A/N: Short chapter. Oversea tours are fun :P

After commentating Main Event, Mike travels to Australia for the beginning of the overseas tour, relieved to leave the whole AJ drama behind him. He spends the weekend wrestling at the live events, and sightseeing when he has a few minutes. Outside of Skype sessions with A-Ri, he's the most cut off he's been in quite awhile and it's actually kind of nice.

Even so, when Monday in the States rolls around, he makes it a point to watch for tweets from WWE so he knows when the show will begin so he can at least track results, since it's not shown live where he's currently at. The only thing that keeps it from being completely dull is when Alex requests a Skype session with him, and Mike accepts just to find the webcam aimed at the monitor so he can watch the show. He chuckles, beyond relieved for his friend's foresight. "Alex?"

"Hey, Mike." Alex peeks around the corner of the screen, waving at him. "Thought you'd be floundering without a way to watch the show, so here ya go."

"Thanks!" he exclaims, settling in to watch. "What's been goin' on, man?"

Alex grins at the computer and shrugs. "Not much, man. The locker room's damn dreary with so many of you in Australia right now though." He sighs. "I heard they might need me for something on Smackdown, but I have no clue yet." They fall silent for a minute, considering what all that could be before Alex turns his attention back to the show. "Can you see the screen alright?"

"Yep, it's perfect." They watch for awhile in silence until AJ appears, yelling at Big E about how he just watches, allowing her to constantly get speared by Kaitlyn. But something seems to register with her after a moment and she immediately turns sweet, pressing a finger to his chest and teasing him about secretly liking her, to which the larger man merely rolls his eyes and doesn't respond, AJ oblivious to it all.

"Well, he has a weird way of showing he's interested, doesn't he?" Alex says after an awkward moment, turning towards the screen to catch Mike's face. "Sorry, man," he mumbles quietly, looking away. "Why did she change on a dime like that? I mean, outside of the obvious... that was extreme, even for her..."

Mike has his suspicions but he doesn't like it much, keeping his thoughts to himself as AJ vs Kaitlyn starts and Mike rolls his eyes, cupping his jaw in his hands. "Yay," he intones dully while the two women go back and forth, Big E watching from the outside when Kaitlyn once more spears AJ to a victory. E's just rolled in to perhaps pull her out of the ringside area when Dolph comes out, mocking them before challenging E to a match right now.

E has the advantage for quite awhile, brutalizing Dolph and screaming at him that it's his time, but AJ, her anger boiling over everything more and more the longer the match goes on, rolls into the ring when Dolph actually has a moment of offense against the much larger superstar, kicking and punching him, tearing his hair out of his head even. The match goes to Dolph by DQ and Big E turns his anger to the diva, demanding to know what she'd been doing, when Dolph sneaks back in and hits the ZigZag on Big E, AJ unable to do anything but watch as the enforcer falls in front of her, tears filling her eyes as she once more screams at the failure of another evening.

The show goes on and on, Alex and Mike's interest quickly fading away and they end up talking through the second half, Mike grinning despite how all over the place his thoughts are since the latest AJ drama. "I have an idea," he tells Alex. "Since we still haven't done our annual fireworks thing, why don't we have a beach party in LA during Summerslam? You, me, Morrison... heck, Ricardo will be off of suspension by then, we can invite him, and Del Rio too, I guess-"

His sentence is cut off when the laptop is suddenly pulled away, Mike blinking in confusion as the muffled sounds of Alex snapping at someone barely reaches the microphone, the screen shaking and showing a blur of colors until finally it resettles on the tear streaked, flushed face of AJ Lee. "Would Big E and I be welcomed to this little party, too, Mike?" she demands. "Or maybe we should just crash it?" In a fashion similar to earlier, she tilts her head and grins sweetly, all but confirming his suspicion that it's all an act to make him burn with jealousy. "Did you watch us tonight, Mike? Did you see how interested he is in me? I'm so lucky to have him by my side-"

Mike watches her with a grimace. "You must've seen something the rest of us weren't privy to, sweetheart. He didn't have the appearance of someone interested in you."

"What do you know?!" she suddenly screams, the volume of her voice making Mike's laptop rattle with reverb as he cringes away from it. "You never cared either!" Fresh tears pour down her face as she all but throws the device back to Alex, who just barely grabs it in time before it crashes to the floor, the girl releasing another broken cry before slamming her way back out of the locker room, the younger man turning horrified eyes back to his former NXT mentor.

"Good God, Mike, she's scarier than a horde of squirrels," he mutters. "Speaking of, did you hear about the bubonic plague-"

Miz definitely has little to no patience for that, after everything he'd already been through in the past twenty minutes, though he doesn't want to think about AJ either, so this distraction is as good as any other could possibly be. "Alex. Alex!" he snaps, interrupting his diatribe about not wanting to contact the plague from the creatures who'd seemed to have so doggedly stalked him in the past. "You'll be fine, alright? John and I, we'll protect you from the nasty, evil squirrels." He takes a breath and tries to relax, voice losing some of its edge as he tries to coax his former rookie. "C'mon, Alex. This'll be good for us, especially since this month hasn't been the greatest for any of us, really. You need to come to LA anyway, for Summerslam Axxess. A beach party should be nothing compared to that, and besides... I know how much you like fireworks. We'll bring plenty of food and just... let loose, huh? What do you say?"

Alex sighs, closing his eyes. "Fine, Mike." He forces a smile. "You had me at fireworks and food. I'll be looking forward to it. Have you suggested it to John yet?"

"Nope," he shakes his head. "Figured we could Skype him together and suggest it to him once I'm back in the States. How's that sound?"

"Great." Alex grins. "Can't wait."

Mike grins back, finding that he can't either. He'd missed hanging out with John without the root cause being needing an ear for his latest woes... and it'd be great to do something that would help all of them just to relax, hopefully, before the biggest event of the summer. He thinks he's perhaps looking more forward to the party than to actually hosting the event...