Put Your Heart Where Your Mouth Is

-Smackdown, February 7-

The lone Divas match on the card was Tia vs. Tamina. Tamina, of course, had AJ standing in her corner and the Divas Champion was, unsurprisingly, a key component in the match and ultimately decided who the victor would be. AJ was able to distract Tia just long enough for Tamina to line up a superkick and get the pinfall. Tia, being the respectful Diva that she is, refrained from throwing a tantrum after the match and just watched AJ and Tamina as they ascended up the ramp.

-Monday Night Raw, February 10-

AJ and Tamina strengthened their friendship when they faced Natalya and Tia tonight on Raw. The Champion was confident as always at the start of the match and almost had the Black Widow applied on Tia when Nattie came in and made the save. This caused Tamina to forcibly remove Natalya from the ring and AJ was able to hit Tia with a Shining Wizard and win the match. Tia's experience in the ring usually shows when she's in the ring but when she's wrestling alongside Nattie it's harder to determine who is better. Her Japanese training definitely shows though, it's obvious that she's striking harder than the other Divas.

-Main Event, February 12-

Again we saw Tia and Eva Marie vs. Foxsana. It went very similarly to the first match but this time ended with Tia not even performing her finishing move. Tia got the pin after a nasty kick to the side of the head. It looked as though Tia was channelling her very first trainer, CM Punk, during the match with a flurry of body kicks and even the step up high knee that he used in almost all of his matches. I wonder if he was okay with that.

-February 14, 2014; Phoenix, Arizona-

Valentine's Day. It didn't matter that she was single, Tessa loved Valentine's Day. Seeing people shower their partners with love in any form always made Tessa's heart sing. She brought half a dozen de-thorned red roses from a florist at the airport even though she had no one person to give them to – she would deliver them at random to anyone she felt needed it.

"Miss!" Tessa had just walked out of the terminal and already someone was trying to get her attention.

"Yes?" she asked, assuming that the middle aged man was going to ask for an autograph. He wouldn't be the first of the day.

"A girl with roses looks like she might be on her way somewhere. Did you want this cab?"

"I'm on my way nowhere in particular," she said with a smile as she shook her head. "But thank you."

He shook his head, "By all means, take it. Your nowhere in particular is surely more important than mine."

"Oh, thank you," Tessa said and let go of her suitcase so that she could hug the man. "Happy Valentine's Day!" She beamed, taking a rose from the bouquet and extending to him. He bowed his head and took the rose from her before he helped her load her suitcases into the waiting taxi. "Have a fantastic day. I hope karma is wonderful to you."

Tessa handed her second rose to the cab driver after they had a lovely conversation about wrestling. He had also helped her bring her things into the hotel so she gave him a nice tip. She always treated Valentine's Day like a federal holiday – everyone who worked deserved to be treated extra nice.

After she checked in, she hauled her suitcase to the elevator and smiled to herself for being smart enough to arrive a day early. The WWE talent had no obligations to be in Phoenix until the 15th but those who were staying with their partners for Valentine's Day would have to fly out early Saturday morning whereas Tessa would be well rested after a nice sleep in.

"Oh, wow, you got roses? From who?"

Tessa smiled when the elevator doors opened to reveal Summer Rae who was grinning and reaching out to touch the four roses Tessa still had left.

"No I give them out to people." She looked at the roses in her hand and, once in the elevator, let go of her suitcase to pull one free. "Happy Valentine's Day, my love."

"Oh Tessa!" Summer gasped, placing a hand to her chest. "You shouldn't have!"

The girls laughed together at Summer's dramatic acting.

When Tessa questioned why Summer was going back up, the blonde shrugged and said that they should hang out given that they were two of the only people in Phoenix. Both of them agreed that given that they were single it was easier to fly out the day before the house show and sleep in rather than rush around in the morning.

"You room by yourself, right?"

"Yeah, but I don't mind. I don't have to worry about annoying anyone, you know?"

Summer nodded in understanding as they reached Tessa's floor and walked towards her room. Tessa knew that it was a lie – having a room to herself sucked. It was lonely and quiet, something that Tessa had never really had to deal with before. Though if she was going to continue whatever she had going with Colby... It was going to be necessary.

"This is a cute outfit," Summer commented, tugging at the bottom of Tessa's white dress lightly. "You kind of look like you're about to get married."

Tessa looked down at her dress and laughed, "I tried to counteract it with the jacket... Probably should have done the same with the shoes, too." She shrugged at Summer who just smiled at her.

Tessa had, begrudgingly, agreed to go out with Summer that night. Summer – who had grown to prefer her ring name over her real name – convinced the newest Diva that being single on Valentine's Day meant going out and she enlisted the help of Phoenix local Dolph Ziggler. Tessa gave him her final rose.

