended, applauded and praised. All the saintly virtues he’d never received from not one, but two fathers, he spent the last few years earning from yet another perfectly flawed father figure in his husband, Dean Blake-Harper.

Warren pocketed his phone quickly, knocked on Dean’s hotel room door and waited. It would be the first time they’d seen each other in person in a while. Warren wasn’t sure what he’d feel about seeing the man he’d convinced himself that he truly loved once upon a time. A time long since passed, a simpler, more innocent time. A time when Warren Harper still believed in fairy-tale romances and happily ever afters.

Warren’s ever after stared at him for a long while. The two men stood firm across from each other, on opposite sides of an unfamiliar doorway, but the emotional distance between them was a cold and expansive abyss. The uncomfortable tension of who and what would break the awkward silence and fill the void lingered for far longer than it used to. It was almost as if they didn’t recognise each other anymore.

“Damien, pack up your bag, it’s time to go,” Dean broke first, sparing Warren.

“Coming!”

Damien’s soft spoken sweetness was obviously the only warmth left in the room, and now Warren had come to take that from him. What would be left without it? Warren wondered. Nothing appealing, most likely.

“He got excited and was planning what to bring.” Dean explained softly, “Which is surprising considering he was crying his eyes out last time you two talked. I told him you were just busy and hanging up on him didn’t mean you hated him.”

“Shit,”Warren said softly, “I’m sorry. I’ll deal with it.”

“Good.” Dean nodded, solemn, tight-lipped. Warren saw on his face that he was holding back what he really wanted to say, likely for his son’s sake.

Warren gave nothing away about what he felt. A poker face Jake Conway would have been proud of. He simply smiled at Dean, hoping it was enough to fill the wait.

Damien came rushing to the door with his Bluey backpack on and his stuffed Bluey toy in his arms, “Ready dad! Love you Daddy.”

“Love you too buddy.” Dean bent down and kissed Damien on the forehead, “Be good.”

“I will!”

Warren wondered if he’d ever feel as comfortable with fatherhood as Dean was, whether he’d ever inspire such easy declarations of love as he had just witnessed. He doubted it, nobody in his family was good with real emotions.

Warren offered a hand to Damien, “Ready to go, kiddo?”

Damien took it happily, nodded. Damien’s bright eyes and even brighter smile reminded Warren more of the real Maxine Valentine than even he was prepared for. It was almost haunting, but not quite as scary as the fragment of her memory suddenly brought to the surface.

“It’s okay, sweetness,” Dean kissed Warren’s neck softly. “I know you don’t remember, but I chose you. Max knew I’d choose you. She said it’s okay. She wanted to give us a baby so we could be a real family - just you and me, forever. We both deserve our happiness, babe. Fuck the world. Let it burn for all I care, nothing else matters to me but our family. Just you, me and Damien. Until death do us part, Sweetness. I promise…

