#sierrafic

"What were you gonna do with this?" he asks. "Force me to wear it? Thought that was more your wheelhouse." "I had planned to knock you out," Seth mutters, straightening. Punk’s posture follows suit, some of the tension dissolving. "What are you gonna do with it?" Punk examines the shoe in his hand. Seth stares at it too. "You're gonna hit me in the head."

Drew loses a bet. Punk collects.

“Go on,” Punk of two weeks ago urges. “Hurry up, my battery’s dying.” “I, Drew Mcintyre, do solemnly swear to acquiesce to the following: if you beat me in the cage match—fair and square—I’ll do it. I’ll get the damn tattoo. You pick it. Anywhere you want. Any size. Hell, I’ll let you draw the bloody thing if it makes you feel clever. There. Happy?” The camera pans back to Punk. “Yeah. Same as what he said. This agreement is binding, so on, so forth. Whatever.”

Punk is a fossil in comparison. He’s been ravaged by father time, wrinkled and the skin stretched taut across his bones. He is dry and fissured, one wrong blink away from a stroke. The greying hair on his temples and overtaking his stubble is nothing like the occasional charming grey that Seth gets, frets over and begs her to pluck out with tweezers. He doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t want him to. There’s not a sentence in existence he could utter that she’d have interest in, nothing of value lurking behind that forked, poisonous, self-interested tongue. He’d better serve her if he was mute.

Cheap is the antithesis of his brand. He does not do cheap. His own low-brow tattoo is easily hidden except when he’s in the ring, and he hopes people are paying more attention to his athleticism than mistakes he made when he was eighteen and going through his Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon phase.

And when he steps into the locker room, he can see it radiating off Punk like steam from a warm sweaty body on a cold morning. If he had an empathetic bone in his body, he might cluck his tongue and slap Punk on the shoulder. Tough break. Walk it off, sunshine. Maybe he’s been hanging around Seth too much, riding with him too often between shows. He does want to strike a match and set Punk aflame.  "Bad day at the office?" he asks, smirking. 

Marek was there when they agreed not to label it. It was his fucking idea. He was the one who suggested they should play it by ear, take it as it comes. Tyler is the one who wavered, because he knows Marek. Tyler knew this would happen—that Marek would flounder in uncertainty and ambiguity. It’s comforting to be known that way, but he can’t take it back now. He refused to let them define this. The grave he dug with his bare hands, he now has to lie in.

friends with benefits, post canon.

Sousuke gets promoted, and as his work life is on a steep upward trajectory, the equilibrium of his personal life is disrupted in more ways than one.

Punk will be gone soon and Marek will have Tyler to himself again. He can stop telling himself that love is kind, love is generous, love is not judgmental. Marek is none of those things.