#I love oranges <33 | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

underratedandoverit · 1 year

Text

Immortal Fears (2/?)

The International title has the power to make you question so many things; yourself, your relationships, everything. It makes you believe the only thing worthy of it is you, and vice versa. It is believed that holding it will have… Maddening consequences. Is any of it true? Is this just mind games played by your opponents instead, to get under your skin, to make you think losing the title to them is worth it? But is the current champion Orange Cassidy willing to take such a risk…?

Tags: Kip Sabian/Orange Cassidy (future). Hurt/comfort (eventually). Title Belt Corruption Arc. Enemies to lovers. Slow burn.

Best Friends/Chuck & Trent and Penelope make frequent cameos. More to be added.

On AO3 here

I have not. Posted a second chapter of anything in so long oh my god. I'm very much personally in love with this chapter tho, there's a lot of things I can work with in the future and a few things that immediately tie back to the first chapter as not-so-obvious continuity which I'm very excited about so!! If you spot something neat like that feel free to let me know!! <3 Shoutouts to @ss-trashboat for being my beta & @midnightpretenders0 for brainstorming this whole arc with me I love you both 💜💜

----------

Sitting in the locker room, fiddling around with the laces of his shoes as if to try to remember how to tie them again, Cassidy had to admit he really didn’t want to be here tonight. At this point, coming to work was just the same thing week after week, an obligation he didn’t want to fulfill but couldn’t escape for obvious reasons. He glanced at the International title sitting inside the open backpack on the bench next to him, frowning at it in almost disgust from behind his Ray-Bans.

It’s not that he didn’t enjoy being a champion. It came with its own perks, obviously, but at the same time it was a burden for a man like him. When he would rather be at home or literally anywhere else, just chilling, not bothering to do anything, barely rolling out of bed in the morning… But no, he was forced to come to work. Forced to wrestle, defend the title, entertain the crowd.

It was getting old, to be honest.

The thoughts evaporated from his mind as Cassidy heard the locker room door open. He glanced up, brown eyes peeking over the top frame of his sunglasses towards the open door, his expression barely changing at the sight of his friends walking through the door. Chuck gave him an enthusiastic wave accompanied with a wide smile, Trent less so as his hand barely lifted up from his side, but the nod he gave to him as he locked eyes with Cassidy was at least reassuring.

“Ready for tonight?”

He shrugged so lazily it was barely noticeable, watching Chuck deflate a little at the very non-response he was given back. Thankfully the Best Friends were used to seeing this sort of behavior from their third member so it didn’t take more than a split second for Chuck to shake it off, but he was still hoping for a little bit more. He had an important match tonight, after all.

“Speaking of which,” Trent pipped in, glancing around the locker room, clearly looking for something, or someone, before his eyes landed back on Cassidy. “Where is he?”

Cassidy just went back to working on his shoelaces, leaving the question unanswered. Chuck and Trent shared a look, both men slightly concerned, but understanding of the situation at the same time – Cassidy wasn’t a talkative or a very observant one, they both knew and understood that, but this was also about his tag team partner for tonight. He should at least be aware of his teammate’s whereabouts on a night like this where they were granted an actual tag title match after their victory over the number one contenders the week before.

And yet, he was sitting here all alone, seemingly struggling to tie up his own shoes.

“That’s fine, actually,” Chuck muttered, nervous arms crossing over his chest. Trent gave him a quick look, though he was aware where his partner wanted to take this conversation. They had been talking about this on the way, trying to figure out what would be the best way to break in this topic, and apparently Chuck had just decided to go straight to it after Cassidy effectively dodged Trent’s attempt to open the conversation.

“We really wanted to talk to you alone.”

Cassidy stopped, letting the laces drop from his hands as he straightened himself on his seat with almost surprising speed, leaning his back against the wall behind him. Eyes focusing behind the sunglasses on the man addressing him as he looked up at Chuck, his expression never changing despite the complete switch in his demeanor otherwise.

“So, about last week…”

Chuck stopped, waiting for some kind of a reaction from the other man. Cassidy just kept looking at him, not responding back, looking like he wasn’t sure where this conversation was going, even though they could have not made it any clearer. Chuck sighed quietly, stealing a glance at Trent who stood there with his hands in his tracksuit pockets, just observing the blond sitting in front of the two.