Warren sighed and quickly blinked away the painful reminder of why it was a universally accepted truth of the human condition that love hurt - and true love fucking smart most of the time. He acknowledged Dean again with a simple nod before he took Damien away for the rest of the day.

~~~

Standing here in the early evening of a late autumn in Boston, Massachusetts, Warren Harper not only felt terribly alone but also incredibly vulnerable. Without the safety and comfort of his simple black leather jacket, the former World Champion felt almost naked.

He kept the quiet regret of his choice to honour Rob Diamond by wearing a patented ‘Wrestling’s Bloody Cinderella’ t-shirt and ripped denim jeans instead of his usual more practical and comfortable attire to himself. He swallowed hard as he faced the camera, his usual confidence shaky. The pressure and consequence of the road he’d chosen threatened to undo him, right here and now, even before he said a damned word about his opponent this week.

Warren backed up a few steps, leant against one of the unshakeable stone pillars of the Kane Family mausoleum, thankful for the only support he had left going into the single biggest match of his entire damned and tragically sporadic wrestling career.

The name KANE carved into the triangular stone above his head made him feel even smaller. He was just as much protected by the monument that his biological father had left behind as he was overshadowed by it still.

There were things in this life that not even death would ever let Warren Harper truly escape. Not here in Boston, this was the Kane Graceland, the Mecca for fans of his father and uncle. Fate had a cruel sense of humour and irony. If Warren Harper wanted to be somebody in professional wrestling again, he’d once again have to transcend the filth of his father’s long and bloody legacy of rivaling the Blakes at every turn.

Thank you, Dean Harper.

No, really, I mean it, and not just because it is the season here in America.

Thank you.

Thank you for trusting me to get the job done once again against an absolute behemoth of a man like Tytus Rost. Thank you for not giving in to your baser instincts and throwing the towel in for me after the first ten minutes of the Odyssey main event last week.

Thank you for actually demonstrating the faith I know you’ve always had in me. Thank you for all the times you’ve believed in me, especially the times when I didn’t believe in myself. I know I haven’t always rewarded that faith. I know I haven’t always reciprocated the love you’ve shown me and I know I damn sure haven’t always respected your feelings for what they were.

I’m sorry that it’s taken me this long to accept that, even as much as I love you, and I do, even if you won’t believe me, sometimes even the most well intentioned love isn’t enough. I finally understand that as things stand between us right now, I am incapable of loving you exactly the way you have always needed and demanded of me.

Honestly, I don’t know if we’ll ever get there.

I don’t know if we’ll ever have the perfect love story I promised you a year ago.

An unhealthy combination of absolute arrogance and personal hubris made me overpromise and underdeliver on that front. Truth be told, I really have been doing that for not only most of our personal relationship but also most of my fucking career, haven’t I, Sweetness?

So why are you so fucking surprised now?

You should have expected this from me.

If you really were half the attentive, unconditionally accepting husband you have always tried to convince me you are every time we’ve had an argument behind closed doors, you’d know that I haven’t so much regressed as much as I have finally started to accept the most untidy parts of my whole damned existence.

I refuse to sweep my well documented parental neglect and personal loathing issues under the carpet just because they make you fucking uncomfortable, Dean. I know that ever since I’ve started to really process my personal shit they’ve done a number on our marriage, but Dr Griffiths has helped me understand that this deeply internalised conflict I have over every facet of my identity as a human being isn’t some brand new fucking revelation.

It’s always been there, I just tried to ignore it.

And why, Dean?

Why would I try so hard to divorce myself from who I was born to be?

Because I knew I would never be accepted for the damaged piece of Kane shit that I really am, deep down. I knew you’d never truly embrace my innate nature, especially not after you had your own fucking grand reveal of being a Goddamned Blake. I knew the deeply personal blood feuds between our respective tribes would always be our undoing.

I knew my tainted bloodline would always come between us, so I deluded myself into thinking I could just lock away everything that makes me who the fuck I really am and that the honesty and purity and wholesomeness of even a love story as fucked up as ours would be enough to circumnavigate our one inescapable truth.

The truth that no matter who we fuck, marry or kill for each other Dean, we will always be the abandoned children of naturally antagonistic tribes. You will always be a Blake at heart and I…I will always be a Kane. Despite everything I still believe ours to be a great forbidden love story Dean. Greater than even the most well known forbidden love story in the fucking world.

We are the fucking Romeo and Juliet of professional wrestling.

The problem is of course that what makes the greatest forbidden love story of all time so great is the knowledge that it was always fated to end in tragedy. But whereas Romeo and Juliet were architects of their own demise, you and I Dean have been slowly killing each other for at least five years now.

I’ve been rapidly stabbing you in the heart, you’ve been slowly poisoning me.

In the end something always has to give, and at Survival of the Fittest, in the single most important Extinction Event match of our entire lives, the cruel hand of fate and the fickle finger of destiny that has brought us this far has once again set the stage for our inescapable and multigenerational family blood feud to come to ahead once more.

Kane versus Blake - the next damned generation.

Kane vs Blake - the bloody legacy continues.

And just like my dearly departed father would have wanted, I am burdened with the glorious purpose of sacrificing everything I’ve ever held near and dear to my heart for something grander and more important than both of us, Sweetness.

The right to definitively be called the best professional wrestler in the world today.

~~~

Dean would have probably killed Warren if he knew where Warren had taken Damien after a day at the park in the company of Shea O’Hara and her golden retriever puppy, Molly. It had been a good day, afterwards they had walked Shea back to the Xander Kane Memorial Academy so she could catch up with Pandora Freeman.

Warren declined the opportunity to visit Pandora, he didn’t feel ready to face her again. He didn’t know what to say, it had been too long, they had drifted too far apart. Maybe someday he’d have the courage to mend all the broken fences around his bloody family, but not today.

