A/N: And we're back. Thanks to everyone who reviewed and read. Sorry about the gap in update. I've got some other stuff up on Archive of Our Own I've been working on. But here's more of this.


9. Stuck

Mox gives the movie five minutes to get interesting. Like five complete, whole minutes.

That's a long time.

The movie doesn't get interesting. It's just credits and people talking.

He chugs some more vodka, and feels very warm and very slow. His head starts to swim with it, like he's one one of those twirly playground rides. It's nice. "Yeah, this is boring. Tell me another movie y'like."

"No," Leakee grunts from under his blanket. "Be quiet."

"Be quiet," Mox mocks. "You're fucking boring. Stop being f-fucking boring. 'S big deal 'bout talkin' to me? Not like I'm gonna run 'round blabbin'. I don't do shit like that."

"I find that hard to believe," Leakee says. Hard to see where he's looking, dark as it is in the living room. "You got a big mouth."

"I seem like I got a big mouth, but I don't. Mean, I do, kinda, 'cuz I can..." get it around a pretty fat dick. There's actually no need to say stuff like that tonight. For once. For once, he doesn't need to think about any of that shit. "I don't blab 'bout shit to people. 'S the big deal? Why don't you wanna talk? 'M not askin' for your life story. Don't gotta get all deep 'n shit. Just tell me a movie y'like. Like me, I like The Rock. That was a good one. Nic Cage? Y'ever see that one? Or Gladiator? Russell Crowe. Kinda bad-ass. 'M into action movies, mainly. I fuckin' love motorcycle chases 'n shit. Like in one of those Matrix movies? Love that shit."

He stops. Waits. Drinks more.

Waits for the fucking door to crack open even an inch, for Leakee to move his pieces onto the board.

Play with me here, dude. C'mon.

It takes like a whole week, seems like, but eventually Leakee sits up again, squeaky couch springs and his blanket hitting the floor by Mox's knee. Mox hears him sigh. Big man grabs the beer he'd abandoned on the coffee table and gulps more. Burps into a fist. "First Matrix was okay," he finally says. Reluctant, but whatever. An answer's an answer. "I didn't really like the second two as much. I did like Gladiator, though. The Dark Knight. I just saw that not too long ago."

"Oh, shit, yeah!" Mox laughs. "Fuck, that movie was awesome. I just saw it like a month ago."

"Let me guess," Leakee says, "you liked the Joker."

"Hell yeah, I did. Buddy of mine said I kinda remind him of the Joker sometimes when I'm doin' promos. I'm kinda like that, I guess. I don't really have a plan when I do shit. Just kinda wanna fuck shit up and see what happens. Kick over the anthill. 'S fun."

"Fun," Leakee snorts. He sounds like a bull. "So you like being an asshole."

"It puts asses in seats," Mox says. "People pay 'cuz they wanna see me get my ass kicked."

"I can see that." Leakee might actually have actually cracked a smile. "I might do that myself now that you mention it."

"Do. It's fun. We get the light tubes and shit goin'. Just beat the shit outta each other. It's a blast. I should be back in about a month." Hopefully. "Assumin' this testin' shit tomorrow goes okay, anyway." Fuck. "Okay, anyway, I gave you three movies. You gotta gimme two more."

Leakee shifts around so he's looking Mox's way more fully, and in the glow from the TV, Mox sees dark eyes narrow. "What happens if it doesn't?"

"What?"

"Your testing. What happens if it doesn't go okay?"

"Fucked if I know." Mox empties the rest of the bottle and stares at it mournfully. He can still think. There's thoughts still bumping like bubbles in his head. Things still hurt. His ass. His hands. His squinty eye. Thing only wants to open halfway. It sucks. It all sucks. He heaves the bottle at one of the bags. It clatters to the floor. "I don't wanna talk about it. Gimme two more movies."

"Are you homeless?"

"What movie's that? Are You Homeless? Who's innit? That like one of the Home Alone movies, or what?"

"It's a question." Leakee clears his throat. "We're having a conversation. That's what you wanted, right? Are you homeless?"

Mox slumps against the side of the couch. Everything is doing a slow tilt-a-whirl spin around his head now. "Toldja I's stayin' with a buddy, didn't I? Sami. 'N his girl. Got a room. 'Cept they're prolly gonna rent it out. They need money 'n I didn't get a job. D'you like livin' like this?"

Another week of silence falls, stretched out like a rubber band being pulled to snapping point. Leakee opens another beer, mutters, "No," into the can. "Why didn't you get a job?"

Blinking owlishly up at him, Mox says, "'Cuz I just wanted to get fucked up 'n forget some shit." Fucker Greg. Better be dead. "'F you don't like livin' like this, how come you do?"

