Post by “The Better Man” Warren Kidd on Aug 8, 2024 16:22:50 GMT
On the recommendation of his IWF appointed psychiatrist, Dr Riley Griffiths, the newly liberated World Champion Warren Kidd stood on a new path in his life surrounded by the absolute serenity of the meticulously kept grounds of Hama Rikyu Gardens. Warren anchored himself further in the natural beauty of his environment with his equally stunning World Championship wrapped securely around his waist. The Championship itself was as much in the midst of a transition as Warren himself, currently the central nameplate was blank, devoid of his marital identity and awaiting an official rebrand to the bastard he had always been.
Clad in a simple black leather jacket and a blank white T-Shirt and stone coloured jeans combination, Warren looked down at his phone and registered the multi-tweet rant from the supposedly righteous consecutive Heir To The Throne, Pax Stormcrow following Warren’s post-match Fallout interview.
@stormcrow_TDH: Homie I'm calling you out on the company you keep and the behavior you decide is acceptable. Actual, real problems. You're deciding that you don't want to compete in a match with a consenting adult because you think it's bad that you might hurt them? Mother fucker Nat stepped into the ring with Tytus fucking Rost. And she won. You couldn't seriously hurt her in your dreams. (2/3)
“Fuck you,”Warren whispered under his breath to himself, “I don’t owe you my blood, no matter how deep you try to cut me.”
@stormcrow_TDH: I have trained with and competed with people on every level of the gender spectrum all my life. I've been beaten by them too. If you truly respected them, Warren, you'd treat them the same as any other competitor that steps into the ring with you. (3/3)
Warren resisted the urge to reply with a snarky meme about Pax needing better bait, and instead laughed off how little his challenger understood that Warren’s reasons for not striking women had nothing to do with not respecting female competitors and everything to do with his personal trauma response to male on female violence. Having routinely seen his much bigger stepfather knock seven shades of holy Hell out of his comparatively tiny mother whilst growing up, Warren’s line in the sand had been drawn decades before he ever signed an IWF contract.
He recalled his tear-filled black eyed, bloody lipped and one armed barely coherent mother making her terrified five year old son promise that Warren would never ever, never ever, never ever hit a girl.
“There are never any excuses, never. Understand?”
Warren reflexively nodded even as he re-lived one of his many, many traumatic memories, “Yes, Mommy,” he promised. “Never.” The tears came now just as easily as they had then.
“Good boy, I know you’ll conquer the world one day and when you do you’ll be a better man in a better place, far away from here. Far away from the sadness and the hurt.”
“Promise we will?” Warren’s voice cracked and left an uncomfortable lump in his throat that he still felt to this day.
His mother held his hand weakly. She didn’t have the strength to squeeze, she barely had the strength to reassure him. “I promise you will, baby. God can’t be this cruel to us both. You will have a better life, you just have to be brave and trust in His plan for you.”
“Stop filling the boy’s head with nonsense,” John declared whilst on the phone to emergency services. “Yes, hello. My wife has taken a nasty spill down our stairs whilst trying to chase our five year old son around the house. She’s pretty banged up and I think her arm is broken. Thank you, please hurry. I’m so worried.”
John then knelt down and fixed Warren with that cold stare that so often frightened the life out of him. “Now you listen to me boy, and you listen good. When the doctors ask, you and Mommy were just playing tag upstairs when you ran downstairs. Mommy tried to follow but she tripped and fell after you. Understand?”
“Yes sir,” Warren lied for the millionth time, just to spare himself the hurt.
“Good boy,” John ruffled his hair. “I’ll make a real man out of you yet. Your Mommy is too stupid and too weak to tell you this, but you’ll never be any better than me. You’ll never be any more than you are, you’re my son and as my son you’ll hurt the ones you love most sometimes too. It’s what we do. Your grandpa used to hurt me and now I hurt you, because I love you and I want you to be strong just like me. Don’t let girls push you around, sometimes you have to show them who’s in charge. Men should be in charge of their house, girls are just for cooking, cleaning and making babies. When they forget that, you have to reset them, like a clock. Got it?”
“Yes sir.” The lying never got any easier, but Warren would rather lie than be hurt.
Tears filled adult Warren’s eyes as he lived under his father’s threat to this very day. The promise that one day he too would hurt any woman he loved. Was that why he had spent so long trying to make himself love more men and to deny the part of him that also loved women? Was that why Dean’s love had felt so euphoric and so safe once upon a time? After all, if he married a man, the dark temptation to hurt a woman was far less likely. Was that why he’d tried so hard to keep his gay marriage going and suppress any love he felt for Vivienne and Shea?
He couldn’t love them, he wouldn’t dare. Not safely or how much he wanted to.