Instead, Warren took Damien to the Kane Family mausoleum. Sat on the bottom step of the entrance to the stone monument, Warren did his best to explain the significance of who was laid to rest here. Family. A father. An uncle. Two younger half brothers.

It sucked that this was the only way Damien would know of Warren’s side of the family, but unlike most Blakes, the Kanes never did have the luxury of living very long.

“Daddy, is that why you’re always so angry, because all your family is dead,” Damien said, clutching Bluey in his lap. “It hurts, doesn’t it, because you miss them?”

Warren nodded slowly, pushing down an uncomfortable lump in his throat. This was the most emotional moment he’d had with Damien. He didn’t quite know how to process it.

“I guess I’m one of the lucky ones,” Damien mused. “Mommy died before I could miss her.” Damien’s eyes brightened as he reached for Warren’s hand. “It’s okay though, I have two daddies and I love you both very much. Even more than I love Bluey and that’s a lot.”

Warren cracked a smile. He wasn’t as sturdy as his father’s monument. “You’re right, kiddo, that is a lot.”

“When can me and Daddy come home with you? I miss you. Daddy misses you. Please stop fighting, I promise I’ll be better.”

“Hey, listen, sweetheart. This was never your fault, okay? This is just something between grown ups, you’ll understand when you’re older.”

“I don’t want to understand, I just want to go home and be a family again, like we used to be.”

“I know,” Warren sighed. “I wish it was that easy.”

“Why can’t it be?”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t you love us anymore?” Damien asked, “Is that why?”

“I do love you,” Warren admitted softly, “I just worry I’m not as good as your mommy.”

“But she’s dead, you’re alive. I don’t know her. I know you. You’re my family now.”

“Am I really?”

“I think so.”