Leakee twists the can in his big paw, round and around. "I dunno, man. Can't seem to make myself do anything. What'd you wanna forget?"

"Everything," Mox answers honestly. "You sick?"

"No. 'D you really try to kill a guy?"

Mox flaps one bruised up, ripped-up hand. "Fucker had it comin. I told him not to. He did it anyway. Fucker. C'n I have a beer?"

"Is that your question?"

"No. I just want a beer. 'M outta vodka." His tongue feels like it's a size too big for his mouth, thick and slow and sluggish. Staticky fuzz in his head too, like someone had turned on a TV in his brain and left it on loud. But nothing hurts. "Quess-question is, why not hire a cleaner?"

"Don't want anyone in here seein' this." Leakee digs a beer out of the box on the table, opens it, and passes it over. He grabs another one of his himself. Mox watches in something like awe as Leakee opens it and chugs the whole thing in a single go. The weak flickery light from the TV catches on the bit that spills out of the corner of Leakee's mouth. He swipes it off, grabs another beer, and chugs it, too. The empty can joins the eighteen or so on the table.

He doesn't ask a question.

Mox takes a drink of his own. It's lukewarm and pissy, but beer's beer. And he's aware in some still somewhat-functional part of himself that he's winning here, that he's managed to cracked open the Leakee-safe a little, he's managed to advance a square or two on the Leakee game board - like challenge met, motherfucker - but he's not satisfied yet.

"'M in here," he declares, loud and sudden and belligerent. That drunk-spike thing his voice always does. "I see it."

Leakee's whole big body seems to flinch. But then he looks at Mox with blackhole eyes, and parrots Mox's own words from earlier back at him: "I don't actually give a shit what you think."

"'S good," Mox says. "You shouldn't. I ain't worth shit. But, like. Why's it like this?"

Another whole beer chugged. Leakee sways a little when he leans forward to drop the can on the table. "Why do you care?"

"'Cuz I can't figure you out. 'M good at figurin' people out, but I can't figure you out. I don't get you. 'S like you're Professor Plum in the Library, but I dunno what weapon you used or why you did it. I don't get you."

"I don't get me, either," is Leakee's rumble of an answer. Either the TV flickers across his face or something changes in his expression because it gets all pinched up. "I can take care of things. I was taking care of the store. I hate it, but I was doing it. I dunno why it's gotten so bad. I wasn't like this before. This-" he flaps a hand at the mess "-ain't me."

"Why do you hate it?"

He waits and waits and waits for an answer, but Leakee sits there staring at the floor like a lump of clay. A lump of clay with a scraggly beard and long messy hair and clothes dirtier than Mox's. And somewhere deep in the buzz and static, Mox thinks he might feel something - bad? - about this. Or sorry? Maybe. Like maybe he's trying to kick over an anthill he should've just left alone. He wants to know what makes this dude tick, wants to know what makes everybody tick, but Leakee looks miserable all the way through.

Mox knows that look.

He's seen it on his own face in the mirror a time or a thousand lately.

Then Leakee digs another beer out of the back of a box and slams it. And another. Two empty cans rattle onto the floor. Leakee slumps onto his pillow. And maybe that's enough booze in him because he slurs, "I's playin' ball in Canada. Not great, but I was playing. The my uncle died. Left me the store. I didn't want it. Wanted to keep playing. Told my dad to sell it. He said if I don't keep it, I'm selfish and disrespecting my uncle. I don't want it. But I gotta. 'S family. Family's important. 'Cept they don't help 'cuz m'uncle did it on his own. So I gotta. Dunno why it's like this." He pulls his blanket around himself. "Don't wanna talk 'bout it. Watch the movie."

For probably the first time in his life, Mox actually keeps his mouth shut.

Even if the room wasn't making him feel like he'd gotten trapped inside a wash machine, he probably wouldn't even know what to say, anyway. Still doesn't make a lot of sense, but there's explosions on the screen and the day's starting to catch up to him. Or maybe it's whole bottle of vodka. Something. He's tired.

He won, though, kinda: cracked Leakee open just a little. Took a whole fuckin' case of beer, practically - and holy shit Mox might have actually met his drinking match in this guy, which is really fuckin' impressive - but he got there. Little tiny crack and a peek inside at something.

Something.

He just doesn't know what.

Enough beers kill that thought, too.


And suddenly it's daytime again, little bars of light blaring in through slits in black-out curtains.

Throbbing bladder o'clock, and oh God, Mox doesn't want to move.