Vivienne was married now, Warren breathed a sigh of relief, he just had to wait for Shea to find someone else too. And then they’d both be safe from him forever, just like they deserved. Warren would rather spend the rest of his life miserable than risk loving Shea until she too inevitably fell down some stairs or walked into a door because of him.
A sharp notification ding snapped Warren out of his reverie as he glanced down at his phone and saw a new photo sent directly to his personal DMs from a most unexpected female friend, Mimi Simpson, captioned:
Warren’s eyes bugged out of his head as he saw Mimi in a public hotel pool in a Stars and Stripes two-piece bikini and the brightest smile he’d ever seen spread most unapologetically on her face. He felt his heartbeat a little faster and a sudden tightness below his waist.
“Fuck Mimi, what are you trying to do, kill me?” He breathed softly.
She had obviously heard and was shooting her shot. He felt flattered, desired, wanted. He was single now, the opportunity to move on from Dean, sooner rather than later was right there if he wanted it. Maybe it would be alright, all he had to do was not fall in love with a girl whilst actually exploring his bisexuality for a change. That should be easy.
After all, she wasn’t Shea O’Hara, so what’s the worst that could happen?
Clad in a simple black leather jacket and a blank white T-Shirt and stone coloured jeans combination, Warren looked down at his phone and registered the multi-tweet rant from the supposedly righteous consecutive Heir To The Throne, Pax Stormcrow following Warren’s post-match Fallout interview.
@stormcrow_TDH: Homie I'm calling you out on the company you keep and the behavior you decide is acceptable. Actual, real problems. You're deciding that you don't want to compete in a match with a consenting adult because you think it's bad that you might hurt them? Mother fucker Nat stepped into the ring with Tytus fucking Rost. And she won. You couldn't seriously hurt her in your dreams. (2/3)
“Fuck you,”Warren whispered under his breath to himself, “I don’t owe you my blood, no matter how deep you try to cut me.”
@stormcrow_TDH: I have trained with and competed with people on every level of the gender spectrum all my life. I've been beaten by them too. If you truly respected them, Warren, you'd treat them the same as any other competitor that steps into the ring with you. (3/3)
Warren resisted the urge to reply with a snarky meme about Pax needing better bait, and instead laughed off how little his challenger understood that Warren’s reasons for not striking women had nothing to do with not respecting female competitors and everything to do with his personal trauma response to male on female violence. Having routinely seen his much bigger stepfather knock seven shades of holy Hell out of his comparatively tiny mother whilst growing up, Warren’s line in the sand had been drawn decades before he ever signed an IWF contract.
He recalled his tear-filled black eyed, bloody lipped and one armed barely coherent mother making her terrified five year old son promise that Warren would never ever, never ever, never ever hit a girl.
“There are never any excuses, never. Understand?”
Warren reflexively nodded even as he re-lived one of his many, many traumatic memories, “Yes, Mommy,” he promised. “Never.” The tears came now just as easily as they had then.
“Good boy, I know you’ll conquer the world one day and when you do you’ll be a better man in a better place, far away from here. Far away from the sadness and the hurt.”
“Promise we will?” Warren’s voice cracked and left an uncomfortable lump in his throat that he still felt to this day.
His mother held his hand weakly. She didn’t have the strength to squeeze, she barely had the strength to reassure him. “I promise you will, baby. God can’t be this cruel to us both. You will have a better life, you just have to be brave and trust in His plan for you.”
“Stop filling the boy’s head with nonsense,” John declared whilst on the phone to emergency services. “Yes, hello. My wife has taken a nasty spill down our stairs whilst trying to chase our five year old son around the house. She’s pretty banged up and I think her arm is broken. Thank you, please hurry. I’m so worried.”
John then knelt down and fixed Warren with that cold stare that so often frightened the life out of him. “Now you listen to me boy, and you listen good. When the doctors ask, you and Mommy were just playing tag upstairs when you ran downstairs. Mommy tried to follow but she tripped and fell after you. Understand?”
“Yes sir,” Warren lied for the millionth time, just to spare himself the hurt.
“Good boy,” John ruffled his hair. “I’ll make a real man out of you yet. Your Mommy is too stupid and too weak to tell you this, but you’ll never be any better than me. You’ll never be any more than you are, you’re my son and as my son you’ll hurt the ones you love most sometimes too. It’s what we do. Your grandpa used to hurt me and now I hurt you, because I love you and I want you to be strong just like me. Don’t let girls push you around, sometimes you have to show them who’s in charge. Men should be in charge of their house, girls are just for cooking, cleaning and making babies. When they forget that, you have to reset them, like a clock. Got it?”
“Yes sir.” The lying never got any easier, but Warren would rather lie than be hurt.