“We were just worried about what happened. You know, with Danhausen… The cheating and all.”

The Best Friends might have been a very ragtag group of friends and weirdos alike, but everyone around knew that they weren’t the bad guys. They wouldn’t result to something like cheating to win matches, so it had been a question on everyone’s minds since the week before when it had happened. Was Danhausen using dirty tactics to win the match for them premeditated? Were the Best Friends just holding up a front to hide their true intentions this entire time, or was Danhausen going rogue and doing this all on his own? Had the team of Orange Cassidy and Danhausen gotten enough of constantly losing and decided to turn the tables in their favor?

There was so many questions, and nobody knew the answers to them. Nobody except the two people themselves that had caused this commotion to happen.

And all Cassidy could do as a reply was to lazily shrug.

“We just want to know what this means man, that’s all.”

Cassidy turned his head slightly to the side to look at Trent as he spoke up, shrugging again.

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know? How the hell don’t you know?”

Trent didn’t intend that to sound as harsh as it came out, a wave of regret quickly washing over his face as soon as the words escaped from his lips. Cassidy still didn’t look phased whatsoever though, but he didn’t really need to show external sides for Trent to know that might have poked a bit deeper than he would have admitted out loud.

“Sorry, it's just --”

“What he means is that we’d just like to know if you had something to do with it,” Chuck spoke up over Trent, receiving a nod of agreement from him, maybe being even slightly thankful that the usually more level-headed of the original Best Friends was taking over the conversation at hand. “We know Danhausen is… Well, he is Danhausen. You could kind of expect things like this from him. But you --”

“I told you, I don’t know.”

This time it was Cassidy’s turn to snap at them, the man clearly growing tired of the constant interrogation. Sure he understood where the concern and everything was coming from, but at the same time he had already said ‘no’ multiple times, and yet they were still pushing the topic. It was honestly getting annoying to him, he didn’t need to sit here and take this from his own friends.

“Why don’t you go find him and ask if you really want to know that much?”

Both Trent and Chuck stared at him in silence, clearly taken aback with the sudden outburst, just watching as Cassidy got up on his feet, one hand reaching for the Jansport backpack. With ease he pulled one strap over his shoulder after zipping the backpack shut, face still completely blank and unreadable to the other men in the room as he walked past them. His expression might have been hidden, but both Chuck and Trent had been around him for long enough to notice the tense body language that was very unusual for his always so lazy demeanor. He clearly wasn’t enjoying himself in this situation either, obviously even less so than either of the two of them, having been put in the spot and all.

But as they watched Cassidy walk out of the locker room, slamming the door shut after him, Chuck and Trent shared a silent look, both of them knowing the other understood how unusual this really was for him.

Adjusting the backpack on his shoulder a little, as soon as he was out of the room Cassidy’s usual composure at least somewhat returned. He inhaled deeply, enjoying the surprisingly more quiet hallway of the arena, the cold air running through his lungs, almost burning. He may have gotten a bit more heated in there than intended, but he wasn’t the only one. Cassidy was merely defending himself as he had been basically shoved into a corner, over something he didn’t even do or had no control over, that the others didn't seem to want to understand.

Dragging his feet, he got on the move, not really knowing where he was going. He could have done a favor for himself and head down to the basement level to try to find Danhausen, as that’s where he most likely was hanging out as per usual, and try to solve this situation he was forcefully put into, but also… Cassidy had to admit that he just absolutely did not care about it enough to go out on his way to do such a thing. What would come out of this whole ordeal wasn’t up to him; he had done nothing wrong, even if it might have affected him, it ultimately just wasn’t going to be his problem.

It would just be too much trouble for him to bother himself with right now.

Instead he opted to endlessly wander the hallways of the arena, drowning in his own thoughts that eventually always forced him back to the tag team match of last week, whether he wanted it or not. How Danhausen had insisted on tagging with him even after Cassidy had said he didn’t really care for any of it, doing his best despite all of this since it was a match after all and the records would be forever etched onto statistics for him and everybody else to stare at, whether he was in the winning team or not. And as a current champion, having even a tag team loss on your record just felt really wrong to him.