"You getting married?" Dolph asked when he noticed Tessa's dress. She rolled her eyes. He turned to Summer and said, "You should have told me we were going to a wedding. I would have dressed up a bit more."

"You guys are mean," Tessa said lamely as she tugged at the hem of her dress.

Summer leaned over and kissed Tessa's cheek, assuring her that she looked fantastic and that they were just joking. Dolph immediately copied the action, leaving Tessa a little confused but nonetheless relieved.

She knew that Summer was going to wear something more appropriate for a club, something tight and no doubt short, but Tessa also knew that they were going for different reasons. Summer would try to hook up with someone – she had made it clear that that was her plan for the night – while Tessa was more than happy to just sit in a booth, drink a little and watch.

Over the next 4 hours Tessa was propositioned by no less than 7 men. 3 of those men recognised her as a WWE Diva, 2 had been beyond drunk and 4 had decided to sit down next to her and put their hand on her thigh. Only 1 of those men had left after she told him she wasn't interested, the other 3 had to be warned off by Dolph.

"I think I'm going to head off," she said after Dolph had gotten rid of the 4th man. "It's like, what? Nearly 3?"

Dolph looked down at his watch and nodded, "Yeah, 10 to. I would love to offer to get you back to the hotel but you're relatively sober and Summer-"

"Stay and make sure she's okay," Tessa agreed with a warm smile. "Thank you, though. I hope you got to have some fun and weren't just babysitting us all night."

Dolph shook his head, assuring her that he had had plenty of fun. She felt his hand hover over the small of her back as he walked her to the front of the club and paid the bouncer 50 dollars to make sure she got into a cab okay.

-Smackdown, February 14-

The crowd in Ontario, California, were offered a nice treat on Smackdown. They were able to see Natalya face off against Tia live. The match was one of the best performances put on by Divas in quite a while as both participants in the match have a lot of experience under their belts and, notably, a lot of time in Japan. Tia eventually won the match (it went on for 10 minutes, which is unusual for Divas matches these days) after locking in the cloverleaf. Nattie looked embarrassed after being made to tap out but Tia's offered hand shake was accepted and both Divas looked pleased with their match.

-February 15, 2014-

Tessa was woken up at 6.30 after roughly 3 hours of sleep by a loud banging on her hotel room door. At first she just rolled back over figuring that it couldn't possibly have been her door that was being assaulted but when the noise continued she threw back the covers and stomped towards it.

She pushed the stray hairs out of her face and peered through the hole in the door. The Shield were standing on the other side of her door – Jon the one beating his fist against the wood. Rubbing the sleep from her eyes, Tessa cracked the door open.

"What?" she asked sleepily.

"We're going to the gym," Jon told her, throwing a piece of clothing at her face.

"What?" she repeated with a furrowed brow. "I've barely slept I don't want to-"

"You're gonna go back in there, get changed and then come to the gym with us. If you take longer than 5 minutes I will start banging on the door again."

Tessa's gaze moved to Colby and Joe, both of them shrugging with unapologetic looks. She sighed and shut the door, moving towards her luggage. When she stretched out her arms to look at the shirt, she laughed. Colby had said he would get her a Shield shirt and that's exactly what she had in her hands.

After tying her hair back into a ponytail and putting on a pair of Capri leggings and her new shirt, Tessa hurried into the bathroom to her make-up bag. It was pointless to apply a full face of make-up to head to the gym, that much she knew, but getting such little sleep meant that bags had formed under her eyes and there was no harm hiding them with some concealer.

Tessa quickly packed her gym bag, pulled on her sneakers and pulled open the door.

"You," she looked straight to Jon, "are buying me breakfast."

"Can't argue with that."

They all walked to the car, Colby turning around to pull faces at Tessa as they did so. She pretended to ignore him but was struggling to hide the smile tugging at the corner of her lips.

She paid no attention to the CrossFit sign on the front of the building - it didn't mean anything to her other than being the name of a local gym.

"I hope you're ready for this," Joe said, patting her shoulder sympathetically.

"What do you mean?" Tessa asked with a frown as the three men walked in front of her.

Colby stopped at the front desk and ushered her over to him so that they could sign her up.

"What is Joe talking about?" She asked Colby who just smiled at her. "What? Colby?"

He handed her a pen and told her to sign the bottom of the page but didn't answer her question. With the same small frown she signed the paper before walking through towards the actual gym. Only it wasn't a gym like she'd ever seen before.

Being in the wrestling business she knew that there was a wide variety of different gyms... CrossFit was a completely different ballpark.

After they warmed up, Colby handed Tessa a piece of paper with a list of three things written on it. Tessa scrunched up her face and looked back to him when she read it.