There are some really cruel ninjas with stars and swords and nunchucks using the inside of his skull as a practice dummy. Everything everywhere is just pound and squeeze and ache, old and new, and a mouth that tastes like dried roadkill. He wedged between a coffee table and a couch somewhere, facedown in something he really hopes is just his own drool.

It probably isn't.

A new day has begun.


Mox pulls himself like a wounded animal through making himself look less than dragged-behind-a-car than he feels. Leakee never even stirs, the lucky bastard, just lays there in his huddle on the couch and snores away like some fuckin' lumberjack buzzsawing through logs.

Some one-on-one time screaming into the porcelain megaphone, aspirin, and a scalding shower are a start, but what Mox needs more than anything is for it to be later today and him sippin' on a beer at Sami's with all this other bullshit fading in his rearview mirror.

Or coffee.

If he wasn't so afraid of contracting some horrible flesh-eating disease, he might have ventured into Leakee's kitchen to see if there is any.

Doubts there is.

"Jerk," Mox mutters at the sleeping bear on the couch.

He's got bugs under his skin right now, though, little chiggers or maybe just jitters or something, so coffee might not be the best idea. Probably shouldn't, anyway, if he's getting blood testing done or whatever the hell it is they're going to do to him.

H-motherfuckin'-I-V.

Just to be a dick, he considers not hauling out any of the trash bags, but then he remembers how sad-sack old Leakee was about it all last night - I dunno why it's gotten so bad - and decides maybe he can take ten minutes to toss all ten thousand trash bags into the dumpster on his way out. Go sweep the shit up in the shop. He can do that. He's not a complete asshole.

So he does.

He makes sure the giant black bags are tied shut tight, and hucks them down to the bottom of the landing, praying like hell the stinking things don't erupt into a garbage rainshower. 'Cuz he'll just have to pick it up, and fuck that noise.

Speaking of, the noise of Mox tossing all those heavy bags downstairs doesn't even wake Leakee up.

But just to be a dick, Mox slams the door on his way out.

He's pretty sure he hears the snoring continue anyway.

"Fucker," he says, chuckling.

Can't really be mad about that, considering Free Parking and all last night.

On his way out the back door, though, he nearly falls on his face because there's, like, a whole forest of boxes sitting on the concrete step. There's gotta be almost twenty of them, in a variety of sizes, and all with UPS labels addressed to the store here. Mox kicks one and it rattles like there's metal in it. He hunkers down - slow, because he's a little dizzy - and examines one label. It's from some tool warehouse somewhere.

Shit for the store, probably, he realizes.

And it won't do to leave it out where where it could get rained on or stolen, so before he hauls the trash out, he carries the boxes in and sets them over behind the counter, where they're out of the way. Be his luck to fucking trip on one of them if he left them anywhere else. As it is, he's lucky he didn't face-plant off the concrete porch. He's already bruise-ugly right now. Doesn't need anymore decorations.

Takes him maybe twenty minutes to get the bags in the dumpster and the nails swept up like Leakee wanted, and the whole time he's doing his best not to vibrate out of his skin with the nerves.

He doesn't think he was this uptight before his first wrestling match.

And he was pretty fucking amped that day.

When he's got all Leakee's shit cleaned up, he lets himself out of the back door. Doesn't lock it. Figures maybe if he gets back around this way someday, he'll pop by.

'Cuz even if he cracked Leakee open a little, it doesn't feel like he really won anything yet.

Got a feeling he's not done with Leakee yet.

Not yet.

But for now, Mox has gotta go see if the guillotine blade over his head is gonna fall or not.


It's the world's worst walk of shame, heading into the free clinic.

He can't even look the receptionist in the eye. Just stares at the desk, mutters his name, and says the five words as fast as he can: "IneedanHIVtest."

There's only a couple people in the lobby ahead of him, but it seems like it takes a fucking year before he hears his name called. He sits in an uncomfortable, hard chair and stares at the covers of ten out-of-date magazines, fidgets. He's sure he looks like a junkie having withdrawals, the way he keeps scratching at his shoulder and tapping his foot, but he's never been good at waiting.

Finally, after he's about clawed himself open, they let him back into a room.

Just a tiny little cube. Illustrations of bodies in the wall. Raised bed-thing in the middle with its standard white paper sheet cover. Two chairs. A window covered by some old blinds. Counter with tongue depressors and cotton balls in clear containers. Antiseptic smell.

Fuck, he hates places like this.

His bones feel like they want to break out of his skin. The ninjas flail away at the inside of his head. He takes a breath. Two.

There's a knock, and finally somebody comes in. Youngish dude, lean and tired-looking. Lab coat two sizes too big for his arms and his ears about a size too small for his head. Nurse practitioner or PA or one of those not-quite-a-doctor people you get in places like this. They usually know their shit, though, so it's all the same to Mox.

