==========================================================
===========================================================
Home Invasion
San Diego, California - Jet City South
15th SEPTEMBER 2023
OFF-Camera
When Jaycee’s eyes open, he couldn’t help but feel like the room around him felt foreign. He sat up in bed, unsure of what time it was, or really even what day it was. If anyone had asked, he wouldn’t have been able to tell them where he was, or how he got there in the first place. It took several moments before he started to recognize the things in the room as his own. He was at home, in his own bed. Yet, he still wasn’t exactly sure how he had gotten there. The pieces of the last day, or more likely the last couple of days, were broken and rearranged in his mind. The headache that had woken him up prevented him from being able to put them in the right order. He decided to just put those questions off for a few hours until he was more awake.
He got out of bed, and once he was headed down the hallway, he noticed the unnatural amount of light coming into the room at the opposite end. His curiosity made him pass up the bathroom, and head to the end of the hallway. Sitting on his couch, with his eyes down at the phone in his lap, was a man that Jaycee had only seen in passing at Jet City. He didn’t think the two of them had ever exchanged words with one another.
JAYCEE: What are you doing in my house JD?
He shrugged, and without moving his eyes from the phone screen, he lifted up a paper from the couch cushion next to where he sat.
JD: Well, according to this, it’s not really yours anymore. They’re kicking you out.
Jaycee felt like he vaguely remembered something about that. It made his head throb to try and pull the rest of that story together. Again, that was a problem for later. The main problem right now was that a man he had never spoken to somehow thought it was okay to invade his space like this.
JAYCEE: How did you…
JD didn’t even let him finish the question.
JD: Your keys were in the door.
JD still hadn’t even bothered to look up. Despite the fact that Jaycee hadn’t even attempted to hide his annoyance, JD hadn’t flinched. The guy didn’t even seem like he was nervous about how Jaycee would react to him being there. He had the demeanor of someone that was exactly where they belonged; carefree.
JAYCEE: So you just thought it was okay to unlock it and head inside?
He shrugged again, this time with a laugh. Jaycee could feel his blood pressure rising. It wasn’t just JD’s presence anymore either, but everything about him. This was a man that had failed as an in-ring performer. He had been thoroughly outclassed by his own wife at Jet City. He had even gone the route of becoming a referee for Kris and Jason’s short-lived PRIDE promotion since he couldn’t make the roster. He was content with his position in life, and that was the thing that made Jaycee the most angry. JD was everything that he didn’t want to become in life, and yet he looked like he was at ease in this place that was totally foreign to him. He looked more at home in this space than Jaycee had ever felt, and wasn’t even threatened enough to look up.
JD: It helped that it was also open.
That explained the light. Jaycee shook his head, and disengaged from the conversation before he lost his cool. He moved around the couch to the previously blind corner of the room and pulled his eyes from the door before finally closing it. The fact that JD had entered and not done either of those things on his way in just piled onto the annoyance.
JAYCEE: I assume that there is a reason that you are here.
Jaycee could tell that JD was way more focused on whatever he was reading off of his phone screen. This whole interaction with him was just secondary.
JD: I’ve been sent to collect you. Probably because Kris thought it would be amusing to get to say both of our names in the same sentence.
He laughed again, even though it was at his own expense. Over the years, the greatest weapon that JD had to use against his boss was his ability to laugh at himself, although Kris had never given up on trying to get under his skin. This task was just another layer of that, and JD could appreciate it for what it was.
JAYCEE: Usually Court is the one that feels sorry for me enough to check in on me. She at least knocks on the door though.
JD brushed off that idea quickly in a line that sounded like it came from Kris word-for-word.
JD: Court is back in Jet City now and has more important things to worry about than babysitting.
JD may have spoken the words, but Jaycee definitely heard who actually said them, and he wasn’t about to be told what to do by someone who didn’t have the courage to actually show up himself.
JAYCEE: Then maybe Kris should have been the one on my couch this morning.
JD finally turned off the small screen in his lap, and looked up. Jaycee immediately wished that he hadn’t been wishing for that for the whole conversation because while JD wasn’t irritated with him at all, he did have the eyes of a disappointed parent.
JD: Evening, Jaycee. It’s already six.
Jaycee looked around confused for a moment. He had already stepped on his own toes so many times since coming down the hallway. First the door, and then the time. Apparently he didn’t have the hours that he thought he did to start piecing together the last couple of days. He needed that information now.
JAYCEE: He still should have been here if he had something to say to me.
JD shrugged his shoulders once more, and once again gave a level and logical answer.
JD: If you know anything about him, you know that this isn’t something he can help you with. You’d likely just drag him back down the same path. He doesn’t want to risk that again, so it got delegated to me.
On one hand, it made him feel better that Kris had at least thought of coming himself. It made sense that he would be worried about giving in as well, because he had made a career out of his downward spirals. Those stories had always been worth hearing.
