The afternoon light came in thin and watery, a pale strip across the far wall that never quite reached his bed. The TV above him murmured softly, the sound low enough to be more texture than noise. Somewhere out in the hallway, a cart squeaked, shoes shuffled, a phone rang and was silenced.
Inside the four walls of his room, it might as well have been an arena curtain before a show—everything muffled, waiting.
Leo's wheelchair bumped gently against the side of the bed as the volunteer parked him. The kid looked smaller today. It was in the way his hospital gown hung a little looser off his shoulders, the way his hands rested on his lap instead of fidgeting with the blanket. His eyes, though, still had that spark.
"Hey," Leo said "Tell me a story."
Alex adjusted his pillow, trying to find a position where his ribs didn't complain with every breath. Talking was easier than walking, but it still took something out of him. Worth it, though. Always worth it with Leo.
"Yeah, yeah," Alex said. "You and your demands. What do you want? Botch story? Drill-from-hell story? Someone puking in the corner story?"
Leo thought for a second, then lifted his chin.
"Give me a Regal one," he said. "You always say he's like a boss level in training."
Alex's mouth twitched into a real smile.
"Regal, huh? All right. You asked for it."
He let his gaze drift up toward the TV without really seeing it, letting the hospital room fade at the edges. The beeps and hums receded until he could almost hear the rattle of the old FCW air conditioning and the slap of bodies hitting canvas.
"So," Alex began, "there was this one week at FCW… Florida summer, right? Building felt like it was held together with duct tape and sweat. We're all dragging a little, but nobody says anything, because you don't complain in front of Regal unless you're suicidal."
Leo's eyes widened, already hooked.
"He comes in late one morning," Alex continued. "Black tracksuit, hair slicked back, that look on his face like he's seen a hundred of us come and go and isn't impressed yet. And he says, 'Right. Today we're going to find out who can wrestle and who just wants to do moves.'"
Alex did a passable impression of Regal's cadence, enough to make Leo grin.
"What's the difference?" Leo asked.
Alex lifted a finger. "That's the point. So he has us pair off for chain wrestling. No flips, no diving, no fancy stuff. Just holds, counters, escapes. Headlocks, hammerlocks, basic stuff. We think, 'Okay, cool. Fundamentals day. Not so bad.'"
He shook his head, smiling at the memory.
"Except it doesn't stop. Five minutes becomes ten. Ten becomes twenty. The canvas is slick with sweat. Guys you'd think were iron lungs are starting to heave. And every time someone breaks the flow—stops thinking, reaches for something flashy—Regal yells 'Again!' and resets them from the start."
Leo laughed, then coughed a little, covering it quickly.
"So where were you?" he asked. "Getting yelled at too?"
"Obviously," Alex said. "I'm not special. I'm in there, trying to keep up, trying not to gas out. And at one point, I'm in with Seth—"
"Rollins Seth?" Leo cut in.
"Yeah," Alex said. "Back when he still had the streak in his hair. We're going back and forth, and he slides into this beautiful little counter, gets behind me, takes me down smooth. Regal claps. Literally claps. For like half a second. Then he looks at me and goes, 'Knight, did you feel that? Did you feel why it worked?'"
Alex paused, hearing Regal's voice in his own head, sharp and patient at the same time.
"And I'm there on the mat, lungs on fire, thinking, 'I felt my pride die,'" he said. "But I look up and say, 'He changed direction when I didn't,' or something like that. Regal nods and goes, 'He didn't just move, sunshine. He made you move where he wanted you to go. There's a difference.' Then he walks off, like he just told me the meaning of life and expects me to keep wrestling while I process it."
Leo's grin stretched wide.
"That's so cool," he breathed. "So what did the ring feel like then? When you were, you know, actually in there doing it for real."
Alex let himself remember it properly.
"Warm," he said softly. "Canvas always feels a little warm. Not soft, not hard. Just… solid. You step, and it gives you a little, like it's breathing with you. The ropes bite your back when you hit them right, and your feet slide this tiny bit on the canvas when you cut corners. You feel everybody else through it, too—their weight, their timing. When it's going well, you don't think about it. You just… flow."
He could almost smell it again: sweat, tape, that faint metallic tang of old blood in the cracks.
Leo soaked it in, his hands curling around the armrests of his chair like he could feel the ropes through them.
"And selling?" Leo asked. "You always say it's important. How did Regal teach that?"
Alex chuckled.
"Oh, that's his favorite torture," he said. "He'd have us take a simple shot—forearm, knee, nothing crazy—and then make us react three different ways. Tiny sell, big sell, delayed sell. Then he'd make us switch sides and do it again. Once he actually stopped a drill, pointed at me and said, 'Knight, you're not a tree. Stop falling like one.'"
Leo laughed so hard he had to wipe at his eyes.
