Jesse Durant vs Heatwave

[Ryan Cooke]

Good luck to both!

[Heatwave]

God, I was sweaty. Not the just finished working out or the ever so lovely, freshly fucked sweaty, but it was the "Holy Shit, it's hotter than dog piss" sweat. Muggy and filmy, it was as if it left a nasty feeling as if I haven't showered for days.

I looked down at myself and my white wife beater and the thin material of the shirt was very much so soaked through with this disgusting sweat of mine. To be honest, I don't even know how I could get this way so damn this dirty. I don't ever remember doing anything at all but the next thing I know I'm standing here, soaked to the bone in my own sweat with the look of total confusion on my face.

I sure as hell couldn't explain it.

After coming to the conclusion that I'm not tripping on acid or heroin nor have I been on one hell of a binge at the bar, I took a moment to look around at my surroundings hoping they would give me a clue of where I was. But yet, I couldn't really see anything I at all. It was dark in what it seemed was a warehouse or something, but yet the only thing in the middle of wherever the hell I was a black steel folding chair. It was extended out as a single light bulb hung down from its single wire. It flicked on and off every once and awhile, needless to say someone hasn't been here in quite a while.

Wherever here was, I was still trying to figure that question out myself.

I pat down my jeans for a moment hoping to find my cell phone, for the most part I always have it on me, just like every other person on the face of the earth. So needless to say, imagine my disappointment where I searched my pockets and up empty-handed. I should've figured, really. Nothing else has been coming my way since I found myself here. I sighed and shook my head trying to figure out how and why I got into the situation and better yet how the hell do I get out of it.

Yeah, that seems to be the better question.

"You know, Nick sometimes I wonder how the hell did we get here myself."

I turn around quickly and throw my hands up as if I was ready to scrap with the next person who walks in front of me. Even though the voice seemed to come from all around me I was still going to put up a fight.

"Look at you, Nick. Always on guard, no matter what. Is there ever an off-switch with you, man?"

Okay, I was starting to get a bit irritated about the whole situation. Not only was it funky and sweaty, not only was I somewhere I didn't want to be at, but the little bastard, whoever he was, apparently was coming off as if he knew me.

Little prick.

"Oh com'n Nick say something."

I just about had enough as I kept my hands up, I was really tense at this point, and I wanted to swing. I want to lunge out and let my fist connect with something or somewhat.

"Say what? How about you grow a set and step into the light and stop acting like a little bitch?"

Whoever it was simply laughed, like a made a damn joke or something. "That's the Nick I know. You want to know who I am? Well then turn around."

I wasn't too sure about this. I've seen enough movies to know that usually when someone has the jump on you, you're dead and you just don't know it yet. I have a lot of enemies so needless to say I wasn't too sure if I want to turn around, but I didn't have any other choice, so I turned around.

And I swear my jaw hit the ground...yeah just like in the cartoon, the sound effects and everything.

Who was I staring at?

Some old enemy?

Some old girlfriend?

Some one night stand.

Some one night stand or old girlfriend?

No.

I was looking at myself.

Weird.

So here I am, funky, confused, and rather sweaty looking at myself. Almost a different version of myself. So here I am, looking at myself, I was, well I guess he was dressed in an all white suit, complete with a white silk tie and rather shiny white leather shoes. Needless to say, I clean up pretty well, especially with a one carat round diamond earring in my left earlobe. I stepped up to my alter ego, in a sense and stared right in his brown eyes.

"What the hell is all of this?" I asked. I wanted some answers and I wanted some answers now.

"Where the hell are we?"

He only smiled and shook his head. "Well, to be honest, this is what I like to call...", he stopped to chuckle. "...this is what -we- like to call a Coming to Jesus Meeting."

I took a step back as if I was punched in the stomach and simply had the look of confusion on my face.

"Okay, man maybe I'm a little slow on the draw at the moment but I'm not following."

