Chapter Text
I’m taking a ride with my best friend
I hope he never lets me down again
He knows where he’s taking me
Taking me where I want to be
I’m taking a ride with my best friend
We’re flying high
Watching the world pass us by
Never want to come down
Never want to put my feet back on the ground
Max is standing in his locker room with Adam and Dustin, pulling the Devil mask over his face. Head to toe clad in black, he makes a foreboding figure… as long as he’s not standing next to Dustin’s ridiculously tall ass. Adam stands next to him, also in a Devil mask, and Max can’t help the way it still makes him feel just a little off to see it, even though he knows they go out together as a team tonight. There’s no more secret about who’s behind the masks. Not this time. This time, it’s just a reminder – don’t try to game the Devil. He wrote the rules of the game.
Tony had been more than happy to book a 4-on-4 tag team match at Nassau Coliseum as Max and Adam’s official welcome back to action in the ring. Give the people what they want, as the saying goes. And the fans and the wrestlers are ready for this showdown in the place where, in all reality, it all fell apart.
Samoa Joe has joined as their fourth man… while he and Max have a lot of dirty water under a very busted up bridge, he respects the hell out of Adam and Dustin, and has no love lost for the Undisputed Kingdom – least of all Wardlow.
Max looks around him at the motley crew who’ve assembled. He and Adam wear Devil masks, Dustin’s red and black face paint reflects a Devil motif, and Joe? Well, he’s just Joe. No mask or face paint required when you’ve got that level of mean mug going for you.
As the Better Than You Bay Bay theme plays, the four men stride toward the ring. No one would be able to tell how nervous both Max and Adam are to get back in the ring after their extensive injuries and PT stints, but they can tell from each other’s tiniest cues. Adam can’t believe there was ever a time he thought this man would betray him, and for his part, Max can’t believe he’s gotten a second chance to share life and wrestling with the man he loves.
But for the time being, he’s not about to drop a gooey romantic promo. He’s got months worth of catching up to do, and as soon as he makes it to the stage, he takes the mic. When the pop dies down (which takes a while… it’s not every day a Generational Talent makes his in-ring return), Max raises the mic to his lips. “I’m back, poors!” he says into the mic, smirking behind his mask as the crowd goes wild again. Being polarizing has its perks, and this is no exception to the rule.
“I told Tony I wasn’t coming back for my return anywhere but here, because I owe my hometown crowd a better show than last time,” he says, and the crowd erupts into cheers and applause again. “Because after what happened the last time we were together, Long Island? I wanted to make sure you were all present for the day of reckoning. These motherfuckers walked into our house and disrespected Long Island, and you know I couldn’t just let that be. Not on my watch.”
He feels Adam beside him, and he knows it will be a while before Long Island accepts Adam back into the fold again, but somehow, he knows they will. “Listen, I’m not here for this fight because I hate the Undisputed Disney’s Magic Kingdom whatever the fuck… For me to hate them, I would have to think about them, and I have better things to think about than a Disney themed stable consisting of Kronk, the old man from Up, and Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dumbass, but here’s the thing…” Max may be wearing a mask, but the smirk on his face is audible in his voice. “These guys made their whole identity fucking me over, and… Well, I just can’t let that stand.”
Adam speaks into his own mic, amused as hell at Max using a Disney reference. He’ll have to tease him a little about that later, as the influence of the Rhodes family, and especially being Libby’s Uncle and sometime-babysitter, is reflected even in his promo speech. The thing about it is? Max is so fucking intense that nobody would even stop to question it. Nobody except Adam, that is. “These people claimed for years to be my friends,” Adam says. “They claimed to be the heroes of the story. They claimed to be great warriors like the legends of the past. But what they couldn’t claim? Was the truth. The truth of being miserable, pathetic little men who never had a chance at being anything but a side character in the real story. And when they write the history? Your names won’t even be in the footnotes.”
