EyexLinerxWhore – Ohh, you have no idea. You're gonna hate me at the end. I promise. BUT I LOVE YOU!

DieselAnnaNights – My readers, reviewers, followers, favoriters, and silent-stalkers are the reason I do this. Without you guys, I'm just another ego-stroking nobody with a keyboard, so when anyone acknowledges me, in any small way, I absolutely have to thank you. You took time out for me!

The same goes for ALL of my R&R's, F&F's, and silent stalkers, and you know who you are, especially nattie, chelle, mom2, blackhat, sweethigh, cougar, westie, and the dozens I'm sure I'm missing. Just the fact you're out there makes me smile like you have no idea. Like Meg with a bottle of tequila, I imagine. (And really, nattiebroskette – the best beta, best-bestie, best writing reality-check, best-best I could have met through a love of all things spandex and rough-bump related – a huge part of the reason I keep this thing going. I was about ready to walk away in the middle of the whole plagiarism debacle. And when I couldn't get Randy's shirt off the right way. That took AN ENTIRE WEEK.)

Mom2 – THANK YOU for saying I'm not writing her as a Sue. Thank you thank you thank you. I write, I re-write, I beta with my beta-buddy nattie, and then I tear my hair out for a solid hour wondering if I'm making it all too campy and fake. It's wonderful to hear that they're reading like people, not like hormonally-charged drama-bombs. Occasionally dramatic, sure, (Hey, we have to have SOME plot, people) but not so overwrought that you wanna smack them for breathing.

ONWARD!

Logically, Joe knew Meg would eventually end up in triage, either to pack the concierge bags she'd mentioned to Dave, or just to knock around and see people as they filtered through before the show was fully underway. The company memo issued before the show gave him a great excuse to filter through as well; every employee had been told to speak directly to Dave or Meg and get the official packet explaining the purpose of the medical concierge service, how to get in contact, what the service could and couldn't be used for, and all the associated legal mumbo-jumbo that had to be signed off on. If the caller hadn't signed for the service, they couldn't use it and would have to either tough it out or wait for standard, land-route paramedics to arrive.

Everyone from stagehand to high-power talent signed, quickly and eagerly. Joe made sure not to appear too excited about the prospect of having easy access to Meg; as much as he wanted to call ten times a night (or just once and keep her with him) he also knew that his wife wouldn't allow for it and Meg would be immediately suspicious about his motivations.

So, he waited and considered his options for approaching her. And while he did, he mulled, paced, digested, recounted and reshuffled, all while trying half-heartedly to prep for his match. The match, he knew, would be useless, but seeing Meg made it easier for him to let go of caring what happened in his script, caring about whether or not he'd catch heat or pop, who wrote his promos and how they'd be delivered, whether his incision would burn or merely ache after his match – all he wanted was to talk to her. Make her listen, somehow, and not only that, but make her care, believe, understand, feel all the things he felt now and should have felt then, but was too...prideful, arrogant, blind, all of those things and more, to admit he felt. Now, he felt bitterly hollow.

His mulling brought him no easy answers. It mostly brought him back to his wedding. She'd picked the venue, the colors, the catering, cake, décor, guest lists and music choices, which left nearly no room for his family and their traditions because they were too...'earthy,' as Meg would say. She wanted Vera Wang by way of Vogue Magazine, and because she wanted it, she got it, just to shut her up. The hundreds of thousands of dollars that followed in expenses and costs did the exact opposite to Joe; the noise he made about the costs made him long for the days where Meg would grouse about borrowing quarters from him for the vending machines. 'Seventy-five cents for one of those chocolate caramel thingies, and Meg would be apologizing to me for hours. God forbid she wanted a Diet Dr. Pepper to go with it and catering was out of them; she cried one time when I pulled my wallet out since the goddamned vending machine wouldn't take quarters. And she always paid me back, too. Or offered to split with me, even though I can't stand that aspartame shit. Sticks to my teeth. So did those caramels, but she'd put those in her lips and dare me to kiss them out.' Joe wound his script into spirals, back and forth, before throwing it into his gear bag, not caring to actually read it.

