Rating: PG, slash.
Continuity: NWA-TNA/Indies, futurefic.
Characters: Christopher Daniels, AJ Styles.
Summary: Ten years from now, Daniels remembers how it used to be.
Bright
In my memory, the years have made no difference. The face I see is not the one I know so well, with my eyes, my fingertips and my mouth, but the one that I first saw: the fresh-faced boy who was all seriousness until that first smile. It was -- still is -- that smile that caught me. Yours is a handsome enough face, blue eyes, brown hair, but when you smile, something bright happens.
Something bright always seems to happen around you.
That first match at Wildside told me you were special: you were headed for the stars, and everybody there knew it. It was only a matter of time before you moved to greener pastures. Talent like yours deserved a bigger audience, a grander showcase. You deserved lights and fireworks, chanting crowds with adoring eyes. You deserved the world.
You smiled at me when you saw me at Ring of Honor. Not quite the world yet, but one step up. You said you liked my robe, is it the same one I wore when I appeared at Wildside? And I was surprised that you even remembered. You smiled that same smile when we met again at TNA. One more step up, and you asked me the same question. You laughed when I let you touch the collar around my throat, and I shivered when your fingertips brushed my collarbone.
When I pick up the phone now and dare to call, you sound distant. Preoccupied. I wonder if you remember the way you blushed when I shivered under your touch. There is no memory in your voice, not like mine. Too much compacted into tiny words that have no meaning, history in my tone that you can't seem to hear. The voice you give me is the one you give to everyone else, and I wonder how I managed to fall from your grace.
There is fear in my voice, something shaking, trembling, weak and exposed for your judgement. Give me a little disdain, a dash of contempt. I have fallen behind, grown old, no longer your match. My shoulder sidelined me while you continued your journey up the pyramid of stars. Show me that you hate my weakness, my body that can no longer repair itself, no longer keep up. But all you give me are bland notes while a chorus of sounds filters through the phone.
Perhaps it would be best if you let the executioner's sword fall upon my neck. There would be less mess that way.
In my memory, you are smiling at me. You are whispering in my ear, about the dinner that we will have, the room we will go to, the bed we will lay upon. A hurried kiss is all you give me before you walk away.
You walked away and never came back.
I see you now only on television. No longer a boy, no longer fresh-faced. You are all seriousness, and there is no smile to brighten the air around you. The colors seem muted, the blue flat, the brown matted. And I only hear you on the phone, a thin voice from hundreds of miles away. You sounded happy when you won the Intercontinental Title. You didn't call when you lost it the next night. Farther and farther away you became, until you no longer called at all.
In my dreams, you are angry at me. You pound your fists at my chest and demand why we wasted so many years. Why I let you fly when I should've held you tight, trapped you like a bird and held your brilliance in my palms. Never pushed you for a try-out even as I went into surgery. Asked you to stay and never let you go.
In my memory, I remember you as you were. Bright as a star.
In my memory, I have your smile.