Synn sat at the small table that rested against the large picture window just off of the main foyer in the house he shared with Despayre in the famed "City of Sin," Las Vegas. He had been for the last several minutes now, without moving. All he did was stare just outside of the room while he basked in the rare warmth of the afternoon sun in what had otherwise been relatively chilly weather. The only sign of life that he was giving was when his hand would reach down to grab the mug of hot coffee and pick it up to drink it. His full attention was on one person, and one alone.
In the living room, Despayre sat on the floor on one side of the coffee table, and on the other was Angel, perched high on three of the sofa's pillows so the teddy bear's head would be able to peek over the edge. Between them on the glass table was a checkers board, with several of the pieces already moved, and a number on Angel's side, stacked. This had to bring a sense of mirth to Synn's concerned state, as Angel was winning -- again. The light hearted sense was lost almost immediately as he remembered exactly why he had been in such a worried state.
What in Hell were those fools thinking? He silently wondered. Even if the tournament brackets had evened out to this particular match up, they could yet have done something to avoid it. Switch it around or something, but no. Synn had little doubt behind the reasoning: the thought of watching Despayre being forced to compete against the one person who possessed his full trust, Gabriel, was too enticing a proposition to sell a few extra tickets. The initial talk between them did not go well.
"No!" Despayre cried pitifully as he lurched forward at the waist, his hands clasped together, fingers interweaved, as he stared up at his father with a desperate need for this to be some dreadful mistake. "Nooo!"
"Joshua..." Synn took a step forward but stopped as Despayre flinched and turned away. He threw the crumbled paper that had delivered to them the dreadful news by fax against the wall and it tumbled off of the house's mantle and fell behind the sofa into a hard to reach corner. Despayre's eyes were clenched shut tightly and his mouth was open in a silent scream of torment at what these mean men in charge of Sin City Wrestling were asking him to do. No, what they were demanding that he do. Asking made it sound as if it were an option. This was no option.
Only then did Synn step back up and rest a comforting hand on his son's small shoulder.
"Joshua," Synn started to say. "Calm down. It'll be alright."
Synn used his hand on the boy's shoulder to turn him around gently and Despayre's cheeks were wet with tears. He gazed up at Synn and absently wiped his nose with the back of his hand before he closed his eyes once again and shook his head.
"No it won't." Despayre stated in a sob filled choke. "I don't want to fight Gabriel."
"I know." Synn sighed. "I would rather prefer you not as well. Yet it was a calculated risk when the both of you entered this event."
Despayre opened his eyes slightly and turned his head away, shaking it again in the negative.
"I wish I hadn't entered." He cried. "I don't want to be in it any more!"
"Joshua..." Synn's hand slid down the boy's shoulder and cupped against his thin arm.
Synn was not entirely used to the position of 'comforter', as he had always been something more of an antagonist. Yet ever since he discovered he was a father, ever since he took this unstable young man into his care, he had found himself in more unfamiliar territories than he had imagined possible. He would attempt to keep Despayre's unstable nature soothed at most times, but there was no telling when something might set him off. It could be something as simple as not wanting to eat what Theresa put on the table before them for dinner, or something as complicated as this situation currently before him.
Despayre's head hung as if he were making a vain attempt to keep this man he loved as a father from seeing the tears streaking from his eyes and down his face. He glanced up through his thick eyelashes and whispered, "Can you make them stop it?"
"Stop it?"
"Can you make them change the match?" Despayre emphasized hopefully.
Synn exhaled lightly through his nose, taking this in. Up until now, Synn had been able to fix just about each and every problem that had come his way that plagued his son. What was happening now was not personal, as much as it was business. And sometimes business could be by far a trickier situation to find oneself in.
"I tried, Joshua." Synn answered. "Unfortunately the match had already been announced by the time we were sent the papers. When we signed the contracts for this tournament, it was a risk with the both of you entered. I admit I'm surprised it took this long."
Despayre finally looked up at Synn and he bit his bottom lip and started to shake his head. Synn shrugged.
"I am sorry, Joshua." Synn said. "I did try, but this time I can't undo it."
Despayre cried out "No!" and before Synn could stop him, he darted past him and up the stairs of their homestead. All he heard following this was the slamming of a bedroom door.
That had been two days ago. Despayre had spent the remainder of that day holed up in his room, sobbing, and Synn had spent an equal amount of time split between hovering outside of the door to make certain the boy was not harming himself, and the rest in his office, fighting in vain with Mark Ward and Christian Underwood both in misguided attempts to coerce them into somehow altering these semi-final brackets.
The phone call from Despayre's tag team partner, Karina Koji, had been an unexpected surprise. She had asked to speak to Despayre (and Angel as well!), but this had come at the time when Despayre was holed up in his room and he would speak to nobody. And Angel, well Synn had simply assumed that Despayre's teddy bear would much prefer to utilize his time trying to soothe Joshua rather than discuss business on the phone.
Yes, you read that correctly!
No matter. When the time would come, Karina would face and handle Gabriel's tag team partner, Roxi Johnson, herself. Despayre had been delighted at Gabriel's pairing with a superhero. Now, not so much.
Several times Synn heard Despayre talking through the closed door, and knew instinctively that the boy was 'talking' to Angel. That would actually bring hope, as it meant he was making an attempt to soothe his own inner turmoil through the teddy bear's companionship. Other times he listened as Despayre would turn on his TV and the familiar sounds of the Looney Tunes animated shorts could be heard through the door. Several times Despayre had tried to refuse meals but Synn would not allow him to cause himself harm in any manner, including making himself go hungry. Twice Theresa brought his meal's upstairs so he'd be allowed the comforts of eating by himself in the quiet of his own room -- on the condition that he brought everything back down once he was finished. It brought a great sense of relief the morning when Despayre finally emerged from his room and came downstairs for breakfast with everyone else, Angel held close to his chest.
