Contrary to her previous threat to walk into The Shield's locker room as if it were her own, Lucy knocked on the door and waited for an answer. Not that she would have minded seeing them wearing a bit less than usual, she thought with a smile. Seth in particular was about as close as it came to eye candy in WWE, in her opinion.
Seth himself opened the door a moment later, sadly still wearing the same outfit he'd had on during their trip to the arena. "Oh, hi," he smiled, all evidence of their previous disagreement gone from his tone as well as his expression. He obviously couldn't hold a grudge for long. "I'm glad someone came by. All I've had to do the last ten minutes is listen to these two on their phones. I'm bored out of my mind."
Although Lucy couldn't see Roman or Dean behind Seth as he stood in the doorway, she could them both talking away in the locker room. "Who are they talking to?" she asked, although she knew the answer.
"Their wives," Seth grinned.
"Dean and Renee aren't married," Lucy pointed out.
"They might as well be," Seth grinned again. "Come on, let's go have a coffee or something. How come you showed up here so quickly anyway?" he asked as they set off along the hallway.
Lucy sighed. "It was either that or murder Sasha Banks, and I'm supposed to be on my best behaviour."
With a grimace, Seth said, "You said in the car you were going to do your best to get along with the other women tonight. Sounds like that didn't last very long?"
"Oh, no, it was going fine," Lucy clarified. "I was chatting away with Bayley and Emma, then with Nikki too, when she showed up. Bayley taught me how to send direct messages on Twitter. I saw a tweet from that girl with the Women's Championship belt from this morning. I wrote to her and apologised for being off with her at the signing. I blamed it on having just received some bad news."
"That was really nice of you," Seth smiled. "I'm sure that meant a lot to her."
"Judging by the response I got back, yeah, it did. It made me want to do that kind of thing for people more often. I was in a great mood, but then Banks had to open her stupid mouth. She's lucky I didn't put my fist in it."
Seth stopped for a moment to say hello to one of the crew members they walked past, who he was apparently on first name terms with. When that was done, they continued walking towards catering and he carried on the conversation from where they had left off. "What exactly is the problem with you and Sasha?" he asked.
Lucy shrugged. "It started off as just one of those things, when you meet someone and you just don't take a liking to each other. I could tell we both felt that way about each other. Then, I had to wrestle her on a house show one night. You know, one of those deals where someone on NXT jobs to someone on the main roster."
Seth gave a single laugh. "I bet you didn't have to do that many times."
It hadn't been a question, so Lucy didn't bother answering him, instead continuing with her story. "During the match, I caught her pretty well with a punch and cut her cheek open below her eye. It was an accident, but after we got back to the locker room, she accused me of taking a shot at her. I told her if I had been taking a shot at her, she'd have still been lying in the ring, wondering what the fuck had hit her." She held her right fist up and grinned. "It only takes one of these."
Remembering her boxing background, Seth said, "Okay, Mike Tyson. I can see why Sasha didn't like getting that attitude from some newbie."
Lucy gave a derogatory grunt as they walked into the catering area and headed for the coffee machine. "Just because I was a newbie didn't mean I was going to stand for bullshit. If Banks didn't like that, it's not my problem."
"And then there was your pectoral injury," Seth recalled, handing Lucy a coffee, then setting the machine to work on pouring his own.
"Thanks, Seth. Where's the sugar?" Lucy saw the answer to her own question even as she asked it, and walked over to a nearby storage container to fetch a sachet of sugar.
Seth joined her a moment later with his own coffee, then they walked over and sat down at a nearby table. "Then the injury happened," he prompted again.
"Right," Lucy said, taking a sip of her drink before she was ready to go into detail. "Of all things, it happened on a hip toss. A stupid hip toss cost me five months on the sidelines. I'm not even sure how I got injured so badly. I just tried to take her over, and she had come at me from a weird angle, and she didn't jump into it right either. I didn't want to fuck the match up, so I tried to just haul her over and hit the move anyway, then boom…"
"Your pec went," Seth finished for her, grimacing as he imagined what the pain might have been like. Luckily for him, he was yet to experience a serious muscle tear injury. He strongly hoped it would stay that way, too.
"Yeah, it felt like I'd been stabbed in the chest. Obviously, I knew something was wrong straight away. I couldn't even lift my arm up properly, so I quickly told the ref we had to finished the match. There was no doubt in my mind that it was serious, and the doc told me right there in the ring that he suspected a pectoral strain or tear. When I got in the back, I was seriously pissed off at Banks, as you can imagine. Then, to make matters worse, she acted like she'd done nothing wrong. I lost my temper with her and told her she'd hurt me because she came at me from a stupid angle. She came right back and said I was the one who hadn't prepared for the move properly, and that the injury was my own fault for my poor positioning and execution. I guess we all know now whose side of that argument Vince came down on," Lucy said smugly.
