AJ is aimlessly poking around her laptop, looking up toddler birthday ideas, since Sara Louisa's birthday is coming up with the quickness, when Mike realizes something and uses his phone to look something up, gaping at the webpage before him in horror. "Crap!" he gasps, almost leaping out of his chair and pacing around their patio as he tugs at his hair. "Dammit, this is bad. This is sooooo bad..."
She frowns and stands up too, finally planting herself in front of him to get his attention. "What's wrong? Mike?"
"Shane's birthday!" he cries out. "It's this week, and I have nothing planned, nor any gifts for him, and- oh shit, what kind of tag partner am I?" He continues to panic until she grips his jaw and forces him to look at her.
"Calm down," she says sternly, her eyes softening when he relaxes, slightly, under her fingers. "You're The Miz. You'll figure it out. You still have a few days, just... go put things together. I know you, you'll make it work. You're not Mr Connected for nothing, now are you?"
It's true. Mike knows a lot of people, people willing to do favors, help him with things. His eyes brighten as he starts putting the pieces together, leaning in to kiss her. "Thank you, sweetheart," he whispers before pulling away and dashing for his phone.
She chuckles and shakes her head, turning back to her own party project while Mike dashes around the house, going on about sneakers and cakes and banners and whatever else to the people on the other end of the phone, running her fingers over the touchpad as she reads over various party ideas and wondering where the time went that Sara's nearly three years old by now, starting preschool imminent.
-x
Mike races. Checks things off of his to do list like a man on fire, cakes, check, sneakers, check, banner, check, suit specially designed for this party, check, and of course the piece de resistance which he'd gotten them last week- a tag title match at the Royal Rumble against Sheamus and Cesaro. He rubs his jaw, grinning. Totally worth the Brogue Kick, yeah.
By Tuesday, everything's settled, Mike's got everything together, working like a finetuned machine, and when he actually comes out at the end of Smackdown and sees the ring, decorated carefully just as he'd specified, it's almost enough to bring tears to his eyes. More so when he sees how pleased Shane is with everything, the sneakers and the cakes, and everything else. Mike listens, rapt, as Shane declares he's going to reveal something deeply personal and confesses that when he was a child, his first goal in WWE was to become tag team champions with Andre the Giant, and how glad he is that Mike is going to be his tag partner.
Mike beams, so happy that everything's falling back into place, encouraging the crowd to sing Happy Birthday to You for Shane. They've barely gotten deeply into it, however, when The Bar interrupts and belittles all that Mike's worked so hard on. One thing leads to another and he finds himself agreeing to wrestle Sheamus, despite being in a suit, reminded of Shane not being ready to compete either when he'd won the Best in the World trophy for them. The match is difficult, Sheamus is brutal on a good night, and Cesaro is on the outside trying to screw everything up for Mike- when Shane gets ahold of him and sends him through the table, saving Mike from this particular kind of humiliation.
Mike wins, Sheamus gets a face full of cake after Shane gets in position for a Coast to Coast right into the dessert held over his face, and Shane takes it as graciously as one could hope when Mike smushes a bit of the cake over his face. All in all, Mike thinks things are going well, especially when Shane agrees to continue his birthday celebration as soon as he's done making sure the business part of the show is wrapped up while 205 Live begins airing.
They decide against really partying any further and go to some quiet all night diner, Mike nursing a mug of hot coffee while Shane stares at pictures of Sara Louisa. "She's adorable, Mike," he says with a small smile, handing his phone back over, and Mike beams.
"Thanks, I think so too. It's ridiculous how big she's gotten, I feel like I miss so much when I'm on the road even though AJ takes pictures and sends me videos as often as she can."
"I remember those days," Shane says. "When my boys were little and I was gone so much, between first WWE and then business in China..." His words fade off into nothing and he shakes his head, smiling just a little. "Best we can hope is try to prove how much we love them when we do get to see them, and hope they never have the same misgivings with us that we do over our own fathers, huh?"
"Yeah," Mike exhales, scooping up some french fries and chewing on them moodily. "I worry about that a lot. I never want her to feel like she's less important to me than my career, I just... I do this for her, you know? So she'll have everything and anything she'll ever want, and... just have a comfortable life without some of the struggles that I did back in the day." He picks at his lip and sighs. "Hopefully someday she'll be old enough to properly understand what I did."
"I'm sure she will," Shane says. "And appreciate that you did the best you could. I think my boys are slowly getting there, thankfully, between my being back in the company now, and their figuring out that it's not just fun and games and exotic locations. It's made it easier to understand why I can't be home sometimes."
Mike nods, eyes locked on him. "I hope it'll be like that for Sara too, some day soon."
"I'm sure she will," Shane says, spinning Mike's phone back over to him and swiping on the screen to wake it up so he can look closer at the toddler there, eyes wide and looked on the camera as she waves her hands around exuberantly.
"I truly hope so," Mike mulls, hoping that Sara will eventually figure things out like Shane's sons did. "Thanks, man. I obsessively think about that a lot, and I'm sure it gets annoying to listen to sometimes."
"Not at all," Shane says, leaning back into the crinkly edge of his leather seat. "Any time you want to talk, I'm here to listen."
"Thank you," Mike says with a bright smile, staring across at Shane. I could easily be tag partners with this man within about two weeks...The more he thinks about it, Mike realizes, the more he likes it.
The more he can' wait for the Royal Rumble to just arrive already.