Taking a left turn at the next corridor, Cassidy suddenly froze on his feet. Something about the air around him changed, almost a freezing breeze blowing past him. He shivered a little, shaking his head to get out of the zone he had gotten himself into, in full belief that his thoughts trailing back to the night a week ago was raising these feelings in his mind --

“Clementine.”

The voice wasn’t very loud, barely a whisper, but he was able to hear it immediately. Eyes widening behind his sunglasses, Cassidy’s head snapping towards the voice, being met with a dark corner that he had just passed turning into the hallway. Through the glasses he was barely able to make out the figure standing in the shadows, but thankfully he didn’t have to – from the accented voice, and the annoying, almost affectionately so at this point, nickname he was already able to tell more than enough.

As Cassidy didn’t reply to him, Kip crept out of the shadows, stepping into the dimly lit hallway, stopping to stand face to face with the other man. The silence around the two of them was heavy, suddenly Cassidy being aware of every single thing he had done wrong during the past week since seeing him last, as if everything that had happened was Kip’s fault.

That would be so easy, huh? Just blaming it all on him. After all, some things surely had changed drastically since Kip had started trying his best to get under his skin during his pursuit for the International championship the first time around.

It was almost as if he could read the complicated thoughts running through his head, as Kip broke the silence with a quiet chuckle.

“You look lonely, dear friend. Where are your companions?”

“Where are yours?”

Kip’s eyes narrowed at the fast quip he was hit with, the smirk flickering briefly from his lips as he tried to regain his composure. No, it was supposed to be him putting this fraud of a champion in his place, and not the other way around.

“Taking care of some business. Not that it should concern you --”

“Then what do you want?”

This time Kip was really taken aback. Cassidy didn’t sound annoyed by his little distraction, not more so than usually at least. But something about the rest of his demeanor felt really off, how he immediately bounced his insults back at him, barely letting him even talk. Usually Cassidy let him taunt him, get it out of his system, not fight back unless Kip had to get physical with him.

But tonight, here in the dark hallway in this very moment, something felt extremely different. And it was grinding Kip’s gears even harder that he couldn’t immediately put his finger on it.

“I’m just worried about you, that’s all. Can’t a friend show concern without being questioned?”

Cassidy just… Looked at him. Kip wasn’t able to read him at all, the smirk finally dropping from his lips in pure annoyance of the situation. Not that he was going to admit that it was in fact Cassidy that had gotten under his skin instead of the other way around like he had intended, but the whole situation was really starting to bother him. He was returned nothing but insults, being questioned about his loyalty and genuine concern.

Not only was that bad enough on its own, but all of this was coming from his self proclaimed arch nemesis, Orange Cassidy out of all people.

“I’m… Sure you have better things to do then,” Kip hissed from between gritted teeth, watching nothing still change in Cassidy. This was usual, sure, but still it was unsettling behavior even from him. And Kip had to admit that taunting him wasn’t even nearly as much fun when he returned back none of it in a manner he could work with. “You might want to check in on your cat-eyed ghoul friend. Last I heard he was causing more trouble than what’s good for him in catering.”

Kip stepped closer, walking past Cassidy to exit the hallway, clearly intentionally bumping his side with the backpack loosely hanging on the champion’s shoulder. Cassidy didn’t react, just listened as Kip stomped out of the hallway and around the corner, muttering some very British insults on his way as he went. The cold air that had caught Cassidy off guard as he had rounded the corner left with Kip, leaving him standing there alone in the comfortable silence that slowly trickled back in the space, the warmth slowly creeping its way back into Cassidy’s entire being.

And yet, he was shivering at the thought that maybe Kip had actually been right about something just now.

#fic: immortal fears #setting: belt corruption arc #im so happy right now. everythings going according to plan #i know this is only chapter two but still!!! PROGRESS!!!#i havent gotten this far with anything in ages. or loved something ive done this much in ages #fellas i am truly living #please love this chapter okay thanks bye i love you <33 #character: orange cassidy #character: chuck taylor #character: kip sabian #ship: orangekip #fic #aew fanfiction #wrestling fanfiction #character: trent baretta

20 notes · View notes