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The
match was over.
Anyone sensible would have had a shower, got changed and gone for a meal. A long, hot soak in a bath to try to get
the worst of the ache from your muscles, and the pain from your bones, especially as they had to do it all over again tomorrow.
Well, not all of it. There'd be no chamber tomorrow.
He thought that was why he hadn't done any of the reasonable things. Randy
wanted to see the chamber again, feel it. There was something about all those tonnes of steel that cried out to him. He’d
put a t-shirt on, but that was about it. He'd spent the past few hours sitting in the locker room, elbows on his lap, thinking
about the chance that had just slipped through his fingers. Thinking about why he hadn't won.
Randy didn't do regrets, and he
couldn't regret doing his best to end Punk. Randy hated mind games. Low down dirty tricks, with a pay-off a couple of weeks
later, those were fine, but grinding down on someone constantly, over and again, that wasn't his thing. Mind games made him
so angry. He just had to try to finish Punk off before Punk did it again. Randy tried to use the steel to help him. He hadn't
noticed the damage the chamber had done to him while he was doing that, but it was coming to him now. His sides ached and
his lower back felt like it was on fire every time he stood up.
It was the chamber that was calling to him. He wanted to be there
again, go over what had gone wrong, and what he'd do differently next time. Next time he wasn't going to bother with an RKO,
he'd just punt Punk into next year. That'd wipe the grin off Punk's face, stop him laughing.
Randy didn't like mockery either.
That made him really angry too.
The chamber stood before him, in the dark. There was minimal lighting, only the tiny lights up in the
roof of the arena, kept on for the security guards.
It took so long to take the chamber down that it had been left for the night.
They were leaving half the ring crew here tomorrow to dismantle it. Then it would lie in wait for next year, when it would
get new victims. If Randy couldn't get the title by then, he'd be one of them.
He wasn't alone in the arena. It was strange sensation, he couldn't
see anyone, or hear anything, but he knew there was someone there, knew it somewhere deep inside.
He moved closer to the chamber,
feeling the links of steel with his fingertips, and then he climbed up and into the ring.
It wasn't a shock to find out that
it was Punk sitting there, cross-legged. If anyone else understood this urge, Randy had a horrible feeling that it was going
to be Punk. He'd taken the space in the middle of the ring that Randy himself wanted. That hadn't surprised Randy either.
What surprised Randy
was the speed at which his thoughts moved from considering what had happened to being so angry that all he could feel was
rage and red mist. Randy wanted to rip out Punk's throat.
The fucker cost him the match. Randy had been so taken up by getting
some measure of revenge for the weeks of mental torment that Punk had put him through that Randy hadn't thought of anything
but hurting Punk. It had come back to bite him in the ass later. If only he could shake the mocking laughter that rung round
his head.
He couldn't
think straight around Punk, his entire mind was taken up and buzzing with him. Randy did the same thing he always did when
he didn't know what to do and went on the attack. He said the first thing that came into his head.
"I beat you fair and square."
"Go and whine to the
GM then, loser." Punk didn't bother to look up.
"Like he'd listen, even if we knew who he was. He's so far in your corner that I'm starting
to think you're secretly blowing him, whoever he is. What've you been doing, Punk, bending over for a shot at the title?"
"I've got anything I've
ever achieved through hard work. It's something you might want to look into, junior." That was when Randy snapped. Some part
of him registered that he disagreed with that. He's worked hard for his place here, not just ridden his Dad's coattails, and
that's why he's suddenly got so pissed off. But it's like the part of him that he's assured does differential calculus every
time he catches a football, it's not something he can access. All Randy understood right now was a burning urge to smash Punk,
punt his head right into the cheap seats.
Punk moved so quickly it's like he teleports. "Truth hurts, doesn't it, Randall?"
"'You and me had a re-match
right now, I'd beat you." They were both still in their trunks, and good to go.
"If I hadn't been trapped in the chamber, you wouldn't have got
more than three hits on me before I laid you out."
"Willing to bet on it?"
"No, gambling's a pointless waste of resources. It's for degenerates."
There was a pause. "But I'm willing to fight you. No biting, no gouging, winner by tap out." Of course, that would put Randy
at a disadvantage, he didn't have many tap out locks in his armoury, but he was too far gone in rage to care. He just wanted
at Punk.
Everything
snapped into the hyper-reality Randy always felt while wrestling. He used to think it was the roar of the crowd, the anticipation,
the attention, but he got it here and now, with no-one watching.
Punk stuck his hand out to shake, and Randy wasn’t sure if it
was a trap or the last vestiges of ROH clinging to Punk. He shook it anyway, weight adjusted ready in case it's the start
of an Irish whip.
It wasn’t a trap, and instead of attacking, they circled each other, leaning forward like they were about to
grapple. Orton waited but he didn’t know what for exactly, he was feeling his way, there would be some sign of weakness,
a lack of balance when Punk moved ... and there it was.
Orton took advantage of the timing of one of Punk's steps and tried to take
him to the ground. It was a set-up by Punk, and Randy got a face-full of mat for his attempt. It did nothing but make him
angry. He threw Punk off, using his whole body, and got back, quickly, to his feet. They traded blows, and Randy whipped Punk
into the side of one of the pods. The lexan cracked and fell in on itself. Randy was glad that the pods got changed every
year anyway, and hoped that the damage would be blamed on bumps during transit or the heat changes or anything but him, not
that anyone knew he was here but he was sick of this kind of thing being blamed on him. Do something wrong once, and it sticks
to your name.