Even the honeymoon was set entirely by his wife; there was no compromise on the location. She wanted Europe, Joe wanted something small, tropical, and soaked in the sort of darkly-sugared rum that put his mind on Meg's caramel edge, with the end result being that their days were spent on couple's tours of the historical art and architecture of the Western world's finer fashion boutiques. Their nights were spent in overly-crowded too-short beds, chilled through by the weather and frozen further by the lack of chemistry between them. 'All the chemistry of dry ice, anyway. Frigid. The sex sucked. The weather sucked. The everything sucked. Meg would have wanted something warm, like I did. She loved the beach at our house. How many times did I chase her down the beach into the surf? Thank God it was getting dark that one time I caught her by the bikini strings; everything came off. She wasn't mad at me, she just stopped running and undid the rest of it and made me follow her in the water. That was the first time I – we – ever made love in the ocean. The sun was setting. The neighbors probably saw, but I didn't care. She was so beautiful...everyone should see beautiful things.' Joe had torn so many pieces of tape off of the roll he was holding that he knew there wouldn't be enough left to tape his hands; he brushed the still-curling script to the floor and dug another roll out of his bag and began to wrap his wrists in earnest.

The dress was beautiful but overly ornate, dripping crystals and small beads and followed by a train that seemed to go on for miles. 'Ironic, since I fucked her so many times. My mother was so offended she wouldn't go with ivory. Champagne. Whatever the fuck women call that color when they're supposed to know better than wearing white.' The church was cavernous, and despite the hundreds of people filling it, couldn't have felt more empty. Joe remembered he had a hard time seeing anything in color that day, had a hard time seeing anything as more than greyish shards of time. It wasn't that he was overwhelmed; rather, he was underwhelmed. There was nothing that made him beam at her the way he knew he was supposed to, but he felt the expression on his face because he knew it was supposed to be there. He reached for her at the altar, because that was what good grooms did. Their kiss was pleasantly, sweetly chaste, as though there was some respect for the venue and atmosphere, some reverence for the event, but it was really just a part of the vacuum in Joe's mind and body, a mechanical action performed for the sake of appearance and tradition. 'Did I ever stop smiling at Meg? Everything was more bright, more intense, more focused, just more. It all felt better, and when it didn't, she could – would – just touch me and it would fix itself. I would break and she would put me back together. Eventually I stopped breaking. Then Jackson happened, and she broke herself for me. I don't think I'm ever gonna understand that one. She should have understood that I could take care of myself, take care of her, but she didn't. Didn't she trust me? Or trust us, trust the idea of us, that we could survive it?' It occurred to Joe, slowly, that Meg had trusted all those things, just trusted them to come true at the end, when she came back. He kept wrapping his hands in tape, kept mentally replaying the wedding and reception.

Whatever had happened at the reception, he'd managed to keep himself out of a majority of the photographs, telling the photographer to focus on his wife and leave him as much alone as was possible while he stewed himself in bourbon as soon as the dinner portion of the evening was over. 'She's such a whore for attention, anyway – it'll take her forty fucking minutes to set herself up for each picture.' He mused over Meg throughout that night, the way she would likely have thrown herself into his family and planned a reception that was actually enjoyable, not some crisp-linen-and-fine-china affair that left everyone sitting slightly uncomfortably in their chairs, afraid to break anything. 'But that's her. It would have been traditional, but it would have been both of us. Her voodoo Catholic Louisiana Russian shit, and my islander culture, and it would have just...worked. I'd be in all the photos. My mother would have gone traditional with our family's type of wedding dress for her. The cake would have been dulce de leche, and she would have let me get her in the face with it. Roses and orchids. Goofy photos. I would have kissed her like I meant it. Maybe I could have talked her into a tattoo.' By the time his mind snapped him away from what little he remembered of the reception and the million details he both remembered and imagined of Meg, he'd wrapped his wrists so thoroughly in tape that his fingers were darkening and he'd had to strip the whole mess off and start over so he actually had movement and circulation.

Pacing didn't do much to help, either, other than agitate his incision and keep his edgy nerves even edgier.