JAYCEE: Well, as you can see, I am fine. I don’t really need his help anyways. You can see yourself out. I’ll see you guys on Friday at the party.
He should have known better, but he was still in the process of waking himself up.
JD: It is Friday, Jaycee. Get yourself cleaned up so that we can go.
He opened his mouth to argue with him, but slammed it closed before anything got out. Everything that he had said since waking up had been wrong. JD was right anyways. Getting cleaned up would give him the time to wake up without having to deal with any of this right now. Plus, it would buy him the opportunity to get himself right without JD staring at him.
JAYCEE: Fine.
==========================================================
>Lost Way
==========================================================
”It’s kind of hard to come to work most weeks, ya know?”
”I guess that isn’t so much different for any other job though, right? We all have the days when we would rather not have to go. We all have the days where we just want to curl up in a ball and forget that a world exists outside of our own little private corner of the universe. We all have days when we don’t want to deal with anyone, no matter how short the interaction.”
”....for me those days have been happening a lot more often than they used to. It seems like everyday is just another one of those where I think that maybe I don’t want to do this anymore. Everyday feels like maybe I wasn’t as good at this as I thought that I was going to be coming out of the Blast from the Past tournament. Most of the time it just feels like a failed experiment. My hot start was more beginner's luck than anything else. Everything else feels like the real me, and if you really add it up, I’m just not cutting it.”
”I look at everyone else that has come out of Jet City and I get sick to my stomach. Kyle Kavanagh sucked and that kid still found a way to be a big part of Underground for a while under that Cyan mask. Aaron Isaacs was a flop in the big picture, but that kid had some amazing moments in the ring. Coby’s stints may have been cut short, but he was always electric when he showed up, and is one of the best Mixed Tag Champions in the history of Sin City regardless of how he got the title.”
”....and now the people that have taken over the spotlight are my friends. I have known Eiley and Oz since I was a kid. They were two of the first few people that I ever met in San Diego, and we have been in-and-out of each other’s lives ever since. It wasn’t all good, and hasn’t been all bad, but I look at them now and it’s painful. These two got into the business after me, and have already started to shine. They are already holding championship belts, and people love to hate the two of them.”
”Courtney Pierce was the one to train me, even though she doesn’t get any of the credit. Kris never wanted me to stay at Jet City, and the day that he got shot, he was in the process of throwing me out when all of that went down. The guy never believed in me, but Court did for some reason. She was the one that got me ready for Blast from the Past last year. She was the one that was constantly pushing me to be better. She was the one that said that anyone can succeed in this business if they really want to, and then she came back and won the Bombshell Championship.”
”Everyone around me is setting the bar so high, and I can’t manage to gain any momentum at all. I go out to the ring and fall on my face time after time, and there doesn’t seem to be any way to get things turned around. The harder I fight, the worse that it gets. Being out in the ring in front of all of you has become my own personal quicksand. I have learned to dread Sunday nights when the cards come out, and breathe a sigh of relief every single time that my name is not listed. Don’t get me wrong, I love being part of Sin City. I have wanted nothing more than to compete inside that ring, but to fail at that so thoroughly has been soul crushing.”
”My dream has become my nightmare, and I am forced to relive that nightmare at every single show.”
”I thought that maybe if I just stopped trying, it wouldn’t hurt as badly. If I could make myself not care, maybe when I fell short it wouldn’t be disappointing because it was expected. I started to blow off training. I stopped showing up at Jet City. I stopped sending out messages ahead of my matches. I showed up and I did the absolute bare minimum to collect a paycheck, but it didn’t make things any easier. It made everything so much worse.”
”There is no winning. I am fucked either way. I considered just packing it up and walking away from it all, but I don’t even have the courage for any of that. It wouldn’t matter anyways. Nobody in this business would even notice that I was gone, and it would leave a huge hole in my life. It would be throwing away everything that I ever wanted while I still had the chance to make something of myself. I can still physically bring myself down to that ring. I can still keep up with whoever is in the ring across from me. Even if it goes wrong, even if it sucks to watch every single one of my peers succeeding without me, I can’t just leave. I can’t stomach the idea of disappearing once again.”
”I wish that there was a better version of myself walking into this match with Ben Jordan. That guy was one of the reasons that I really started to put the work in when I first started training. That guy has picked himself back up and powered through so much negative bullshit, and is beloved in this business because of it. He carries himself like one of the greatest to ever step into an SCW ring, and it doesn’t matter that his list of accomplishments don’t add up to a lot of the others. His presence, his connection to the fans, and his passion for this place make him one of the best to ever compete in the company.”
”He is a guy that I wish I could be more like.”
”I guess I’m just not there yet.”
”#BenDeservesBetter”