Tears filled adult Warren’s eyes as he lived under his father’s threat to this very day. The promise that one day he too would hurt any woman he loved. Was that why he had spent so long trying to make himself love more men and to deny the part of him that also loved women? Was that why Dean’s love had felt so euphoric and so safe once upon a time? After all, if he married a man, the dark temptation to hurt a woman was far less likely. Was that why he’d tried so hard to keep his gay marriage going and suppress any love he felt for Vivienne and Shea?
He couldn’t love them, he wouldn’t dare. Not safely or how much he wanted to.
Vivienne was married now, Warren breathed a sigh of relief, he just had to wait for Shea to find someone else too. And then they’d both be safe from him forever, just like they deserved. Warren would rather spend the rest of his life miserable than risk loving Shea until she too inevitably fell down some stairs or walked into a door because of him.
A sharp notification ding snapped Warren out of his reverie as he glanced down at his phone and saw a new photo sent directly to his personal DMs from a most unexpected female friend, Mimi Simpson, captioned:
Better Men Deserve Better Women.
Warren’s eyes bugged out of his head as he saw Mimi in a public hotel pool in a Stars and Stripes two-piece bikini and the brightest smile he’d ever seen spread most unapologetically on her face. He felt his heartbeat a little faster and a sudden tightness below his waist.
“Fuck Mimi, what are you trying to do, kill me?” He breathed softly.
She had obviously heard and was shooting her shot. He felt flattered, desired, wanted. He was single now, the opportunity to move on from Dean, sooner rather than later was right there if he wanted it. Maybe it would be alright, all he had to do was not fall in love with a girl whilst actually exploring his bisexuality for a change. That should be easy.
After all, she wasn’t Shea O’Hara, so what’s the worst that could happen?
~~~
Warren Kidd sat in a charmingly picturesque and peaceful little teahouse with his nameless World Championship propped up on the table in front of him.
Well shit, this week I got the real man’s man, Cyrus Daniels one on one.
Savour that modicum of respect I’m willing to offer you right now, Cyrus because I do so only for the sake of your beautiful wife, Vivienne, the very same woman who is - or at least was - my very best friend. I don’t care if you hate me Cyrus, you hate just about everyone so it’s nothing new. What I do care about however is the very same woman you claim to love more than anything, your wife.
I care about her much more than I think even she realises, simply because I’ve known her a hell of a lot longer than you have. She was an important part of my life for years before you even knew she existed. Hell, you wouldn’t even have her back if it wasn’t for me going out of my way to reunite her with the “best man she’s ever loved.”
“Best man,” as in better than me, that’s how highly she regards you, Cyrus.
I hope you know what the hell that means, I hope you not only respect, but fucking worship her in all the ways I’ve never allowed myself to. She deserves no less. She deserves so much more in fact. More than someone like me could ever give her romantically, not that I wasn’t tempted a few years ago when she asked me to help her get pregnant. I would have taken her up on the offer if I wasn’t so afraid of passing on all the shit that has taken every male member of my cursed Kane bloodline prematurely.
Everything from psychotic breaks to heart issues.
I couldn’t risk giving Vivienne fundamentally broken babies, just like I couldn’t risk that shit with Maxine either. It sucks to know I’ll probably never be able to have healthy children like everyone else takes for fucking granted. Plenty of arseholes who have absolutely no business being parents end up having children, I know and I’d be lying if I said that I’ve never worried about you being one of them.
Now I’m not a particularly religious guy, not these days at least, but for Vivienne’s sake I hope and pray that my silent worry is entirely unfounded. I hope you really are “the best man” she thinks you are, because if you’re not. If you ever harm a hair on her head or raise a hand to your baby boys, I’ll fucking kill you, and I don’t mean metaphorically.
I mean literal cold blooded murder.
The kind you get banged up for life for.
It’s true that I’m willing to cut you a lot more fucking slack than most of the boys in the back, but it isn’t because we are friends necessarily, more that I think I understand your childhood trauma better than most everyone else around here. We both were raised by physically abusive borderline racist misogynistic bastards, and while it’s easy for normal healthy people to say there is no excuse for perpetuating that kind of behaviour, those raised in it for decades know it’s not that easy to break the cycle of generational trauma.
Before I helped you find her again, you promised me you really loved Vivienne and would do nothing to hurt your family, and you should know that I’ll fucking hold you to that vow until your last fucking breath. We haven’t faced each other in about eight years, I’m not the same man you beat back then for your seven days in the sun as an IWF Champion, and from what I can tell you’re not the same man you were back then either.
We’ve both changed due to circumstances beyond our control.
You’ve apparently gotten a lot meaner, more aggressive and much more willing to embrace every single “-ist,” and “phobe,” label people want to throw at you, and for a while I really couldn’t understand why. One little visit to Dr Kingsley’s office however changed all that. It’s amazing what a smile like mine can charm out of people, and whilst I wasn’t particularly surprised when she told me about how you slapped her around when you lost it once outside the bedroom, it does explain why you’re happier to be known as a racist and a homophobe than a potential wife and child beater.