He shook his head and chuckled. "I figured you wouldn't. You only respond when someone spells it out for you. Damn, Nick you would think that after four years at Nebraska and you'd be smarter than a damn brick. We are going to discuss what means more to you than anything."

"Your career."

"I don't know if you've noticed but you suck."

Are you serious? Was I about to get into this with...myself?

"Man, fuck you I don't suck."

He arched a brow and placed his hands on his waist. "Oh yeah? You think so? Well let me ask you this, since you've beaten Mason where are you on the card? Better question who are you fighting next?"

This can?t be happening. "Uh? Jesse Durant."

"Yeah, a lot of people in the PPW and you know the sad thing? Out of those people you're still on the bottom of the card, opening match. When are you going to finally put a end to getting shafted When you are going to realize that you half-assing it around here isn't going to get you anywhere?"

"Man, screw you. I don't need this shit."

I've had enough, I was not about to get a lecture from anyone, not even myself. So I started to walk, I don't have a clue where I am, but if I walk far enough I'll figure something out.

"Go ahead, walk away! But just remember you still ain't shit. You haven't earned anything yet! Beating Mason isn't anything compared to what you can accomplish, but if you want to walk away thinking you shit doesn't stink go ahead but realize that how can you go back saying you're cock of the walk when the last three matches you've gotten you no where! Go ahead and walk away from everything. You're no better than your fucking father."

Hold it.

I turned around, it doesn't take much to push my buttons but yet -that- topic will get you in a heap of trouble. I rush back to him grabbing him by the collar of his suit jacket. At this point and time I didn't give a shit if I wrinkled his Armani jacket. I wanted to get something off my chest and bad.

I found some leverage and with a good bit of pure strength I lifted him off the ground. "Listen here you son of a bitch, I'm nothing like my father, he just gave me a name and that's it, you fucking hear me? I'm a better man than my father ever will be and soon enough I will be a better father than he ever will be. If you ever try to compare me and the man ever again I swear to God I will kill you where you stand, I promise you that."

And can you believe the bastard had the audacity to smile at me.

"Wow, you can still get angry? I'm surprised Nick, I figured you had gone soft on me since you've been in the PPW."

I set him down roughly, making him lose his balance a bit. He caught his balance, smoothing out his jacket. "Question, Nic? Do you remember the WMW?"

He was on my bad side now I really wasn't into the Q & A session he was trying to give me.

"Yeah, I remember it." I said reluctantly. God, I wasn't in the mood for this right now.

"You know, Nick, you had fun then. You were a force then, you were someone to be feared when they get into the ring with you. You had this aura about yourself, you didn't give a shit about whatever one else thought, good or bad because you only cared about getting into the ring. And you know what, you where good at it. But now,look at you. You beat to J.C.Mason and in return...you find yourself curtain jerking once again." He stepped up close to me and gave me a rather rough shove to my chest.

To his credit, which is actually -our- credit, I forgot who strong I was.

I took a step back, as I looked away. "I suggest you don't do that again."

"Or what, Nick? Or you are going to get angry or something, you are a shell of what Heatwave used to be. You think that Demetrius or C.J. Rowell give two flying shits about you, Nick? They don't because they know that can beat you, they've both proven it. What have you proven? Nothing more than you can run for fuckin' mouth. Get angry, damnit. Get angry and take it out on those unlucky sons of bitches.?

And after that, he shoved me again.

"Listen, don't fuckin' touch me again."

He shook his head. "You aren't getting it, Nick. Get angry! Stop trying to fucking hold back and get angry! The PPW is yours to own if you will stop holding back and get fucking angry, Nick! Goddamnit, man! I swear you're starting to piss me off now, what is it going to take for you to get that look again and tear the PPW apart, huh?"

And he shoved me again.

"I said STOP FUCKIN' TOUCHING ME!", I yelled out at the top of my lungs several veins had appeared down the sides of my neck at the strain.

Yet the whole time I was about to lose my composure or what was left of it, he was strangely calm. "Or what, Nick? So far you've said a lot of bullshit nothing to back it up with."