The pod
didn't matter now; it wasn’t like they could fix it. The pods never mattered. They were just what Punk used as an excuse.
In a straight fight, Punk wouldn't get close to beating him.
He had Punk backed against one of the other pods, and Randy's fists
went bang, bang, bang on the plastic, the way Punk mocked him for doing during the match.
If anyone had asked Randy what happened
next, he'd deny that anything happened, and if it was someone he trusted asking, he'd tell them the truth, he had no idea.
It was like when he lost it, and he couldn't remember exactly how he'd gone from being angry to being in the middle of a wrecked
room, except what he couldn't remember this time was less expensive and infinitely more dangerous. He was banging on the pod,
so close to Punk that he was all but touching him, skin tingling with nearness, and then bam! Punk's legs were wrapped around
his waist, his hands were on the back of Punk's thighs, Punk was pressed against the plexiglass and his mouth was either forcing
itself against Punk's or being forced against it. He wasn’t sure which, given Punk's hands were all over the back of
his head, pushing them together.
He could feel everything; Punk's hands forcing his shaven hair against the grain, a line of cold
steel against his lips, the press of his growing erection against Punk's, the way the combination of those things were sending
bolts of shivering electricity up and down his spine, and the warmth in his mouth and his belly.
Randy felt a sudden stickiness
beneath his fingers. The feel of blood was unmistakable. He knew that it had to be the wounds on Punk's thigh, the ones Punk
got when he landed hard against the steel cage, opening up. He knew it had to hurt. And he knew that Punk wasn’t stopping
either.
He dug
in, to get a better grip, to hurt Punk or to move him nearer, Randy wasn't sure which. Punk took in a breath, and groaned.
Randy didn't know if it was from pain or from pleasure, but assumed it was from something good when Punk tightened his legs
around him.
Randy
knew his back was going to hate him for this in the morning, even as he used the shell of the pod to take some of Punk's weight.
The lactic acid left in his muscles was making them scream, he was taking deep gulps of air when he could, working round Punk's
tongue.
If he
couldn’t rip Punk to shreds, this would do as second best. It didn’t even have to deviate that far from what he
really wanted to do, not if tightened his grip.
Punk's thighs clenched around him, trapping Randy right up tight against Punk. It was
just about the right kind of tight, and Randy was able to rub himself against Punk exactly how he wanted.
Randy was jerking away, furiously,
blindly. He didn’t consciously notice Punk's thighs loosening their grip, because he was almost there, just where he
wanted to be.
He came,
and it would have been messy if he wasn't still in his trunks. As it was, he was uncomfortable and glad he was going to throw
the trunks away anyway. Punk's feet were firmly on the ground, so Randy couldn’t drop him on the floor, the way he would
have done if he'd had time to think about it at all. He shouldn't have missed an opportunity like that.
They stood there, breathing
heavily. Randy thought he'd be happier sitting down, but he wasn’t going to show any weaknesses to Punk. He knew Punk
was probably thinking the same thing. It wasn’t something he wanted to know, because he wanted to have nothing in common
with that madman.
Randy was aware of his rage cooling into a solid feeling of hate. It was something he could work with, something he
could use to beat Punk. He needed it, or something like it, because he could see the next six months or so of his life stretching
out before him as a chain of matches against Punk. The man was an obsessive psycho and he had fixated himself on Randy for
something that Randy actually had done. You couldn’t beat someone like that with rage; you could only hold them off
with hate until their attention switched to someone else.
Randy knew that not flipping out was not his strong suit, but it was
something he'd have to watch, because, for all that the doctor's note about his IED had been oh so useful, and would be again,
Punk would make use of his blackout levels of anger, if Randy let him.
He didn’t know why he was only just realising this, when
it had been plain and obvious in front of him all of the time. He put it down to the way that even now, sated, he would still
do it again, wanted to do it again, but, however temporarily, he'd taken the edge off the worst of his drives. Randy choose
to believe that the only reason Punk had got him so wound up was because he was there in Randy's face all the time, and Randy
hadn't been home in far too long.
That didn't explain the way he seemed to understand what Punk thought, the terrifying level of understanding
between them. Randy wanted to blame that on the constant nearness, the way that Punk had been on his mind all this time because
Punk kept attacking him. It worried him though. He didn't want this to end up like his Dad and Piper, where his Dad was still
not over it. He didn’t want to think of his Dad, or Piper, at a time like this, but he would have loved to know why
it was his Dad that wasn’t over it given that Piper had been the one smashing himself in the face and shouting about
betrayal on live TV.
He wasn’t ready for anything like that, and he didn't want anything like that with Punk, not least of all because
despite the way Punk was leaning, panting, against the pod, Punk was looking at him as though this was normal. Randy tried
to forget that everyone knew that Punk didn't do promiscuous sex, and that he knew there was a difference between someone
who just said that and Punk. He didn’t want to think about why he knew that difference was real and not just another
thing that Punk lied about.
Randy could feel the rage building, along with confusion and everything else, but until he knew for sure
what he himself would do next - he hated how out of control that uncertainty made him feel - he also knew he needed to take
evasive action rather than stay here with the cause of all these chaotic urges. He scrambled from the cage, and headed to
the back.
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