Seth, however, realised that Vince coming down on Lucy's side and blaming Sasha didn't mean all that much, in terms of who had actually been at fault. Lucy was a McMahon favourite, which sadly meant a hell of a lot when it came to things like that. Seth considered it more likely than there had been fault on both sides. That was how accidents happened in the ring; it was just unfortunate that Lucy had sustained a serious injury from something so innocuous.
"You guys really should try and move on," he suggested after taking a drink from his cup, not wanting to get into a debate about who was to blame.
"I'm willing to try and do more to get along with people, but I'm not going as far as offering an olive branch to Banks," Lucy said definitively. "We're never going to be friends, and I'm totally fine with that. Let's have a subject change. What's your favourite memory?" she asked, plucking the first random thing out of the air that came to mind.
"Wrestling memory?" Seth asked with a smile, pleased that she was making some effort to ensure the conversation wasn't all about her, as it had been the last time they had chatted over coffee. Lucy nodded, so he went on. It didn't take much thought to come up with the answer. "Wrestlemania 31, when Roman and I beat Cesaro and Tyson Kidd for the tag titles. The crowd were right behind us that night and the match was amazing. I don't know if you remember it, but Cesaro and Tyson looked like they had the match won a bunch of times, but then for the finish I hit the ring got a Curb Stomp out of nowhere. The crowd went wild when I got the three count. I'll always remember thinking, when we were standing at the top of the ramp after the match, looking around Levi Stadium and celebrating with the titles, that it was a moment I would never forget." He showed her his arm, which was now covered in goosebumps. "Look at that, just by thinking back to it."
"Wow," Lucy smiled, looking at his arm, then into his eyes. It was the first time he had seen real, genuine warmth from her towards him. To his surprise, he found himself thinking that she really was beautiful when she had that look on her face. He wasn't sure if it was a good idea to be thinking of his new teammate like that.
Meanwhile, Lucy saw in his eyes exactly what he was thinking. Until then, she hadn't considered the possibility that Seth might find her attractive, as she did him. It was a very interesting development, that was for sure. She felt a strange fluttering sensation in her chest for a moment, then found herself considering the idea of leaning across the table and kissing him. Quickly, she forced that idea aside. Even if she was going to kiss the guy, it wasn't going to happen in the middle of catering, that was for sure. Everyone backstage would know about it in two minutes flat if she did that. Hiding her emotions by taking a long, slow drink of her coffee, she decided to wait and see what he said next.
"So, what's your favourite memory?" Seth asked, glad of having an easy question at hand to carry the conversation on.
Like Seth before her, Lucy did not need thinking time to come up with an answer. "Mine is from when I used to play cricket for my school," she began, smiling as she recalled it. "As I told you before, I was a bowler - a fast bowler to be more specific. In the game I'm talking about, my team had batted first and hadn't made a very good total, which put us bowlers under pressure to bowl the opposition out cheaply. The team we were against had three really good batters at the top of their order, and the first two people who bowled for us didn't manage to get anyone out. Then the captain told me to come on and bowl. My first ball was to this girl who was a left-hander. I was in one of those moods when you're determined you're going to do well, and I came steaming in to bowl. The first ball just managed to sneak through her defenses and bowled her. That means it hit her stumps," she clarified, not that Seth was really any the wiser. However, seeing how passionately she was speaking, he nodded to feign understanding, not wanting to stop her in full flow.
"The next girl who came in was the best batter on their team," Lucy went on. "She was a right-hander, so I'm now looking to swing the ball in towards her through the air, then have it move either further towards her or take it away from her off the seam when the ball pitches, depending on what delivery I bowl. My first ball to her swung in at her like a dream, moved even further in off the seam and hit her on the pads. I was certain it was out LBW, as were the rest of the team. We all appealed like crazy for it, but the umpire said not out. I'll never know how he turned that down. What I had noticed though, was that she was nowhere near hitting the ball. I decided to take the next one away from her, and she played at it and missed. I could really see she was on the ropes, not having a clue how to play what I was bowling. I brought the next one in at her again and hit her on the pads, but again it was not out. I took the next ball away from her, but I bowled it a bit too wide and she was able to leave it, even though I could see she was still struggling with the pace I was bowling at. So, that left me with one ball left in the over to bowl at her."
Seth had no clue about any of the cricket terminology she was using, but he still knew where the story was heading. "And you got her?" he ventured.
"I did," Lucy said, eyes looking slightly glazed over as she relived the scene in her mind. "I charged in and bowled the best ball I ever bowled. It swung in at her perfectly, then moved away off the pitch just the right amount." She motioned with her hand to demonstrate the trajectory of the delivery. "She had to play it as it was too close to her stumps to risk trying to leave it, but it moved away just enough to clip the edge of her bat, to be caught by the wicket keeper. I can remember running off celebrating like it was yesterday, with the other girls piling on top of me. After the game, the teacher who managed the team told me he'd never seen anyone bowl an over as good as that in person."
