Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Author Note: Set during the Brooke Hogan/Bully Ray on-screen relationship and its aftermath. Written because I like what Brooke's been doing and hate that the relationship seems to have been an underhanded trick the whole time.

WORDS ON CARDBOARD

Brooke Hogan is not everything people say she is. Oh, sure, she's a Daddy's girl. She adores her father, for all his faults and relentless attempts to control who she dates. She adores him for giving her a job in TNA, for trusting her to do it well and for taking a step back and letting her run the Knockouts Division without much interference. She loves him for loving her that much.

And yes, she loves to dress pretty, to show off her body. She loves to dance and have fun and go out for nights with the girls. She loves going on dates and the feel of warm lips on hers and the stroke of a masculine hand on her thigh. She's been told since birth that she's to be adored and she sees nothing wrong with that. Anyway, her parents taught her common sense and while she's definitely no wrestler, her Dad's always made sure that she could handle herself in a 'bad date' kind of situation, not that anybody seems to believe that.

But that's not all she is. She's not an idiot, and she's definitely not a bimbo. Just because she shows some skin, that doesn't mean she's trampy. She chooses who she dates – really, Dad, it's her decision, okay? And how can he expect her not to date wrestlers when she's spent her entire life surrounded by them?

People are really surprised when it's revealed that she's dating Bully Ray. They shouldn't be.

No, he's not going to be on the cover of GQ or anything, but who says Brooke always likes them pretty? He's covered in scars and he's got a coarse mouth. But he looks at her like she's a person, not like she's made of glass, or like she's some Barbie doll to be instantly undressed and manhandled. He actually wants to talk to her. The first time they talk is after a hard night in the Impact Zone, it feels like everything's splitting apart because of Aces & Eights and Brooke's got a monster headache and her Dad is completely stressed out, and there's no talking to him when he's like that. So she's heading out to her car to go home when Bully Ray appears and asks about her Dad, which is kinda weird because he's always been so foul and uncaring to everybody, only lately he's been helping the rest of the TNA locker-room take on Aces & Eights so Brooke answers him, keeping one hand on the mace in her purse.

The conversation actually flows without much awkwardness and Brooke finds herself spilling her guts about her worries for her Dad and Dixie and everybody else now that Aces & Eights seem determined to tear apart every bit of good in the company. Brooke is pleasantly surprised when his eyes stay fixed firmly on her face and not once does he suggest that they take the conversation back to his place. It's the first time in a long while that she's been shown that much respect.

She feels lighter afterwards and he offers his cellphone number, in case she needs it in the currently unstable TNA world, before walking her to her car. He doesn't try for a kiss, or even a hug. He just claps a wide hand to her shoulder and watches her drive off. It leaves a warm buzz in the pit of her stomach and Brooke finds herself smiling as she rattles around her apartment, trying to find something to combat the dregs of that headache. It doesn't hurt as much now though.

They bump into each other backstage more frequently after that. Or maybe they're seeking each other out? Brooke is glad to find somebody she can relax around, somebody who doesn't sneer at her when she doesn't have all the answers, somebody who treats her well and makes her laugh. His sense of humour's both sharp and rude and he makes her laugh so hard that her belly hurts. She kisses him for the first time in her Dad's office, she's sat on the desk and he's made her laugh again and she just grabs his shirt and reels him in. This whole time he's let her draw the line and now she's going to cross it.

She doesn't regret it, not that time or any time after. She loves the way their lives intersect and begin fitting snugly together. She loves eating chicken wings with him in front of football or baseball games, wrapped up in one of his huge-ass shirts and with no make-up on. Yes, Brooke Hogan likes to go without make-up. She loves wearing it, of course she loves dolling herself up, she wouldn't wear it otherwise. But sometimes it feels like warpaint, like a shield she needs to face another day in front of the world so often, in private, she goes without. Bully Ray thumbs the skin under her eyes and kisses the crease of her elbow when she accidentally spills hot sauce there.

She likes drinking beer straight from the bottle – cocktails are fun, but her Dad brought her up drinking beer. She likes that Bully Ray talks to her about his career, about the places he's travelled to thanks to wrestling, the friends and enemies he's made. She likes how his face changes when he talks about family. That, she gets. She and Nick used to watch ECW back in the day, they were curious and ate up wrestling as eagerly as ice cream and watching it had felt a little like rebelling against their Dad which even then, they'd both had a taste for. So she knows the tattered lay of the Dudley family, the oddball band of brothers who fought and loved each other in equally fierce measures. She gets why he sounds so gruff when he talks about Devon, the brother he travelled the most roads with, the brother who hasn't been around for a while.

