Hello friends! Here we are with another exciting chapter! Massive thanks, as always, to Teanni and OneLastSummer for their massive contributions to this crazy creation and a huge thank you to everyone who had followed, favorited and reviewed. Can't wait to hear your thoughts on this new chapter!
Kat and Jon pulled into the parking lot of the WWE Performance Center, Kat still trying to shake the feeling of apprehension that was uncurling in her gut. She had a really bad feeling about this that was only made worse when Jon gave her a quick peck as soon as they entered the doors and headed off in his own direction.
"Wait, where are you going?" Kat asked.
"I gotta go find Joe and Colby to work some spots with some of the guys. You'll be fine."
"You'll be fine" he says, the voice in her head quipped. "It'll be fun" he says. Why do I feel like this is going to end really, really badly?
"Kat! There you are!" Tom said, coming through one of the hallways. "Glad you could make it. Pierce and I are training through here."
She followed him down the hallway and through to one of the massive rooms filled with wrestling rings. Pierce was standing in one of the rings, leaning against the top rope waiting for Tom to return. Tom rolled under the bottom rope, and the two embraced before Pierce threw him across the ring.
"What the hell, babe?" Tom said, a bit dazed by what had just happened.
"You let your defenses down," she replied. Kat's eyes widened.
"Oh, it's on."
The two wrestlers proceeded to lock up: a 6-foot-8-inch man and a 5-foot-2-inch woman. The result would have been comical under any other circumstance if Kat hadn't just seen the petite woman throw the giant across the ring not two minutes before. She was so out of her element right now.
After they were done with ring work - which was educational for Kat to say the least - they headed toward the punching bags.
"C'mon Mouse, time for some of that participant observation." When Pierce saw the surprised look on Kat's face, her smile widened. "Oh yeah, I did some research of my own. I know you anthropologists like to blend in, so how about you hold my bag?"
"It's okay," Tom cut in, attempting to reassure the somewhat frightened-looking Kat. "She doesn't bite…much." He winked.
Kat took a deep breath to steady herself. "Okay, let's do this."
What happened next was, by Kat's standards, absolutely horrifying. Kat had Pierce's hands and feet landing millimeters away from her face and strikes sending her almost flying backwards as she attempted to keep a 100-pound punching bag steady.
"What the hell was that?" she asked when Pierce finished up her fists and feet of fury.
"She had complete control of that," one of the other wrestlers, a very pale English girl who had previously introduced herself as Saraya, said. "She knew what she was doing."
"Right, 'course she did," Kat said, heading over to one of the benches to cool off as she attempted to re-regulate her breathing and get her temper under control. Things weren't going exactly as planned, but she wasn't ready to give up on this quite yet.
She was in the process of recording quick field notes of everything that had happened so far when she, and the notes, were suddenly drenched in something wet and sticky. She gasped and jumped, turning around to see Pierce and Saraya chuckling and holding one of those water coolers that are normally filled with Gatorade - the Gatorade that was now covering her hair, clothes and notepad.
"I had to test a theory," Pierce shrugged, as if she was offering an explanation for why Kat was suddenly a mess of sugary beverage.
"Wait, do Kats not like to get wet?" Saraya joked. "We thought you might like to cool off!"
"That's it," Kat said, now absolutely livid. "I'm done. You get your wish, Pierce. I'm done." With that, she grabbed what was left of her things, and her dignity, and left the building.
Kat unlocked the door to her and Jon's room, fighting back the tears of frustration pricking at the corners of her eyes. She was done. She had never been so discouraged by a research project ever. She was not usually a person who would just give up on an informant, but this was turning out to be the exception to the rule in more ways than one. Considering how her day was going, Kat definitely needed a ridiculously hot shower, and then she would continue with the project that had been consuming her life since before she had earned her PhD—those damned South America journals. But first, she really needed to de-stress from the unmitigated disaster that this morning had been, and she desperately needed to get the Gatorade out of her hair.
Kat grabbed clean clothes from her suitcase, setting the folder with the journals aside so that she wouldn't forget about them, and headed into the bathroom. She turned up the playlist on her phone as loud as it would go, stepped under the steaming water, and just stood there for a moment, letting the water wash over her.
Jon came into the room and heard the shower running, as well as Kat's music. She's back early, he thought. Dammit. I knew I should have told Pierce to behave. Maybe it wasn't so bad though… His train of thought was distracted by the folder that was sitting there next to Kat's suitcase. Jon knew that he probably shouldn't be snooping through Kat's things, but he also really had to know what happened to her in South America. That manila folder was going to give him those answers come hell or high water. He picked up the folder and undid the fastening, sliding out the sheaf of papers.
He sat down on the edge of the bed, holding the papers in his hand. The first thing he noticed as he glanced over them was that Kat had definitely not written these journals. He could tell because where Kat always wrote in the first person, these were referring to her in the third. He was intrigued.
I have taken over this record on Katharine's behalf, he read. Because she is indisposed due to the events, I am going to recount to the best of my knowledge. Jon continued to read on, beginning to understand what had happened. Wes, Kat's old professor who was recording everything, described what had happened to her, and Jon felt sick.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?"
Jon jumped a bit when he heard Kat's voice from the bathroom doorway. He looked up, hoping that whatever she was seeing was not ridiculously incriminating. From the cold glare he was getting from her normally warm hazel eyes, he wasn't going to bet on that.
"I was just—they were sitting out—I needed to know, doll." He really had no explanation, and from the way she was looking at him, he had a feeling any explanation he was going to offer was going to fall on deaf ears anyhow.
"You had no right, Jon," She moved quickly over to her suitcase and started throwing her things in it, refusing to make eye contact with him. After everything that had gone on today, the Gatorade Incident, not having enough shampoo to get it all out, and now this, she just really needed her own space for a while before she exploded and did something really rash. When she had everything packed, she went to move towards the door, and that's when Jon realized she was trying to leave.
"Kat…where are you going? Doll, please, let's talk about this…"
"I can't talk to you about this right now," she said, still refusing to look at him. "Just give me some space." With that, she walked out the door and down to reception, asking the man behind the desk for her own room.
Once she got the key and into the room, she collapsed onto the bed and just curled into a ball. She had every intention of telling Jon about what happened eventually, but that eventuality was going to happen after she had come to terms with what had happened herself. Now, she had to figure out what she was going to do about her situation with Jon. Part of her really just wanted to go back home. She missed her cat, and Janie, Brent and the kids. Of course, she had signed up for this, but now she had some major thinking to do.
Her thinking was interrupted by a knock at the door, which definitely confused her. No one knew where she was. She got up off the bed and walked over to the door.
"What are you doing here?" she asked when she opened the door to reveal the last person she was expecting to see.
"Listen up, Kitty Kat. You can give up on me all you want, but hear me out before you go giving up on Jon. C'mon. We need to have a chat." Kat stepped aside, more surprised than anything, and let Pierce into the room.