"This," he pointed to the paper, "is Jackie. A benchmark workout that I want you to try."

"I just have to do those?" Tessa asked, reading the list again: 1000 meter row, thrusters 45lbs – 50 reps, pull ups – 30. "What's a thruster?"

Colby pulled her towards the weights and demonstrated what a thruster was. Tessa pulled a small face as he squatted – even though it happened 4 years ago, her knee injury was always playing on her mind.

"The idea is to do it as fast as you can but don't push yourself too hard, okay?" Colby spoke quietly making sure Tessa knew that he was serious. "You've never done it before and I don't want you to hurt yourself. Take your time."

Tessa nodded and assured him that she knew her own limits. He followed her to the rowing machine and stood beside her, starting the stop watch on his phone.

The 1000 metres was barely anything. Rowing was one of her favourite things to do at the gym – granted she didn't usually try to sprint but it wasn't proving difficult at all. She clocked in at 3 minutes and 17 seconds and left Colby with a gaping mouth.

The thrusters proved more difficult. She was too conscious of the movement of her knees to be able to complete the 50 reps quickly or consecutively.

"Are you okay?" Colby asked when she stopped at 10 reps. "You want to stop?"

Tessa shook her head and breathed deeply. Colby holding a timer in his hands made her want to keep going and prove that she could do it. 4 minutes and 43 seconds later and she had completed all 50 thrusters.

People were staring as started her pull ups. It might have been her declaration that she was going to get through them without a break or it might have been Jon and Joe stopping their workouts to join Colby in supporting her.

"You can use your momentum," Colby told her as her pull ups slowed a little.

"That's cheating," she said with gritted teeth. He smiled at her, proud that she was sticking to her guns.

True to her word, Tessa completed all pull ups from a dead hang and she did so in 2 minutes and 6 seconds.

"10 minutes and 6 seconds," Colby said as she showed her his phone. "That's crazy for your first time."

"You guys need to go to Japan," she said, her chest heaving up and down as she tried to regulate her breathing. "This is easy."

All three Shield members laughed at her, knowing that if what she'd done had been 'easy' then she wouldn't look so exhausted.

Tessa didn't do much after Jackie. She was sure it was psychosomatic but her knee was feeling a little stiff and she didn't want to do anything more than she had to in case she injured it again.

In September 2010 she tore her left meniscus in the middle of a match when she jumped from the top rope and landed flat foot, jarring her knee. It required surgery and she was out of action for 6 months. That time was spent in Seattle where she remained under the radar – it was no secret throughout the wrestling world that she was injured but she had managed to keep her whereabouts under wraps.

While The Shield continued their workouts, Tessa stayed to the side and started to do some yoga stretches. She was well aware that it was out of place – Colby's constant confused looks only solidified it – but with only 10 minutes of a workout under her belt for the day she felt that she had to do something.

When Colby appeared by her side a half hour later, she took hold of his outstretched hand and allowed him to pull her to her feet.

"Picture time, come on."

"No!" she gasped, dropping his hand and stepping backwards.

"What?"

"I look terrible! And besides, do you really want people to know that we're hanging out?"

"We're adults; we're allowed to hang out."

Opening her mouth to remind him that they hadn't just 'hung out' since 2007, she was forced to stop when Jon and Joe walked towards them. Jon didn't look too happy about being roped into a photo but Joe seemed happy enough. Tessa huffed before staring into the mirrors on the wall and attempting to fix her hair into something that resembled normal.

They stood in a line, Tessa in between Jon and Colby with Joe on Colby's other side. Her smile faltered for a second as Colby surprised her by putting his hand on the small of her back. After regaining her composure she threw up her signature peace sign.

"Now you get a Twitter," Colby said casually as he retrieved his phone from the employee who took the photo.

"I'm not getting a Twitter account," Tessa said quickly. "I love the fans but I don't need them knowing everything about my life."

"See, she gets it." Jon turned to look at her, "They're fucking pointless."

"You don't have to put up everything about your life," Colby countered. "Just what you want to share."

"I don't want to share anything..." She started to think about anything that had happened in recent memory that she would have been okay with sharing with the world – her annual giving of flowers was the only thing that came to mind. "Literally nothing interesting happens in my life."

"Well, that's a lie but I'll let it go. You okay with this?"

Tia's first CrossFit session! She's a natural.

"That's really lame," she told him with a laugh. "But it's fine."

She watched him hit send and the tweet was sent out into the world for anyone to see. It wouldn't go down well with anyone who knew their history – she was sure of it – but they were adults. They were allowed to hang out. Right?

a/n thanks to deanambooty, Livin on the EDGE, UntilNeverDawns, ajroleplays, Imagineer1392, nmoxracha and Straight Edge Queen for reviewing! 100 reviews! :D woo!