What happened next was like a reflex almost as if I've been doing it for years. I reached behind and pulled out a Glock .40 from the back of my jeans and held his right in front of his face. I don't know how it got there, when this all started I don't remember bringing anything with me, I even frisked myself so how did this gun get here? Well at this point and time it was kind of a low point of where I got it from, the thing is I have it now.

"Well Nick, you're halfway there. Pull the trigger."

"Stop telling me what to do! I'm sick of you talking to me." He took a step forward placed the muzzle of the gun against his forehead. "Then do it, Nick. Pull the trigger, Nick."

"Stop being afraid, Nick and pull the damn trigger, Nick."

"Do it, Nick!", he started to yell out.

"Pull the goddamn trigger!"

"Pull it!"

So I did what any man would do in my position.

I squeezed the trigger.

I awoke with a start. I never heard the bang of the hammer, nor the flash from the muzzle. I looked at my hands, clammy. My breathing was very heavy as if I just ran the Boston Marathon at full speed and still lost to those Kenya fuckers. '

I was filthy, just like in the beginning. I looked over in the bed and see Nicole sleeping soundly beside me, she didn?t have an idea of the trip I just went on.

But then again neither did I.

What was that all about?

I shook my head slowly as I glanced at the clock, it read three forty five in the morning. I need to take a walk but first, I need a shower.

I'm all sweaty.

[Jesse Durant]

He sees his name on the booking sheet and thought about the long road behind him. Three years of healing and rehab, pain and sweat, at times feeling hopelessly incapable of doing the smallest tasks, other times he’d been elated at such tiny triumphs as walking up five little steps unaided. By the end of the first year he could walk on his own without aid of any kind and only a very pronounced limp. His grip had still been weak and a little clumsy, but he could manage to turn keys and open doors with his left hand, a good thing too, since he was a lefty. He’d spent the next year continuing to rehab, till his grip was as strong as it had been before the accident and his limp was only noticeable when he was very tired. He’d spent the whole next year being very tired.

They’d said he had little chance of walking again without aid of at least a cane, Well, it had taken time but he’d done it. They’d told him there was no chance in hell he would ever wrestle again.

That he still could not accept.

So Jessie had contacted the man who trained him and he’d asked Ty Walker if he would train him again, and Ty had done so.

Gone was the rookie that Jesse had been. 18 and a daredevil, high flyer, balls to the wall off the top rope every chance he’d gotten, balcony diving, back flipping, hot headed crazy son of a gun. Somewhere in the course of all that pain and rehab he’d grown up. The temper he’d never been able to control, the temper that had landed him in several scrapes he’d been unable to get himself out of had been no match for the patient persistence of those who had worked with him every day, trying to help him regain his independence, and maybe, his dream.

At the time of the accident Jesse had been 19 years old, he’d had all of nine matches and there had been a million and one dreams, a million and one hopes and plans and visions that he had for his career. He was 22 now, and understood the importance of taking it one day at a time. He’d signed a three month contract, that would give him the time to know whether or not his body could take the punishment, the rigors of being back in the ring and on the road.

At least this time he would be able to focus all of his attention on what he intended to do. His brother, Tommy, for whom he had been made guardian of before his accident, was 17 now, he was nearly done with school, he had a job and he too had turned his life around. Gone was the attitude, the anger and the drugs, done was the thefts and vandalisms that had brought him to the attention of the courts. Without Tommy, Jesse didn’t know how he would have made it through some of the more grueling months of rehab, but Tommy always seemed to be there, sticking by Jesse, encouraging him, reminding Jesse how much he looked up to him. There was no way in hell that Jesse was going to let Tommy down.

