That Thursday, Mike arrives at Superstars, content to briefly sit in the car and stare at the late April weather, taking deep breaths as he considers the next few days ahead. This match, whatever it may be here, then Sunday against Santino for the US title. He's not sure what'll follow that, maybe another week of nothing, maybe not, but there's a current in the air. He thinks change will be coming, one way or another.
Getting out of the car finally, he heads for the building, head tucked down as he tries to straighten out his warped luggage handle, not noticing in time and running right into someone leaving. "Hey!" he exclaims, almost knocked clean off his feet by the collision.
"Watch where you'r- Oh." Alex cuts himself off abruptly, flushing as he realizes who he'd almost just knocked down, his quick reflexes helping him in grabbing the shorter man the only thing keeping him from hitting the pavement probably. "Mike. Sorry, I didn't see you coming."
"Obviously," the former WWE champion blinks, regaining his footing as Alex lets him go. "Where's the fire?"
"Oh." His flush grows deeper and he coughs awkwardly. "No fire, I just wanted to go outside and wait for you."
"Wait for me? Why?" he asks suspiciously.
Alex looks uncomfortable, running his fingers through his short hair. "Um, my match tonight..."
"Yeah?" Mike mumbles, pushing past him to enter the arena as he thumbs over his touchpad phone, reading tweets. "What about it?"
"It's against you."
This stops him in his tracks. "Excuse me?" They wander into the locker room to get ready for the match, not even minding the odd looks they get from the other guys on the card that night. As Alex begins stretching and taping himself up, Mike stares at his arm. "You injured?" White gauze is wrapped from his wrist halfway up his elbow and just looking at it this close to a match makes his former mentor uncomfortable.
"Sore, mostly," Alex tries brushing it off. "I overdid it at the gym, I think." Mike hums in response, about to say something about the match tonight, when he speaks over him. "You don't need to take it easy on me though. I know you have that match on Sunday and you need to impress; if it happens to be against me, that's fine. I can take it."
Miz gapes at him, shaking his head. "You expect me to..." He stares at the protected arm, which is all but a beacon to potential opponents begging to be targetted, and takes a deep breath. It's the smart move, it's what anybody with five minutes experience in a wrestling ring would do. He still doesn't like it though.
Their match goes back and forth, Mike indeed targetting the arm now and again. Even so, he wants both men to impress, maybe get Alex out of the slump he's been in too, so whenever the younger man seems to be flagging, he would get right in his face and taunt him, yell at him. Anything to get him going again, lengthen the match by that much more to show that A-Ri could roll with the big boys. Even one who's being overlooked as much as he is currently; Mike is a former champion and it has to count for something still, he figures.
Finally he sees his opportunity and takes it, hooking his foot around Alex's leg and sweeping him down into the Skull Crushing Finale, eyes slipping closed a minute as he relishes in the moment. He's missed hitting that move so much. He rolls from the ring first, heading up the ramp as Alex peers from the ring at him, obviously annoyed at the loss and in a fair amount of pain, but both men carry a fair amount of respect for the other as the show slowly fades to black and Mike heads to the back to wait for Alex to do so as well.
As soon as he stumbles through the curtain, Miz sucks in a breath, pushing away from the wall he's been leaning against and walking alongside him to the trainer's office. "You alright? I didn't do too much damage to the arm, did I?"
"Nah, I'm alright," Alex shakes his head, slowly flexing his fingers to show that nothing seriously is wrong. "Was that a good warm up for Sunday?"
Mike grins. "Yes, yes it was. Thanks, Alex."
"Anytime."
They're going home to their respective states until Sunday for the pay per view so Mike drags Alex, bad arm and all, to a nearby store whose bakery just happens to still be open, and they pick around whatever's left. "I'm buying," Mike says. "Get whatever you want." Alex grins, finally finding a selection of individually wrapped slice of cheesecakes and holding them up. Once Mike nods, they head for the register.
Despite being sliced somewhat small, there are six so the two men divide them, Mike content with his chocolate chip, walnut and New York style slices, while Alex digs into the plain, strawberry swirled, and cherry covered ones.
"Happy birthday, man."
"Thanks," Alex grins at him.
Sunday however goes bad early. He's had days to dwell on it, think about what a travesty it is that he's thrown into the pre-show- something free online, no less!- and by the time he heads out to the ring, he's grumpy and ready for the whole arena- world- to know it. He lays into Chicago, he complains about being disrespected, he lays out all of his thoughts and feelings that'd been cluttering his mind for the past three days nonstop, and even that isn't enough, the anger still deep inside. Instead, however, of fueling his rage into a victory, it causes him to be sloppy. He gets hit by that stupid Cobra and everything goes dark for a bit.