Guy's all elbows and knees, and knocks into the bed when he sits down on a stool. Sets an inch-thick stack of pamphlets down in the empty chair next to Mox. First one says HIV Transmission Facts and Myths.

Mox honest-to-God wants to punch somebody.

At least the guy doesn't dick around. "I'm Matt," he says. "And you're Jon Moxley? Can you tell me your date of birth?" After Mox does, Matt looks down at his notes. "HIV test, huh? Before we do that, I need to ask you a few questions. Standard stuff. Just answer as truthfully as you can."

"Shoot," Mox says, impatient. If he had any fingernails left...well, he wouldn't have any fingernails left.

"How were you exposed?"

"Unprotected sex," Mox tells the floor.

"How long ago?"

"Uh, shit." Mox digs through the patchwork mess of memories he's got for the last two weeks, and tries to find something to anchor him at a specific time. Draws a blank. "Week, ten days ago, maybe. I don't know for sure. But there was another time after that that was like a few days ago. I just found out yesterday the dude might have had it."

"Do you know for sure if he did?"

"No. I just - that's what I heard somebody say. Figured I'd better get in. Better safe 'n sorry."

"Very true," the Matt guy says. "It's good that you did, but, unfortunately, if it's only been about ten days, we can't actually test you."

Mox shakes his hair out of his eyes, an impatient flick. Glares at the guy. "Why the fuck not?"

"It takes a while for the virus to become detectable in your body," is the calm answer. "Even the most expensive, sophisticated tests - which we don't offer here - need around ten to twelve days before they can pick it up. The tests we use can pick it up starting around three to four weeks. But in some people, it takes even longer for the virus to become concentrated enough that the tests pick it up. So we can test you here in two or three weeks, but if the results come back negative, that doesn't mean you are negative. We'd want to test you six to eight after that. Then again another two to three months after that, just to be on the safe side. If you're negative after five to six months, then you're in the clear."

The bottom falls out of Mox's stomach, just drops like a fucking stone. "Months?"

"Unfortunately, yeah," he says with what's probably supposed to be a sympathetic smile. "Really, the odds of you turning up positive after four months of negative tests are extremely low. But even so, it's still better to give it the full five to six."

Months.

Fucking. Months

"I wrestle for a living," Mox says. His mouth is numb, like he's just been injected with Novocain. Months. "Like, pro wrestling. There's glass and barbed and wire and shit. Kinda gets bloody. That's what I do. Could I still...?"

"Absolutely out of the question," the Matt guy says without a scrap of hesitation. "It's actually a felony to knowingly expose somebody to HIV. You can still transmit it in this window period. If you were to get cut open and your blood got in someone's cuts, they could get it. Until you know you're negative, you're going to have to avoid putting yourself in those situations."

Months.

Months of no wrestling.

Months of not being able to get his name out there, of being forgotten, of not being able to do shit after he'd just gotten himself back in the game and gotten noticed.

"Un-fucking-real."

"I'm sorry," Matt says. "I wish I had better news. That's just kind of how it goes with this stuff. Until you know for sure you're negative, you're potentially putting people at risk if they come into contact with your blood. Or your semen. I've got some pamphlets here for you to take. This is all good information about ways HIV is and isn't transmitted. Precautions you can take. Safer ways to have sex. Also..."

The guy keeps talking, but it's like listening to an adult in a Peanuts cartoon talk for all Mox can focus on any of it, just wah-wah-wah.

Months.

This guillotine blade is going to be hanging over his head for a long fucking time.

He stumbles out of the clinic and its antiseptic cool, and comes to a dead stop in the middle of the sidewalk, everything pounding all over, his blackened eye and his throbbing asshole having a loud argument with his head, and he doesn't have a fucking clue what to do.

Months.

Months of not being able to do the only fucking thing he's ever given a shit about or been good at.

Fucking useless stupid waiting.

He wants to howl, but his throat's fucking locked. His eyes are burning. Something in them, maybe,

And he needs to get away.

Somewhere. Anywhere. Just fucking away.

So he puts his head down and charges off down the sidewalk, not knowing where he's going.

Just goes.

Fuckyou fucker. Fuckyou fuckyou fuckyou.


A/N: Where's Mox gonna end up? Thanks for reading.

Also, I tend to research a lot when I write, so most of the stuff about HIV testing and what-not is pulled directly from what I uncovered in my research. It really does take a few weeks most before tests can detect HIV. That's not me trying to drag out or prolong the drama. I'm trying to keep this as close to factually accurate as I can. But that said, any mistakes are mine. I own 'em.