Powerless
Las Vegas, NV
Carter’s Loft
“Carter, I-”
His eyes had a hard time believing it and seeing it, but there Carter stood with their back to each and everyone one of them but even through the steam of the shower, the mirror didn’t lie.
The women that surrounded him just gasped and cried. Hearing it from Carter’s mom and grandmother broke his heart even harder than it had already been just looking at how bad his friend looked.
Miles though, his focus remained on Carter. Silently cursing himself for not doing anything sooner, he took two more steps into the bathroom, reaching for Carter’s shoulder, “Carter.” is all he got out before Carter turned and wrapped his arms around Miles’ midsection and started to cry- actually, sob, “Go ahead, mate, let it out.” Miles followed up by giving his friend one of his famous hugs.
It wasn’t more than a few moments before Ari joined them and began questioning who did it and as soon as he lowly said Laz’s name, you could have potentially felt the flames shoot off Miles’ body but he internally tampered it down because this was not the time and he was gonna get it enough from everyone else. Carter didn’t need a lecture right now; eventually it would have to happen but now was not the time nor the place.
“Ok, let’s get you cleaned up and get you out of here.” Miles said before turning around and walking out of the room for a moment.
Carter’s eyes got big for what they could under the bruising, “But-”
“No!” Carter’s mom barked out, “You are not staying here. END of story.”
From outside the bathroom, a commotion could be heard for a moment, “Hey, this PS5 out here...yours?” Miles said popping his head around the corner as Carter’s mom and gram watched over him for a brief moment.
“No, it’s his.”
Miles have an evil smirk creep across his face, “Ah good, be right back.”
He stalks back down the hall, rips it off the entertainment center, not caring about the cords, “What are you doing?” Krystal said.
Miles smiles, walks over to the window, throws it open and whistles, “INCOMING BROKEN PS5!!!!” before he chucks it from 5 stories up and all you hear is a crash of plastic, some metal and cement colliding. There was a collective moment of silence before Miles made his way back into the bathroom.
“Why don’t you lovely ladies leave cleaning Carter up to me and you can collect his things and we’ll make our way to our next destination as soon as we’re through here,” Miles said with a little comfort in his voice, he was trying to keep everyone calm in a situation that didn’t call for it, “Besides, I don’t think you wanna see what I have to do next.”
The women look back to Carter for a moment as he just gives them a reassuring nod before leaving the two men alone in the room, closing the door behind them.
“First aid kit?”
“Under the sink, but you don’t have to-”
Miles is already under there and pulling things out and standing, “Shush, I think if anyone here knows how to clean up something like this, it’s me. Gods know, I’ve had enough practice.”
He knows Carter is watching everyone movement he makes before his eyes glance at his shirt, “I got blood on your shirt.”
“Don’t even worry about it, I have my methods to get it out and if it doesn’t, it’s just a shirt.” he says motioning Carter to sit on the counter for the sink for a moment and begins to clean up what he can on the young man’s face, “You scared the hell out of everyone, you know?”
Carter’s eyes just drop in sadness.
“I get it though,” Miles says before Carter can answer him, “I’m not going to hound you for the details, because the more I hear about it the harder I’m going to put the son of a bitch through the wall before anyone else can get their hands on him.”
“Miles...” HB gets out like almost a warning.
“Oh don’t!” Milo growls at him before he shakes his head, “I’m allowed to be pissed off at the person that made you almost unrecognizable. And you’re lucky that you don’t get dragged to the hospital.”
“They’ll insist.”
“And if you start showing signs that you need to, I’ll carrying you in myself, kicking and screaming if I gotta.” Miles smirks brightly enough, but if it was possible Miles could have swore Carter was holding his breath, “That was a joke. You’re supposed to laugh.”
“Oh uh...Sorry,” Carter said with a small laugh. A knock comes to the door for a moment, “Yeah?”
“I have some fresh clothes for you, my boy,” the kind voice of Carter’s gram says from the other side. Miles opens the door and she hands them to him, “You are such a sweet boy for taking care of Carter.”
“It’s an honour.” Miles smiles at her, “We won’t be much longer.”
Grams smiles and just shuts the door behind her, “She likes you.”
“She’s pretty awesome. I can definitely see where you get your sense of humour.” Miles says putting the clothes on the other side of Carter, “I’ll have to remember to tell you about her joke in the elevator. ...NOW, about that nose.”
“What about it?” Carter says with worry in his eyes.
“Well...” Miles says with a sigh, “We can do this a few different ways. One, we can just leave it as is right now, take you to the hospital and have them do it. Two, we can just leave it, heal it crooked and while I think it’d ruin your pretty face, some would say it’d add character.”
“Is there a third option?”
Miles stands right in front of him, leaning his hands on both sides of Carter and looks him eye to eye, “Yeah, but you are going to have to trust me.”
