1. Chapter 1 (1/1)

for aj, putting on his ric flair-esque personality was like putting on a suit that didn't fit properly: it chafed like hell and half the time, it felt like it was trying to strangle him to death. from the moment he left his hotel room in the morning to the moment that he finally kicked the last dumbass groupie bitch out at night, it clung to him like oil, black and slimy and ugly as sin. he hated it.

this wasn't him. it wasn't even close to being him. it was the antithesis of everything he was, had been and ever would be. but this was what he had chosen, and this was what he was stuck with if he was going to stay champion.

you don't back out on the nature boy. that's a one-way ticket to losing everything.

and aj needed that belt; needed to be the champion; needed the prestige and the money that being the best and associating with the best

ings in. he wanted to look after his family properly, the economy be damned.

he couldn't afford to let anybody take this away from him.

and apparently, that made him the villain.

so day in, day out, he pretended to be somebody he wasn't. he bit back hard on his anger and frustration at every damn simpering girl who tried to grab his ass and pretended he was having a good time. he pretended he didn't care that everybody except them and flair seemed to hate his guts. he pretended he wasn't fated to telling nothing but lies, lies, lies.

and every night, taking off the mask became a little harder, like he was getting lost inside it with no end in sight. like he was forgetting who he was doing this for. like he was losing himself. and nobody could see it. nobody knew what it was like to feel the way he did.

and he spent hours lying awake at night, trying desperately hard not to blame everybody else for it. it was his choice.

sometimes, he imagined what it would be like to just throw it all away: to stand in the middle of the ring in the impact! zone, tear off the hand-made suits and the ugly ties, and tell ric flair exactly where he can shove it. but that would be admitting defeat. that would be giving up on his family. and he could never do that to his wife or the boys. never.

aj couldn't afford to let go. not of ric flair, not of the stupid pretence, not of the dreams that led him to pretend that his conscience was an empty, hollow place instead of the aching well of guilt that he tried so hard to ignore.

besides, nobody would believe him now if he tried to say he were sorry now.

aj was trapped here, pretending to be the bad guy, and hiding the sad, lost man living behind his blue eyes.