When Jesse had packed up and left home this time just the leaving had been a moment of triumph. The physical scars he would always bear, but the psychological ones had slowly been fading. Jessie no longer cringed or coward when he saw a Semi Truck headed his way, he no longer curled terrified in the back seat as they drove past one, and he could look at a motorcycle now without seeing images of his broken body, distorted usually to a point far past death, laying on the asphalt. In short the dreams had ceased to trouble him and the daytime visions were losing their hold. He still didn’t like to drive though, a lingering phobia, maybe, but it had taken a great deal of prompting to get him behind the wheel of anything. He doubted he’d ever touch another motorcycle again, as it was, he counted himself lucky that the Semi had only clipped him, that the car hadn’t smashed him directly, and that he’d been but a tiny player in that pinball game out on the highway, spun one way and then the next before everything had stopped abruptly in a hail of metal flashes, tail lights and the spots and stars that had waltzed in front of his eyes. Lucky…he’d been so damn lucky.

He closed his eyes and remembered back to those first uncertain days in the hospital when he hadn’t felt very lucky at all.

Flashback

"Don't worry it's still there." Ty pressed him back down again. "They managed to save it."

Jesse seemed relieved

“wrestle” he said softly

"Maybe." Ty said.

Jesse closed his eyes grabbing the sheets in one hand and shaking his head a bit

There had been more things spoken, more words that at the time had only felt like hallow, empty words. He remembered how hard Ty had tried to encourage him…looking back Jesse could acknowledge now that it was the only thing that had kept him alive.

Only if you don't want to, Jesse." Ty said sternly. "You're down and out right now, but everyone falls down, sometimes, they fall harder than others and that's life. But, getting back up is what counts in the end and it's up to you..." His voice trailed. "You can think you're gonna be nothing but some damned cripple for the rest of your life or you can deal with the fact that you're gonna have to fight harder for this than anything you've ever fought for in your entire life."

Jesse tried to sit up and found he couldn’t even move which frustrated him more

“I’m nothing now; he said softly, turning his eyes back towards the window

"Now." Ty said. "But, that's not forever."

Jesse was just silent, he hurt and the knowledge of the damage made him want to go back to sleep forever. He closed his eyes, crying silently

“I wish I hadn’t woken up” he said softly, almost to himself.

End flashback

Over and over he’d wished he hadn’t woken up the first time. Each new day had brought new levels of pain, new struggles. He’d been afraid he would never heal, afraid he would never be able to move on his own, but when the stitches had come out the new fear started, when he’d tried to make things work the way they should have. It had been the fear that he had survived but for what, what purpose could a body that had sustained as much damage as his had really have in the long one. He’d felt sorry for himself, become depressed, sat in rehab the first month refusing to do anything because every god damn thing had been too damn hard, brought too much pain. He’d given up.

Or at least, he’d thought he had.

He didn’t remember why he started looking around at everyone else, but he did and what he saw shocked him. There were injuries there so much worse than his own, he at least, had all of his parts intact, though scarred. There were those in the rehab center missing an arm, missing a leg or both of them as in the case of once young man about his age who’d been run over by a piece of heavy farm equipment. There was a young girl whose face was so badly scarred she was blind and yet she worked hard each day to learn to read brail, her scarred hand slowly and painfully moving over the raised bumps that made up the words. There was another young man in a wheelchair, his limbs twisted and deformed, yet twice a week he insisted on leaving the rehab center to join a local martial arts studio, participating and even competing with pride and determination. It had motivated Jesse so much he’d joined up with the studio too. There were others with whole, perfect limps that lacked the ability to feel them in order to be able to use them, something Jesse felt might really be the cruelest fate of them all.

Seeing all of them had reminded Jesse of how good he really had it. He had a chance and he thanked Ty and Tommy and everyone else who had motivated him to not blow it. They’d kept his expectations realistic, all the while letting him discover each new triumph for himself, break each new boundary, and now.

Now he was set to face a man named Heatwave in his first match back and he had a great deal of expectorations. He expected heat wave to put a damn good fight. He expected that there would be moments of hesitation while in the ring, twinges and reminders of the injuries he’d suffered, but he also expected them not to hinder him, Ty had worked with him too damn hard for there to be much hesitation left in him. This one match, this first match, would be the last hurtle in a long road to recovery.