“I do-”
“No, you don’t understand...” Miles sighs and leans in a little closer, ”You are going to have unequivocally trust me. It’s not pleasant, it’s going to suck but if you let me do this...I don’t know, maybe I’ll tell you something that I’ve never told another soul...even my own sister.”
Carter swallows hard, there is a moment, a beat that he seriously is considering every option but at the same time distracted by Miles’ closeness, “Do it.”
“You sure?” Miles asked with a raise of his eyebrow.
“Yes.”
Miles leans his forehead onto Carter’s “Alright, here we go.”
3...
2...
1...
From outside the door we hear Carter screaming out, “HOLY SHIT!”
It’s Been A Week
Still Vegas
This time it’s somewhere in the remote vicinity of K and Aron’s place
“You know, I’m beginning to think K was right and I just need to get a place here with how much I’ve been hanging around lately.”
Miles kicks back, deck side. He looks up and takes in a deep breath before rolling his neck, giving it a couple of deep cracks. In front of him a roaring fire crackles as the sun sets over Vegas.
“You’ll have to excuse me as it’s been a rough couple of weeks.” he shrugs, “You know, I’m not even mad about the loss anymore. Barnhart has to live with the whole ass fact that when I spent my first reign as the Roulette Champion, I didn’t hold back. I’m not even remotely sorry for it and those pictures will live on twitter as long as Elon doesn’t fuck twitter up even further.”
“But now, we shift our focus. Because I am a former champion that finds himself on the road to redemption. I wanna get my hands around the non-existent neck of Bill Barnhart but also there is a bigger part of me that almost wonder about life beyond the Roulette Division. And I get to test out that wet dream against the ever pompous pious one, “Godly” Ken Davison.” Miles laughs, “It’s absolutely amazing, Finn beats this man’s arse, dethrones him and Kenny boy still has got his nose in the air like his shit don’t smell just as bad as everyone else.”
“Starts a whole ass betting pool between Mercer and Raven and then when he gets out-numbered for people backin’ Austin, he takes his tail, tucks it and without missing a beat shoves that crooked schnoz of his, sniffs his horseshit ‘I have a match to prepare for.’ WELL NO FUCKIN’ SHIT, BRUV! The hell you say!” Miles leans forward with a glimmer in his blue-green eyes, “Could it be that you are looking to redeem the redeemer? Naaaaaaah, you’re above the SCW World Title right? At least that’s what you would have us all believe. But yet, those wounds are fresh and far be it from me to rub salt into them because honestly I have not much room to talk but pretty much I think a lot of us are really over the whole ‘I’m better than you’ attitude.”
“On any given day, no matter how great you think you are there is always someone that is looking at the possibility to get a glimpse as to what it is like to know what you have experienced and you, old man, have had a lot of experience.” he takes a sip of his drink that’s been sitting by him, “You are so used to the next young upstart coming along and looking to knock you off that pedestal you have a death grip on. I have come to the realization that there is always a possibility with me doing just that but I also have things that tend to hold me back. Whether it’s my life, my anger...which is what cost me the Roulette Championship...I know that now more than anything that I did let my anger get the better of me against Bill.”
“I’m gonna use my anger, my angst and I wanna turn it into a strength instead of a weakness. I’m not one to use my anger on innocent people and sometimes it just so happens that whomever I’m across the ring from deserves a little hard dose of just how dangerous one can truly be...when they are properly motivated. A win against you, would be huge in the bucket list column, at least with this we don’t have any stupid gimmicks and I can show you just how far I have really come.” Miles head drops, “I know some people even after a couple of years still consider me the young upstart with potential out the ears but then they’re like ‘He really is just a lovable loser.’. I got told by people that they are still convinced that I paid people off for wins. I’m honestly getting sick and tired of the backhanded comments around here and I think it’s about time I really live up to what some people see and what some people try and stomp out.”
“I’m not gonna let someone with a stick so far up their arse they should be classified as a puppet treat me like I’m worth nothing anymore. NOT ANYMORE!” he sniffs hard and glares even harder, “I’m not gonna let people who should have that silver spoon shoved down their throats treat me or even the ones closest to me, like we belong on the bottom of their shoe.”
“Prove points, attitude adjustments and doing whatever I need to do to finally get it through people’s heads that you only just gave me all kinds of ammo and I’m gonna make you pay for every time you tried to beat us down.”
Miles reaches behind him and looks at the photo, his eyes growing cold. He crumples it up and tosses it into the pit.
“And I’m going to eat you alive, like the wolf I am.”
He pushes himself up, grabbing his glass and walks awake. We focus on the fire as it burns the photo he tossed in there, where we see a headshot of Lazurus that Miles must have taken from Carter’s apartment and it burns quickly, melts and then turns to ash.