Family is hard, it's crazy, but you love them anyway, no matter what. God, yes, she gets that.

They argue about which place in New York does the best pizza. Bully Ray lived there for a while so he has very strong opinions and vows to drag her there for a weekend in order to settle the argument once and for all. Brooke lights up at the thought of going away for a weekend with him, because it sounds like it'll be fun and like he isn't assuming they'll spend the whole weekend in a hotel room. It's so different to most of the other relationships she's had.

And of course her Dad disapproves and of course it's incredibly hard to get him on the same page. Of course it takes a wedding to achieve that. A wedding. Brooke gets married, on live TV. Later, she finds that hard to believe. But there's footage to prove it, she gets married. She doesn't regret it either. It might seem like way too fast to some people, but she can't ignore the feeling she gets in her belly when she looks at Bully Ray and she thinks about all he's done for her, how he lets her stand on her own two feet, and how he protects her at the same time. How he gets her in a way that few people ever do. She wants that, forever.

Of course their honeymoon is spent in the hospital watching over her injured father. Brooke's hand, wedding ring and all, curls into a fist. Aces & Eights ruin everything. They're poison and pleasure at destruction and Brooke doesn't think she's ever seen anything like it. It scares her.

Bully Ray holds her, but he doesn't tell her that everything's going to be all right. He doesn't lie to her. He does say that they'll get Aces & Eight, that the group won't be allowed to run roughshod over TNA, that they'll get what they deserve.

She feels reassured and there's a fire in her belly at the thought of triumphing over the people who keep on making her life, and her family's lives, miserable. She feels strong, like she can deal with anything now.

Then Lockdown happens.

Then Bully Ray turns on her.

Brooke's world crumbles. She screams and raves and slams her hands against the steel cage. She doesn't want to believe it, but there's footage that she looks over and studies later, and yes, it happened. She was there. Bully Ray is the chairman of Aces & Eights, he has been since the beginning and Brooke was just part of their plan to turn TNA inside out.

Once Brooke's done throwing the mother of all tantrums backstage, Taryn and Miss Tessmacher escort her back to her office and pour her a large drink. They lock the door and tell security to let no one in, especially no cameras. There, on the couch, her head on Taryn's shoulder, Brooke cries. She cries for what feels like hours and she knows her make-up's running but God, she really doesn't care. Her marriage is apparently a sham, the whole world now has confirmation that she's a total moron, and Aces & Eights have an even greater foothold in TNA.

Her dreams are liquid that night, terrible things that claw at her heart. After she wakes up with a pounding headache, Brooke take a long shower and scrubs herself clean. Then she throws on some old sweats and grabs her laptop. She stares at miles of old footage, of Bully Ray looking at her, touching her hand, taking care of her. More tears gather, but she determinedly blinks them away for the moment and keeps looking. It all looks so real.

Bully Ray talks about her later, sneering about his plan to break TNA, to tear the Hogans from the heart of it, he says trampy things about her and it hurts, God, really a lot. But it's all soft-target stuff. He knows deeply private and personal things about her, things that would mortify her family and that would make her look incredibly bad if made public – like who she lost her virginity to and where. He's got photos of her practically nude, but those never get shown on-camera or online. Is he...protecting her?

Brooke knows she sounds crazy, like she's in denial, but she looks, really looks, and sees all that Bully Ray isn't saying. He isn't using everything he knows against her and her Dad, he isn't emptying bank accounts, or screwing up paperwork, or airing any Hogan family secrets. Because it's family, and his life has always been defined by his. Aces & Eights isn't really about power; it's about him reuniting with Devon.

So one night soon after Lockdown, Brooke sends him a simple text message Congratulations on the title. I'm glad you got Devon back.

That's all. She doesn't say you bastard, you broke my heart, how could you, how could you?! He'll hear it all anyway, she's not the only one good at filling in the gaps. He knows. He doesn't text back, but he doesn't say anything about it on-camera either.

Brooke doesn't take time off work, neither does her Dad, TNA needs them both. She slips on her favourite shoes, paints her face to perfection, and strides into the arena, a vision in white that looks great against her tan. She's wearing her wedding ring around her neck on a long discreet chain. She doesn't start divorce proceedings.