Max takes his cue, and both he and Adam raise their masks at the same time. “Because you thought you were on the level of the Devil,” Max says, giving that deliciously evil smirk that Adam has to force himself not to look at lest he get distracted. “Hell, you’re not even on the same planet. So you better say your prayers before you come out here tonight… because you won’t like it in hell. Just like AEW? That’s where the Devil runs the fucking show.”
He glances over to Adam beside him, preparing themselves for the onslaught, and before their music even hits, the men who had tried to write his destruction come out from behind the curtain, Roddy at the head of the line. Max glances at Joe and Dustin. “Let’s do this,” he says, then back at Adam. “Roddy’s mine.”
All of the men involved put up a hell of a fight, but whether it’s the training he’s been doing at the gym as soon as he was able, or the adrenaline of being back in front of his hometown crowd, healthy and whole, both inside and out, Max is not backing down this time… not here. Not now. Not when he knows without a doubt that he has Adam’s support behind him – no matter how bad things get.
The fight is absolutely brutal, and by the end of it, Max isn’t even sure whose blood covers his chest and hands… some of his own, but not just his own. Despite his determination to win this match for him and for Adam, in the end, the chaos is such that things don’t quite go to plan… or don’t go to plan at all.
Adam’s in the ring, up against Taven, and Max is itching to get back in, but Adam sets up and hits the Panama Sunrise, leaving Taven dazed on the mat. He goes for a pin, but Taven manages to recover and kick out at two, fighting to get back up again. Giving his former friend just a second, Adam tags Max in, and the two seem to share the brain wave they have, firmly shoving their opponent back into the ropes. Hearts pounding in their ears with the roar of the crowd, they clasp their hands together tight and hit the double clothesline, and Max, as the legal man, gets the pin. One. Two. Three. The crowd is going wild, and in the midst of it all, Max can feel Adam’s smile before he even sees it. The so-called Kingdom that had once nearly taken everything that mattered to him, retreats to tend to their wounds, as Max, Adam, Dustin, and Joe stand side by side in the ring, clasped hands raised to the sky. And if this is his last night on earth, Max is pretty sure he couldn’t plan one better.
He feels Adam’s arm around his neck, and casually wraps his arm around the other man’s waist. He looks over his shoulder to Dustin, who hands him a mic. “And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I am where I am right now. At the end of the day, those assholes thought they had what it took to become world champions… but here I am in the ring with two men who’ve already proven that they do. Let’s hear it for two AEW World Champions: Maxwell Jacob Friedman, and Samoa Joe!”
The crowd goes nuts, and Max squeezes Adam tightly. The older man continues, “And we couldn’t have done it without the support of the man you all know and love, Dustin Rhodes!” Another pop for the firstborn son of the American Dream.
“As for the Undisputed Kingdom?” Adam says, a smirk on his face. “It was just disputed, guys. And you came up short – lacking in every single way. The best men won… and they’re all in this ring. Your kingdom has fallen.”
“We fucking did this shit,” Adam says to Max, off the mic, lips pressed to his ear so he can hear him over the crowd.
“Yes the fuck we did,” Max agrees.
Dustin catches the tenderness of the moment between them and gives them both an amused smirk. “Why don’t you two get a room before you give everybody stomach aches and cavities?”
Max gives Adam a playful smile. “Whaddya say, Bay Bay?” using Adam’s catchphrase as a term of endearment.
“I say let’s go home,” replies Adam, looping his arms around Max to hug him tight one more time.
Despite himself, though, Max can’t walk out without getting one last dig in. He takes the mic from Adam, raises it to his lips, and says, “In case some of you poors were in the bathroom and missed it? Once again, we have proven that there is nobody on our level. Least of all the pathetic so-called Kingdom.” He turns to Adam, and though he’s still on the mic, he may as well be speaking in a whisper behind the curtain for all the deeper meaning he implies. “We’re better than them, Bay Bay. And they know it.”
Adam laughs, tightening his embrace around Max, and despite everything in the world trying to prove things to the contrary? Max knows without a doubt that from now on, he has a home… a real home. And it’s wherever Adam Cole is with him.
The End