You don’t want that idea to spread because you know as well as I do that there’s absolutely no coming back from something like that. Not even Vivienne would ever believe a raised hand to her or your beautiful twin boys Noah and Liam was just a slip up like she’s forgiven you for the slurs, would she?
Just because you were never charged doesn’t mean you were never guilty.
But I’m not above giving you another chance to be a better man, Cyrus.
Everyone deserves a second chance after all, but a second is all you’re getting.
You fuck up like you did with Nicole with Vivienne and I promise you I will bury you.
And I don’t mean like I will in this match, I mean literally six feet under.
You’re not the only one who isn’t afraid of going to jail for her, mate.
Better women deserve better men, after all.
Warren Kidd sat in a charmingly picturesque and peaceful little teahouse with his nameless World Championship propped up on the table in front of him.
Well shit, this week I got the real man’s man, Cyrus Daniels one on one.
Savour that modicum of respect I’m willing to offer you right now, Cyrus because I do so only for the sake of your beautiful wife, Vivienne, the very same woman who is - or at least was - my very best friend. I don’t care if you hate me Cyrus, you hate just about everyone so it’s nothing new. What I do care about however is the very same woman you claim to love more than anything, your wife.
I care about her much more than I think even she realises, simply because I’ve known her a hell of a lot longer than you have. She was an important part of my life for years before you even knew she existed. Hell, you wouldn’t even have her back if it wasn’t for me going out of my way to reunite her with the “best man she’s ever loved.”
“Best man,” as in better than me, that’s how highly she regards you, Cyrus.
I hope you know what the hell that means, I hope you not only respect, but fucking worship her in all the ways I’ve never allowed myself to. She deserves no less. She deserves so much more in fact. More than someone like me could ever give her romantically, not that I wasn’t tempted a few years ago when she asked me to help her get pregnant. I would have taken her up on the offer if I wasn’t so afraid of passing on all the shit that has taken every male member of my cursed Kane bloodline prematurely.
Everything from psychotic breaks to heart issues.
I couldn’t risk giving Vivienne fundamentally broken babies, just like I couldn’t risk that shit with Maxine either. It sucks to know I’ll probably never be able to have healthy children like everyone else takes for fucking granted. Plenty of arseholes who have absolutely no business being parents end up having children, I know and I’d be lying if I said that I’ve never worried about you being one of them.
Now I’m not a particularly religious guy, not these days at least, but for Vivienne’s sake I hope and pray that my silent worry is entirely unfounded. I hope you really are “the best man” she thinks you are, because if you’re not. If you ever harm a hair on her head or raise a hand to your baby boys, I’ll fucking kill you, and I don’t mean metaphorically.
I mean literal cold blooded murder.
The kind you get banged up for life for.
It’s true that I’m willing to cut you a lot more fucking slack than most of the boys in the back, but it isn’t because we are friends necessarily, more that I think I understand your childhood trauma better than most everyone else around here. We both were raised by physically abusive borderline racist misogynistic bastards, and while it’s easy for normal healthy people to say there is no excuse for perpetuating that kind of behaviour, those raised in it for decades know it’s not that easy to break the cycle of generational trauma.
Before I helped you find her again, you promised me you really loved Vivienne and would do nothing to hurt your family, and you should know that I’ll fucking hold you to that vow until your last fucking breath. We haven’t faced each other in about eight years, I’m not the same man you beat back then for your seven days in the sun as an IWF Champion, and from what I can tell you’re not the same man you were back then either.
We’ve both changed due to circumstances beyond our control.
You’ve apparently gotten a lot meaner, more aggressive and much more willing to embrace every single “-ist,” and “phobe,” label people want to throw at you, and for a while I really couldn’t understand why. One little visit to Dr Kingsley’s office however changed all that. It’s amazing what a smile like mine can charm out of people, and whilst I wasn’t particularly surprised when she told me about how you slapped her around when you lost it once outside the bedroom, it does explain why you’re happier to be known as a racist and a homophobe than a potential wife and child beater.
You don’t want that idea to spread because you know as well as I do that there’s absolutely no coming back from something like that. Not even Vivienne would ever believe a raised hand to her or your beautiful twin boys Noah and Liam was just a slip up like she’s forgiven you for the slurs, would she?
Just because you were never charged doesn’t mean you were never guilty.
But I’m not above giving you another chance to be a better man, Cyrus.
Everyone deserves a second chance after all, but a second is all you’re getting.
You fuck up like you did with Nicole with Vivienne and I promise you I will bury you.
And I don’t mean like I will in this match, I mean literally six feet under.
You’re not the only one who isn’t afraid of going to jail for her, mate.
Better women deserve better men, after all.
Well howdy there pardner.