Bully Ray could have tried to persuade her to join Aces & Eights; he could have used the part of her that has always rebelled against her Dad. He could have sold her dreams of striking out on her own, of making her own mark on the business without her Dad's help. He hadn't gotten her involved though, he'd kept her separate, he'd made her a pawn and nothing more. He'd kept her safe.

Brooke deals with her Mom's worry for her, the disquietening phone calls which tell her way more than she's ever wanted to know about what her parents's marriage was really like. She sometimes talks to Nick, but he doesn't really know what to say to her, apart from saying he's going to kick Bully Ray's ass. She spends a lot of time with Taryn and Miss Tessmacher, they get spectacularly drunk together and laugh and cry, letting worries and pain float away on mojitos.

She keeps the house. Bully Ray must be staying with his brother because he doesn't once talk about throwing her out. All his stuff is gone by the second night after Lockdown but he keeps his key. That should make her feel unsafe, but it doesn't. She wonders if he's kept his wedding ring.

The marriage isn't over. It's built on one huge fat lie, yes, but there's things real about it, things not seen on camera, things that still aren't tainted by what's happened. Brooke's guarding them to make sure of that. She gets that marriages often don't work out in the wrestling business, but she also knows that there's a lot worth fighting for.

So she sends the occasional message to Bully Ray, careful and real and sometimes tender, nothing she's ashamed of. She can't really explain it, her girlfriends don't all get it either, but some do, some of them are married to unexpected guys too. Her Dad wants her to take Bully Ray for all he's worth, but Brooke shakes her head and says she's got other things to worry about right now, like Gail Kim and Taryn's escalating animosity. Her Dad looks at her sometimes like he doesn't know her at all.

Bully Ray had listened to her when she'd talked about Garrett Bischoff, member of Aces & Eights and one of her childhood friends. They'd hung out together backstage at WCW while their dads were working and they'd dated when they were teenagers, though of course it didn't work out. She's always liked Garrett, his eagerness and his sweetness, and it burns her that he's chosen Aces & Eights and destroying his father, that he looks at her now with gleeful malice. She'd talked to Bully Ray about it and he'd nodded and offered her a beer and commented that it sucked, losing people like that, people you cared about who turned their backs on you. He'd been thinking about Devon probably.

Brooke misses a lot of things about Bully Ray. She misses the loud old-school rock and metal music he'd play at all hours, the bars they'd go to together, that one time they went to NASCAR and he hoisted her up onto his shoulders so that she could see what was happening when somebody blocked her view. She misses the private gentleness of his hands on her, the look in his eyes when she'd make him coffee or told him that he'd be a more than worthy champion, that he deserved the title.

She doesn't reveal any of the secrets he told her, any of the private pieces of him that slipped out. She knows things about the Dudley clan, about their mothers, about their wives and kids. She knows things about Devon. Bully Ray probably hadn't planned on telling her anything, the plan had probably been to lure her into marriage with gifts and affection and to keep himself totally shielded. But he hadn't, Brooke knows that, she'd stake her life on it.

So just as he keeps them, their memories, their life together, completely private, she does the same for him. It's a silent truce between them – nobody knows; nobody knows how real that was/is, let's keep it quiet, okay? Brooke looks into his eyes whenever they happen to interact at work and lets him see her hurt, her heartbreak, but also her love. One night, one act, doesn't change that, no matter what her Dad says. She wants Bully Ray to know that too.

She treasures the little things most, the way his arms had fit around her, how he'd taste of beer and tobacco when they kissed. She likes to think about his fingers in her hair, deftly twisting parts of it. He has plenty of nieces and out of necessity, knew, in his own words, 'how to rock the shit out of a braid.' It's something he did for her on quiet nights, when it was just the two of them and she'd kiss him afterward and ride his lap with laughter and moans.

She misses him and she keeps her wedding ring close to her heart and her warpaint on, because she's been part of this business since birth and she knows the importance of truth when she sees it. It's why she married Bully Ray, why she'd wanted him as part of her life forever. That hasn't changed and until all she sees is fakery and lies in him, she's going to stay a married woman. She's got a company to hold together after all and maybe she can prove to Bully Ray that there's things worth saving in TNA.

She's a Hogan; she fights hard for what she wants and for what she believes in. She's all about proving the doubters wrong.

-the end