When he awakens, a referee is leaning over him, waiting to help him to the back if he needs it, and the match is long over, Santino the victor. He slaps his fist against the mat before jerkily rolling out of the ring, ignoring the referee the whole staggering way up to the top of the ramp. Alex is there to greet him but he barely catches sight of him before he lifts one hand and basically gives him the Maryse hand gesture before storming off, not in the mood to talk to anyone or hear a pep talk of any sort. He doesn't see Alex for the rest of the night.
Monday starts off alright but becomes even worse than the preshow. The first Beat the clock challenge is him vs... of course... Santino, but whereas things didn't click the night before, they do tonight. He wins in 4:18, in what seems like a respectable time, but it doesn't last that long when the referee claims that Jericho beat the clock by a second, even though he obviously hadn't. Mike sits anxiously as the footage is played again, Laurinaitis getting involved and deciding that Mike's time held. He sighs, slumping down in his chair to wait, almost surprised that the Unfortunate GM of both Raw and Smackdown had actually made a proper decision.
"Mike?"
He looks up, surprised to find Alex standing in the hallway nearby, waiting. "Hey." Alex hesitantly joins him, staring at the monitor. "How's it going?"
"It's alright." They wait, tense and a bit awkward, as commercials run through. "Mike-"
"Alex-" They both hesitate. "I just wanted to say," Mike finally speaks again. "I'm sorry about last night. That match didn't go the way I wanted it to at all, obviously. I wasn't in the mood to talk or hear anything about the match, so... I just wanted to get out of there."
"It's ok, I understand." Alex leans against the wall, watching as the show starts up again. "What do you think?"
Mike shrugs, turning to look at him as they reair Lesnar attacking HHH for the millionth time. "So how was your birthday? Bet nothing you did beat the cheesecake in a crappy hotel room, right?"
Alex grins. "Yeah, it was alright. Guess who called."
"Who?" He glances back over at the TV, finding another recap airing on it, before turning back to Alex.
"Morrison."
This attracts his attention. "Oh really?" Despite their failed attempt at drunk dialing him the week before, he hadn't really heard from his former tag partner in weeks, struggling to give the man distance since their discussion following Wrestlemania, but it's hard, the days they'd spent just talking over the phone about this and that long gone once again. Whereas before, when the draft had happened and they were thrown on opposing shows, the divide between them had been anger and resentment. This go around, it's just emptiness and space, at least on his end. He wants to ask a lot of things about their conversation but, considering how much he hates nosiness, he reigns it in. Finally settling for a simple, "How is he?"
Alex's gaze softens. "He's doing well," he says. "We didn't talk for too long, he was in the middle of filming something, but he asked about you." Mike nods distantly, blatantly uncertain how to take this little bit of news. "I didn't really want to go into it, since I'm not sure how he feels about talking about WWE right now, so I just told him you were doing alright, that everything's kind of in flux for a lot of people right now."
"Well, that's true," Mike mumbles. In flux was one way to put a man successfully winning the boss' new role in the company and still not getting recognition of any sort for it. They both fall silent as the third BtC match begins, Orton vs Jack Swagger. Miz starts to feel sick as the match progresses, Swagger barely holding on as the seconds tick slowly by. Finally the worst happens- an RKO later and Miz's time is beat by a whole two seconds. He feels ill, almost throwing a punch at the TV before he slams his way out of the section of the arena put aside for the current holder of the best time.
Alex follows him outside, keeping up with him as he walks purposely down the hall towards Laurinaitis' locker room. Just feet away, however, he skids to a stop, breathing heavily. There's just no point. He hasn't listened to me since he took the role of interim GM. Why the hell would he listen to me now? His fists clenching, he leans his forehead against the cool concrete wall and tries to regulate his breathing, cursing quietly between each inhale.
A hand rests carefully on his shoulder a few minutes later and he tries to shrug it off but its grip is as stubborn as he is, holding on tightly. When he finally looks up to yell, Alex is standing before him, his bad arm weighed down by one bag- Miz' bag- and another laying on the floor, waiting. "Let's get out of here, huh?"
Nothing's ever sounded so good to the bone-weary, angry man. "Yeah," he snaps. "We better before I do something I'm going to regret."