He decided to sit, which let him calm enough to lead to a mental count and tally of both of their rights and wrongs. She shouldn't have left, should have let him help somehow, found a lawyer, asked for the hotel security tape, anything – though he had a good idea of what went on, both at his hotel the night she came to him and Randy, and then again once Meg found Jackson. Randy wasn't the only one with the ability to sign a FOIA request, and while Joe hadn't managed to get hold of Meg's medical records (that required her signed consent, and forgery was, surprisingly, a felony he wasn't willing to attempt), the police, fire, and ambulance information painted a bleak enough picture that he wasn't sure he ever wanted to read the hospital reports. 'You went through a window, Meg. The car didn't land on you, but it should have. You shouldn't have come out of the car with your leg still attached. You shouldn't be able to move your arm, anymore. Why didn't you put my phone number down? I would have come. Randy explained how to work that phone shit; I would have come. Or even Dave. It's not like you would have fallen in love with Dave. Did you love Randy then? You replaced me before you even got to my door, Meg. Or were you planning on dying and you didn't want me to see it?'

He'd done no better than she did; not only did he let her leave after the certified mail came in, but he'd done his damnedest to make sure she stayed gone even after her return. When Meg showed up on his doorstep in Tampa, damp from sweat, her long hair sticky down her neck, he'd wanted to scruff his then-fiancee, shove her out the door, and hold Meg in his arms as long as she'd allow it. Then, his internal conflict started. As much physical pain as he was in, he could read ten times that on her face. Even worse, the backs of her eyes showed such raw emotional scarring that he wanted to push her as far away as he could and never look again. Until he looked again. Heard her start to apologize. And then Joe knew, if he heard he speak a second more, even another single syllable, he'd be done, he really would be pushing his fiancee out the door, there'd never be a wedding – or even room in him – for anyone other than Meg, and that terrified him. He'd kept the shirts she slept in, he'd wrapped the once-used engagement ring in them, having every intent of melting it down and starting over, shaping it into something personal for her, a series of roses and fleur-de-lys, and he'd felt like he ought to let go of it all but deep down knew he never would.

So instead, he delivered the promo of a lifetime, hoping he was acting as cold as her hands always felt, giving her enough of a reason to simply turn her back on him and go, cut all the ties, but he underestimated her stubbornness, willpower, and sheer dogged devotion. Later, when he read the reports, he started to understand: in her mind, everything she'd done, everything she'd gone through, really was all to protect him. 'Why she did all that...why I didn't believe she would do all that...she loved me. Everything she wrote in that note was the truth, and I chose not to believe her.'

Then, with no warning at all, she came back, Randy's arms around her in the hallway. The way they looked at each other was as intimate as anything Meg had ever demonstrated toward Joe openly backstage, and then he remembered how she'd turn her eyes to him in the same way, over coffee, after sex, simply across a corridor when they passed each other right before she palmed him some perfumed sheet of hotel stationery where she'd written a thousand things he'd never known how to say himself. 'He held her like he didn't know, either. The way I wanted to hold her – like you couldn't let go, like if you did it might all just disappear. But he was so content. Protective. The way I wanted to be. The way I'd still be with her if she'd just fucking let me get near her. Just talk to her. I can convince her to come back to me; it's not like my wife matters. Not like the marriage matters. It's all just paperwork. Meg is real.'

That score ended up one-one, fuckups all set at a tie between the two of them, the count even, especially since he refused to add the staged break-in to the tally. There, Joe was still puzzling with himself. He wanted to be angry that he'd gone so far, that he'd risked Meg so thoroughly – it wasn't like he knew the idiot he hired would actually stop when he promised he would – but he had to know she was there, had to know that she'd rejected him completely and started over with the one person who couldn't have broken his heart more thoroughly. 'I remember when you called me your brother. You helped me understand her. You kept her safe when I couldn't, on the nights she'd stay with you when I was gone. You, Orton, hurt me more than she did – but she didn't mean to. Did you?'

Ultimately, it all left him shuffling. Memories, touches, whispers, the tiny stolen moments that he'd learned to recognize when they happened between other performers, other talent, other techs, and learned to let go of in his life. Those moments rarely if ever happened between his wife; she handled his credit cards more tenderly than she handled him. 'Who whores for who, then? I fuck her because I let her use my credit cards, or she lets me fuck her because of that, or if it wasn't for the cards I wouldn't be fucking her, or am I just buying access while she's buying dresses she leaves the tags on and then won't return?'