"You fell like a tree?" he asked.
"I was trying to be dramatic," Alex said. "He was not impressed. He got in my face and said, 'If you make everything look like death, sunshine, nothing will feel like death when it actually matters.' Then he chopped me so hard my soul left my body."
Leo's shoulders shook with silent laughter.
"I wish I'd seen that," he said. "You, getting chopped into the next dimension."
"Everyone in the building saw it," Alex said dryly. "I think people in the parking lot heard it."
For a while, the room felt lighter. The TV flickered. The hospital smells didn't disappear, but they faded behind the heat and noise of that Florida warehouse in his memory. Leo peppered him with more questions—about drills, about who messed up the most, about who helped him the first time he blew a spot in practice and wanted to crawl under the ring.
Alex answered as best he could, editing out the parts where his body had already started to betray him back then. There was no point dragging those shadows into this story.
It was enough to talk about the good parts. The sweat, the learning, the feeling of finally belonging somewhere that had once lived only on a TV screen in Uncle Dave's living room.
At some point, the story wound down. The Regal impressions slowed. The TV muttered something about a tag team title change. The monitor beside Alex's bed ticked along, a steady, indifferent beat.
Leo went quiet.
Alex noticed it gradually. The boy's hands had gone still on the armrests. His gaze had dropped from Alex's face to somewhere in the middle distance, like he was looking past the room, past the hospital, to something only he could see.
"You okay?" Alex asked.
"Yeah," Leo said automatically. Then he hesitated. "Alex?"
"Yeah."
Leo licked his lips, eyes still lowered.
"Do you… do you think I'll ever get to see you wrestle for real?"
The question landed between them like a dropped belt.
For a second, Alex's brain reached for the familiar counters. Platitudes. Jokes. You'll be front row at WrestleMania throwing popcorn at me. You'll be the one telling me I botched my finisher on TV.
They all felt wrong. Thin. Insulting, even.
He opened his mouth and found nothing.
Leo didn't look up. His fingers worried the edge of the thin blanket draped over his lap.
"I mean," Leo continued softly, "I know what we say. 'When you get cleared. When I get out of here.' All that."
His voice was too steady, and that was somehow worse than if it had been shaking.
"But I see the way my parents look when they think I'm not watching," he said. "And the doctors… they always say 'we'll see' now. They used to say 'when.' They don't say that anymore."
Alex's stomach clenched.
He thought of his own parents' faces when Dr. Carter had first said the word lymphoma. The way every sentence after that had slid off them like water because that one word was stuck there, blocking everything else.
"Leo—" he started.
Leo shook his head, cutting him off.
"I'm not asking for… fake stuff," he said. "I'm not stupid. I know I might not walk out of here. I know… I might not have time."
His breath hitched once, but he forced it steady.
"But I also know you," Leo went on. "You talk about that ring like it's church. Like it's… home. And you already made it there once. FCW, NXT… all of it."
He finally lifted his eyes. They were too big in his thin face, dark and clear.
"So I gotta ask for something real," he said.
The room seemed to hold its breath with them. Even the hallway noises went distant, as though they'd stepped into a smaller circle inside the world, one with its own rules.
Leo swallowed.
"If you ever… if somehow you ever get back in there," he said, "if you ever step through the ropes again… will you do it for both of us?"
Alex stared at him.
Leo pushed on, words gaining momentum.
"I mean it," he said. "Every match. Every time your music hits, every time you hit that… Crownbreaker thing. I want you to wrestle like I'm in the front row screaming my head off. Like I'm right there, even if I'm… not."
His voice wobbled on the last word, but he steadied it, jaw tightening.
"Don't ever coast," Leo said. "Don't ever… phone it in. Not for a house show, not for a dark match, not for anything. You told me wrestling's about making people feel something, right?"
"Yeah," Alex whispered.
"Then make me feel it," Leo said. "Wherever I am. However I'm… watching. Promise me you won't waste it if you get it back. Not one second. Promise you'll go all out. For you and for me."
Alex's throat closed around the answer before he could even form it.
He thought of that night in Uncle Dave's living room, boots too big on his feet, making that first promise with cheap leather laces digging into his ankles.
He thought of the FCW ring, the Regal drills, the heat, the way sweat had poured off him as he tried to earn the right to be there.
He thought of Leo in this chair, watching other people wrestle on a screen like it was oxygen.
He didn't know if there would be a second chance. The rational part of his brain, the part that listened to doctors and read charts, told him this was probably the last run, the last chapter, the match where the face didn't get his big comeback.
But the part of him that had carried him from Cleveland to Tampa, from fan to trainee, didn't care about odds.
"Yes," he said, and his voice cracked on the single syllable. "I promise."
He forced the words out clearer, even as his eyes burned.