Finishing his coffee, Seth had to smile at the main thing he had taken away from listening to her passionate description. "You know, if you could show that kind of passion for your wrestling, it would probably do more than anything else towards getting you over with the fans." His kind tone kept the words from sounding overly patronising.
Rather than snapping at him, Lucy forced herself to take a moment to consider the advice. Maybe he had a point. It was possible that the fact she worked for WWE primarily because the money was really good actually showed in her in-ring work. Could the fans see that her heart wasn't in it to the extent that it was with someone like Bayley, who was out there every night literally living her dream?
"The thing is, I'm not like you, Seth," she said simply. "I'm not like you, or Bayley. You guys always wanted to be wrestlers. I just took the job because Stephanie McMahon sold it to me, then WWE came with an offer of a shit load more money than I was likely to make anywhere else. How am I supposed to just make myself passionate about it?"
"Get emotionally invested in it," Seth encouraged, his own passion for the business showing through quite clearly. "Get invested in your character and your storylines. Don't just go through the motions and take a pay check like you're working some nine to five in an office. This is one of the best jobs in the world. Look at Bayley when she won the Women's Championship; she cried her eyes out in the ring that night, and you know what? Most of us in the back cried right along with her, seeing what it meant to her. We all want our own moments like that. If the fans saw you caring about the business to that extent, you'd soon change a lot of opinions, I can tell you that. Basically, what I'm saying is put your heart into what you're doing. Right now, you really have no idea how great a time you could be having doing this job if you're just going through the motions."
Lucy nodded slowly, weighing up his suggestions. She could easily imagine herself getting as passionate about cricket as Bayley was about wrestling. In fact, she had been moved to tears on more than one occasion while watching the England cricket team. The question was, how could she make herself that passionate about wrestling? She supposed the same way she had become passionate about cricket: Learn everything about it, watch other people who were good at it, then focus on becoming the best she could be at it herself. And then it dawned on her; the perfect answer. The one thing that really annoyed her about WWE was people telling her that she couldn't wrestle; that she couldn't sell moves for others; that she only had a set of five moves of her own to use. Improving her in-ring work and proving those people wrong and trying to become one of the all time greats of women's wrestling was something she could definitely get passionate about.
"Do you think I could make it to the Hall of Fame one day?" she asked Seth, suddenly feeling like she needed his affirmation of her as yet unfulfilled potential.
Seth considered that for a moment before deciding that the best thing to do was give her an honest answer. "Yeah, I'm sure you will end up in the Hall of Fame if you stick at it long enough. Vince loves you, so it's pretty much a guarantee. The real question is not can you get in the Hall of Fame, it's will you deserve to be in it? There's a huge difference there."
Part of Lucy felt like she had essentially wasted the past year of her career with WWE, approaching every aspect of it in totally the wrong way. Maybe if she had handled things differently, including speaking to Vince about the over-the-top way he was booking her, she might never have ended up in a situation where a lot of fans were now determined to boo her regardless of what she actually did in the ring. Turning that around was going to take a lot of work, but Seth's advice, added to her own determination to make more effort to get along with her colleagues, gave her the newfound motivation to try.
"Thanks, Seth, I appreciate the advice," she said, meaning it. "Again, I'm sorry for going off at you in the car this morning. You really didn't deserve that."
"You're welcome, and forget what happened this morning, it's in the past," Seth said with a smile. "How about we go back and see if those two jokers are off their phones yet?"
As they walked back to The Shield's locker room, Lucy found herself thinking back to the moment in the middle of their conversation when she had felt like kissing Seth. She had absolutely no doubt that he had been thinking the same thing in that moment. Being honest with herself, she wished she had done what she usually did in life, and seized the moment. She should have kissed him. If only they hadn't been sitting in catering at the time, she would have done. Well, she told herself as they approached the women's locker room, it didn't have to be too late to seize the moment.
"Seth?" she said, stopping outside the door to the women's locker room. Luckily, the hallways were a lot less busy than they had been earlier, and no one was around.
"Yeah?" he asked, stopping next to her and looking at her with a slightly quizzical expression on his face.
"I'll catch up to you later," Lucy said, then reached up and planted a passionate kiss on his lips, enough to give him a taste of her. Without waiting for a response of any kind, she walked into the locker room and closed the door on him.
Seth stood there for a moment, surprised at what had just happened. If someone had told him a few days earlier that he would sit down and have a pleasant chat with Lucy Thorne, then she would end up kissing him in the hallway afterwards, he would have accused them of being on drugs. But those things had happened. Resuming his walk back to the locker room, a smile broke out on his face. Lucy had kissed him, and he wanted more. He wanted a lot more.