"How is he?"
Synn looked up at the form of Despayre's Grandmother, Victoria, who was holding a cup of tea in her hand and watching the front room with a concerned eye that only a grandmother would be able to pull off. It was just recently as Despayre's (and Angel's) birthday party that his mother Margaret had surprised Synn's and her son by reuniting him with the grandmother he had so dearly loved as a boy. Now both Margaret and her mother had traveled down from Vancouver to pay Despayre a visit, Synn graciously opening his and Despayre's home to them as guests. Behind her, entering the nook, was Margaret who paused to look into the front room before she finally joined her mother and took a seat at the table with her own tea.
Synn answered, "He's still having trouble accepting what's expected of him this weekend, but overall he'll be fine. We just need to get past this weekend and he'll understand that there would be no hard feelings no matter what happens."
Margaret sipped her tea and shook her head. She said, "I just can't believe that they're making Joshy wrestle Gabriel. Don't they understand what that's doing to him?"
Victoria looked from her daughter to Synn as Despayre's father answered, "It's doubtful. Much as he's in the public eye on a weekly basis, few truly understand the way Joshua's mind works. hell, even I don't pretend to understand everything that there is to know about him. I just know what Gabriel means to him and this match was tearing him up inside."
Victoria set her tea cup down and asked, "And there's no way to stop the match?"
Synn shook his head, not once taking his eyes from Despayre's game of checkers with Angel. He answered, "None. It was the risk of them both being entered into this tournament. There was always the chance they'd end up meeting on opposite sides of the ring at some point."
Synn noticed more checkers were now on Angel's side. Despayre was running fingers through his long, black hair and he blew out a gust of air through pursed lips as he 'studied' the board.
"I admit that I'm new to this whole 'Grandmother' thing." Victoria said as she stretched over to the left to get a better view of her grandson at play. "But what exactly is he doing?"
Margaret turned to her with a smile and replied, "Losing at checkers would be my guess."
"I am not losing!" Despayre shouted from the living room, causing each of the older adults to turn and look back to him in amusement. Despayre's eyes never left the board as he spoke aloud, "I'm lulling him into a false sense of security!"
Synn called back, "And you're doing a very good job at that!"
"Thank you!"
"So, are you feeling better?"
"About what?"
"You know what. The match coming up this weekend."
"Oh. That. I was trying to forget about that Angel, and you just brought it back up again. Thanks a lot."
"I know, and I'm sorry. I just want you to b alright."
"If you want me to be alright, help Synn find a way to cancel this match. I don't want to do it any more. I don't want to fight Gabriel."
"Wrestle Gabriel."
"What?"
"You said 'fight'. You're not going to be 'fighting' Gabriel. You're going to be 'wrestling' him."
"What's the difference?"
"Well there's a whole wide world of difference Joshua!
"Explain."
"Oh for goodness sake! A fight would be with someone that you don't like. You know, like when you had that match with Goth. That was a fight."
"Okay, that makes sense."
"Right, and this is a wrestling match. You know, like when you've been in the ring with the Surf Boys, or when you horsed around with Bernie in the ring after that show? Oh! And remember a few months ago when you and Gabriel helped out all those people in that benefit show?"
"Yeah...?"
"You wrestled Shane and his cousin, Jason. That was a great example of a wrestling match!"
"I suppose so. But Gabriel is different."
"I know, and he's just as uneasy at the idea of wrestling you,, as you are at wrestling him. But it's not like you two haven't wrestled around a ring with each other, before. You two have had those friendly little sparring sessions so you can keep your skills honed and sharp.."
"Yeah, that's true."
"So you see? It's entirely possible that you can go into this match and leave it still the bestest of friends. You gotta trust me on this one. I know you don't want to. I know you were thinking about making yourself lose just like you did in that gauntlet match a year ago, but you can't."
"Why not?"
"Because you have someone else depending on you to at least try. Karina wants to win this event, and you should too."
Despayre shrugged his shoulders helplessly as he stood up, all of his checkers now on Angel's side of the board. He reached down and scooped Angel up into his arms and took off into a sprint for the kitchen, his parents and Grandmother watching in his wake.
"That was ... sudden." Victoria observed.
Synn turned back around and took a drink from his own coffee mug and said, "He's probably getting ready for the postman." He glanced up and saw the confused expressions on the women's faces and emphasized, "For some reason, Joshua's taken a disliking to our postman."
Despayre then came running back from the kitchen, Angel in one hand, and -- one of his 'special' balloons he had won in London (filled with water), in the other. Not waiting to say anything to the adults, Despayre raced upstairs with them all watching.
Victoria turned back to Synn with wide eyes and asked, "Was that a..."
"Mm hm." Synn murmured with a smile and a nod.
"Filled with water?" Margaret asked.
Synn said, "Apparently so."
"But... where did he get them?" His grandmother asked.
Synn nonchalantly sighed and leaned back in his chair to answer, "He had a little luck with a game in a London pub."
Before either woman could ask for further details, they heard a faint *pop!* and Despayre shouted out in startled surprise. He came stomping back downstairs, both he and Angel soaking wet! he marched right over and plopped the bear down on the table in the middle of the three and turned to storm off.
"Joshy!" His mother called. "What happened to you?"
Despayre wheeled around and pointed at Angel. "A needle and a very precocious teddy bear with a flare for practical jokes!" And he turned back and went off with the three adults turning to look at the bear.