"I swear, Leo," he said. "If I ever get between those ropes again… I'll wrestle every match like you're right there in the front row. No coasting. No half-speed. Whether it's a dark match in front of fifty people or a main event with fifty thousand… I'll make it count. For you. For me. For all of it."
Leo exhaled then, a long, shaky breath that seemed to leave some invisible weight behind.
"Okay," he said, a small smile touching the corners of his mouth. "Good. That's… that's all I wanted."
His shoulders, which had been creeping up toward his ears, settled a little. The tension around his eyes eased. It was as if, in asking, he'd handed over something too heavy to carry by himself.
"Now when I… when I think about you wrestling," Leo said, "I don't have to be sad it might not happen while I'm… here. I can just picture it. You out there. Doing the thing. Knowing you're going hard because you promised me."
Alex nodded. He couldn't trust his voice.
Leo looked at him for another long moment, then seemed to deliberately brighten, like turning up a dimmer switch.
"Also," he added, "now I get to haunt you if you ever phone in a headlock."
A strangled laugh escaped Alex in spite of everything.
"Terrifying," he managed. "Ghost booking. That's a new one."
"Damn right," Leo said. "I'll be the most annoying guardian angel in WWE history."
The knock on the door broke the spell. A nurse peeked in, checking the clock.
"Time to get you back, Leo," she said gently. "Your folks are waiting."
Leo sighed but nodded. He reached out, and Alex met his hand halfway. Their fingers squeezed, bone against bone, both grips weaker than they wanted them to be.
"Don't forget," Leo said softly.
"I won't," Alex replied. "I couldn't."
The nurse wheeled him out, IV pole trundling along, Leo's head turned back toward Alex until the last possible angle. Then the door closed with a soft click, and the room was just four walls and machines again.
Collapse
For a while, Alex didn't move.
He lay there propped half up, staring at nothing, Leo's words echoing in the quiet.
Do you think I'll ever get to see you wrestle for real?
If you ever step through the ropes again… do it for both of us.
He'd said yes so quickly. No hesitation. The promise had come out of him like it had been waiting there for years, like a move he'd practiced a thousand times and could hit blindfolded.
Now, with the room empty, the sheer impossibility of it crashed over him.
His chest ached—not the sharp, medical pain that nurses measured and charted, but a deeper, stranger hurt sitting right behind his sternum. His eyes blurred, and he blinked once, twice, uselessly.
Uncle Dave's living room rose up in his mind again, the feel of oversized boots on threadbare carpet, the glow of a TV showing a world that felt impossibly far away.
His mother's voice asking if he was "really okay."
Jason's quiet reassurance that what he'd already done mattered.
Leo's thin hand gripping his, eyes too old for his face.
He turned his head away from the door, angling his face toward the wall, just in case anyone looked in. The effort of that small movement cost him something, but it let him bury his expression in the shadow where the pale window light didn't quite reach.
The first sob came out almost soundless, just a hitch in his breathing that rattled where his lungs were already weak. He pressed his lips together, trying to keep it quiet. The monitor stuttered a little, then found its rhythm again.
He'd cried before, of course. In bathrooms. In hallways. In that horrible first night after the diagnosis when the word cancer had mutated into a whole new language nobody had taught him.
But this felt different.
This wasn't just grief for himself—for the matches he wouldn't have, the titles he'd never chase, the entrance music Leo wouldn't get to rate. This was grief for the kid who'd just handed him his dream like it was a baton in a relay race he might not get to finish.
How do you live up to that? How do you promise someone you'll carry both your weight and theirs into a ring you might never touch again?
"I'll try," he whispered into the dim. His voice broke on the word. "I don't… I don't know how, but I'll try."
If there was no second chance, then the promise was a story they'd written together and kept between them, a match that lived only in their heads.
But if—if—there was something beyond this white ceiling and the beeping and the slow decline, if there was even the smallest crack in the door…
He would walk through it carrying Leo's hope and Uncle Dave's old boots and his parents' tired, proud eyes.
He would run the ropes until his legs gave out. He would sell like every cutoff mattered and fire up like every hope spot might be the last. He would throw his whole soul into every Crownbreaker, every near fall, every entrance, because somewhere, somehow, a kid in a hospital chair deserved to feel all of it.
Hot tears slid down his temples into his hair. He let them. There was no crowd to see him break, no camera to catch the moment.
Just a man in a bed, clutching a promise that felt too big for his failing body and holding on anyway.
"I'll try," he said again, softer now, more breath than sound. "For you. For all of you."
Outside, footsteps came and went. The TV flickered on, then off, as a nurse adjusted something without comment. Night gathered slowly at the window.
Alex closed his eyes, the last image behind them not the ceiling, but a ring under bright lights and a front row seat with an empty chair he intended to fill, one way or another.