There was no ring rust, he’d been in the gym and in the ring more in the past year than he had been prior to his accident. There was simply a new way of doing things in place. Heatwave might find he didn’t like it very much, what Jesse had in mind, but Jesse had a game plan and a whole new style and he was waiting to unleash it upon Headwave and all the others who would soon face him.

He walked out of the gym into the bright sunlight, his backpack hitched over his shoulder as he walked home. Experience had taught him that he could never be to strong, to fit, too prepared. Cardio was important, especially to him, it might take him awhile to lock onto what he was looking for. Train for double the amount of time you planned to be in the ring, that had been drilled into his head over and over. The martial arts he studied now where an added touch as well. Strikes and kicks, throws and takedowns he had figured out how to roll them all into his wrestling training, giving him something to fall back on, the ability to make distance and by himself some time, or tie someone up and put himself in the position for victory.

There were time, when he was alone in the gym, when he sat on the top rope and gazed out in the empty room, that he closed his eyes and remembered what it used to feel like to come off the top rope, to twist and spin through the air, to have that all too brief moment of flight before landing on his opponent and hearing the referee’s hand began striking the mat for the one two three. And sometimes, alone in the gloom, he’d come off the top, moonsault, shooting star, and he’d known without seeing how sloppy they where, that his balance was not and never would be the same, that he could not land on his feet anymore and save himself if an opponent moved, not without debilitating pain shooting through that leg, costing him precious seconds. He’d tried when none could see him fail, and for the most part, he had accepted that one tiny defeat, and yet, he still couldn’t help, as he walked home with the sunshine on his face and a soft wind blowing back his long hair, if there wasn’t just one move salvageable, just one more twist left in him that would remind him of what if could be like, to fly again.

[jesse]

Jesse brushed a hand through his long tangle of wet hair, then shook his head, sending drops of water everywhere. He’d finished his daily laps in the pool and now leaned back on a towel, soaking up what little sun was left. He’d been working particularly hard this past week, to get ready for his match with Heatwave, and it was certainly beginning to show. He felt more like his old self, felt focused and ready for the match, ready for anything really.

He’d never been a man of many words, to stand outside of the ring and threaten or trash talk his opponents had never been his thing, mostly because being so young, he couldn’t see where arrogance and antagonism would get him. He still couldn’t see where it would get him.

Aside from the scars, the change in moves and techniques, he was still the same man, he still woke every morning to go run, he still went to the gym each day, still swam each night, the biggest difference was, he no longer let those things dominate his life. He no longer spent half the afternoon at the gym and half the afternoon in the pool and all of his free time swimming, instead, he’d picked up some hobbies, of course, because of his initial physical limitations they’d had to be something he could do sitting down, but still, he’d found a few which was a good thing, because all this waiting on the match was starting to drive him up the wall.

Standing Jesse headed inside to grab a quick shower, then go find some food. It was hard not to glance at the clock, count the hours, wish he could reach up and turn the hands of the clock and move the hands of time as well, bringing him to match time, the big moment.

Was he ready?

God damnit he’d better be.

The truth was, in all the uncertainty about his future, he’d attacked said future with such single minded determination that he didn’t have a backup plan. He had no bloody idea what the hell he was going to do if his body failed to hold up under the rigors of getting into the ring week in and week out.

Funny, Jesse thought to himself as he headed out, he probably should have addressed that at some point.

As he walked to the diner he let his mind fully wander over the predicament that he’d currently found himself in.

He had a high school diploma, no on the job skills, and the only thing in his life that he had ever been passionate about was wrestling.

If that wasn’t enough to leave a guy cold and a bit shaken at the prospect of failure he didn’t know what else would be.

It was at that precise moment, of course, that he heard Ty’s voice in his head giving him a very loud and rather profanity filled kick in the ass, reminding him that it was inviting failure to sit around contemplating that you wouldn’t succeed.

So he ordered his dinner and thought about non-distracting things, till the blond walked in the room and swept all thoughts of everything but her curves straight outta his head.