“I’m not so sure anymore.”

~~~

A birthright I should have claimed several times over already, but didn’t because I concerned myself far too much with the black and white of a broken binary morality that I neglected the wonderful greyness one can languish in instead. I was so preoccupied with not being another demon you hated that I tried to force myself to be another angel you loved.

But let’s be honest, if we discount the cherub that is your son, Damien, there’s only ever been room for one Angel in your heart and no matter how hard I tried, it sure as shit was never going to be me, was it Dean?

No, apparently it’s just fine and dandy for you to chase the love, adoration and approval of the asshole father who abandoned you for decades and never knew you even existed until you were already a man, but the second I want to do the same you tell me he never deserved me and you’re the only one who ever fucking did.

Fuck that and fuck you, you Goddamned hypocrite.

I never got the chance to square things with Spike the way you did with Angel.

I never got the chance to prove myself my father’s equal like you have over the last four reigns, matching him at every turn, killing the momentum of Olympic calibre wrestlers just so you can go down in the history books next to dear old Daddy yourself.

You’re a four time World Champion, just like him.

Congratulations.

I’m not about to pretend you didn’t earn it all, but let’s not pretend that for every opportunity you’ve earned in this business, there haven’t been opportunities you’ve stolen, even from me over the years.

The most notable one being the single biggest elephant in the room and the darkest chapter in this company’s history. You murdered my father, indirectly perhaps but you still did it and more than that you had the gall to act like you did me a favour.

No, fuck you.

You took advantage of some of my father’s greatest vices and you signed off on his death warrant and then because I was a horny naive emo idiot trying to fill a void in my heart that I knew Rob Diamond never would, you took advantage of my lust and made me believe I owed you not only my life but my fucking body.

Five years ago I sucked your dick because I thought you’d solved all my problems.

Now I will kick your ass because I know you only made them worse.

My only regret is that it has taken me this fucking long to gargle the taste of your balls out from the back of my throat and fucking wake up to the reality that you never really cared about me or my family but insisted I needed to accept that you were going to reconnect with yours regardless of how I felt.

You know I fucking hate Tara.

You know I fucking hate Sabin.

You know I fucking hate Angel.

And now you know I fucking hate you for putting me in this fucking position.

If you really loved me as much as you say you do, you would have never accepted a match with a suicidal Spike Kane who was just begging to be put out of his misery on his own terms so the fucking cancer wouldn’t come back and ravage him. You could have told Spike or Roberto or whoever else you needed to that you wanted no part in executing a mentally unstable, physically compromised old man.

But no, you’re a fucking Blake and we know they’ve never had any fucking integrity.

All you saw was the chance to win the World Championship.

All you needed was yet another chance to impress dear old Daddy.

And worse you got me to co-sign off on my father’s execution by playing to my primal instincts and telling me how fucking hot it would be when we used Spike’s only truly valued possession - the World Championship - as a very special sex toy.

I’ll never be able to fucking forgive myself for my myopathy, Dean.

And as long as I live and breathe, I’ll never be able to forgive you for how easily your stupid, sexy ass could confuse and manipulate not only my erratic emotions but my most primal instincts. I know I can’t ever go back and change what has happened between us, so now my only solace will be from finally taking back what you took from my dying father half a decade ago.

As much as I owe Spike at least that much, I owe it to myself even more.

There is a certain poetry to this particular chapter of our wonderfully romantic tragedy, Sweetheart and that is when I walk out of the Extinction Event with the World Championship and finally become a multiple time IWF World Champion just like my father before me, I will have done it not only in the state he called home but also directly infront of your father and your younger step brother.

The sheer bloody poetry of a Kane finally rising from the ashes to take down yet another overprivileged Blake at the peak of his power in this company. It’s enough to make a boy tingle down there.

You know, just like you used to make me fucking feel.

I guess I really don’t need you quite as much as I thought, after all.

Maybe I never really did.

Maybe I have spent the last few years utterly bewitched by what you have come to represent to me on a personal level, Dean. I mean was it really just coincidence that Dean Harper’s attractiveness had reached a whole new level for me just after Damien was born?

Whatever else I think of you nowadays, Sweetness, I can never quite bring myself to truly deny your status as a premium quality, top shelf level DILF.

The idea of a violent psychopath loving me, accepting me, wanting me, hadn’t begun with you, it had begun with my stepfather, John Kidd and only escalated with the discovery of my biological father, Spike Kane.

You were simply the natural conclusion, the glorious crescendo, the absolute ideal husband for me, because after Damien was born, you became the one thing I had always coveted above everything, even World Championships - a father who loved me unconditionally.

Why wouldn’t I be seduced by that?

Why wouldn’t I go out of my way to marry such a glorious ideal?

Why wouldn’t I say exactly what I needed to say to lock you down?

All I have ever wanted, since I was a little kid was for the violence to stop, for the baddest of bad men in my life to love me, embrace me and praise me. And through molding you, chipping away at your rougher edges as well as I have over the last few years, telling my most loyal sweetheart all the things I knew you needed to hear because our baggage has always been so well coordinated, I got everything I thought I ever wanted.

Everything I thought I ever needed.

A father’s love.

But as much as the conflation has served me well over the last half decade, nothing lasts forever and now the cracks are showing. It’s been a good run, lover, but the honeymoon is finally over. I’ve known it for months, we haven’t been able to talk recently without coming for each other’s throats rather than just inside them.

You want to go for the jugular, Dean?

Then let’s fucking go, big boy.

Don’t disappoint me anymore by holding anything back.

You want to beat me within an inch of my miserable fucking life?

Well you’re going to have to mate, because the only way you’re going to continue to deny me my rightful place as your personal and professional equal is if you repeat history and once again kill another stubborn bastard called Kane.

My father was the bane of your father’s existence, even as allies.

And now here we are, Dean, you and me, following in their bloody footsteps.

You will be remembered for putting a broken father down before his idiot son, and now you will reap what you have sown as I put down a broken son before his idiot father. At Survival of the Fittest I will either live as my father before me or I will die as he did.

By your hand, Sweetness.

Do for me what you did for him.

Beat me half to fucking death.

Everyone else does.

Because I promise you, if you can’t, if you hesitate for even a single second, I will make you regret the rest of your fucking life just as deeply as I do my fucking own. It is time to slay the most powerful demon I’ve ever known, the one I’ve been loyal to for five fucking years, only for it to mean nothing. The one I welcomed not only into my heart and my bed but also my fucking body.

You better fucking murder me Dean, because if you don’t, I promise you that you will bloody hail me as the better man. End me quick or forever acknowledge me as your athletic and moral superior. Teach me humility or learn the most painful lesson my father ever taught me.

Once a Kane, Always a Kane.

And as his son, I will fight as he did, because you’ve left me no choice, Dean.

I will fight you until my very last breath.

Like father, like son.

It is my destiny and it will be the legacy I leave behind.

A legacy I know my father would be proud of.

That’s all I’ve ever wanted and that’s all I’ve ever fucking deserved.

Nobody can deny me anything anymore.

Not even my dearly beloved husband.