It took several people pounding on the door to his locker room before he realized it was time for his promos to be filmed, and he wondered if the crowd would be behind him or simply telling him how boring he was.

Turned out, the path to Renee's set led him past triage, which led him to slow his steps. Neither Meg nor Dave had bothered shutting the door after Tenille walked in; too many people kept knocking, eager to see Meg, and it wasn't as though Tenille was showing any inappropriate part of her body. This let Meg's voice carry much farther than she intended, and as soon as Joe heard Meg say her wrists had been tied and she'd enjoyed it and she trusted Randy during the whole thing. his eyes widened. She kept going, talking about how the whole thing had flipped some mental switch for her, brought her back, made her want to be here in her circus-cum-family-away-from-home, and it just killed Joe. The icy burn her fingers had left on her arm felt like lava; it shot across his skin and felt blistering, dropped lower, crawled around his thighs and tightened until it pressed him against the wall, where he stood silently, still listening, feeling his legs grow tighter and tighter, his thoughts prepared to snap and propel him forward into the room, into Meg. 'You never let me do that. Ever. I never asked, you never offered, but we never...didn't you trust me? Wouldn't I get you off like that? I would have used blue, that same cerulean from the first night I made love to you. You were beautiful, Meg, you were in moonlight and in wine and I was in you. Your hands wouldn't be behind you, Meg, in all that blue ribbon. I would have wanted to see you. See how you wanted to move, what you wanted to touch. Would you have let me tie you to the bed? Ribbon, or silk? Have you ever let him blindfold you? Does he tell you what to do in bed, Meg? I never did that to you. Did I ever want to? We weren't like that, Meg. You never said you wanted it, liked it...did you need something I didn't give you? I can do that for you, Meg. I promise, I can. Let me show you. Let me tell you I remember how beautiful you were, and then let me show you. I never showed you the right way.'

Joe was snapped from his reverie by Tenille, who sped past him as though both she and he were on fire. Joe had no way of knowing Dave had spotted him and told Tenille to run as fast as she could to find Randy, tell him to get his ass to triage double-quick, regardless of what else he was doing, tell him Meg needed him now and it wasn't negotiable. Then, all Dave could do was hold his breath and pray while Joe loomed in the hallway, moved toward the doorway, hovered in the room. Any time Joe said something was owed him, it was a sign a disaster wasn't far behind.

Meg, for her part, slipped her hand into the front pocket of her suit jacket and grabbed her phone, unlocking it and gripping it firmly in her hand before turning to face Joe. Dave glanced over at the screen and saw it was lit, but couldn't tell whose number was up. 'Please have some sense, Meg. Get Randy down here. Joe will back down, at least for now.'

She cleared her throat, almost casually, and motioned Joe further into the room, causing Dave to throw his hands in the air and roll his head back. As soon as Joe crossed Dave's plane of vision, Meg pointed across the back of her phone, directing Dave out the door. 'Go, dumbass. Go, and help Tenille. Two people looking is better than one, and I can handle myself here. Go now.' Dave seemed to understand Meg's unspoken thoughts and passed quickly out the door, heading the opposite way the younger girl had sprinted, making sure to pop the peg lock on the door as he passed it, hoping Joe wouldn't notice it now couldn't be locked.

"Joe, I'm glad you're here. I need you to sign on the screen for the concierge agreement." 'And please do not read it first, because yours is oh-so-special.' Meg remained pleasantly distant, neither irritated nor impressed by Joe's sudden arrival in triage. "Nice work with the tape, too." She gestured at his hands. 'Distraction worked with one idiot in my life; let's see if it works with you. I don't have to get you in a car. I just have to get you out of here.'

Karma smiled on her; Joe grabbed at the Toughbook she held out to him and skimmed the stylus across the signature box. "You should shut the door when you're gonna have a conversation like that. You never know who's listening."

"What, about Randy? Joe, nothing I do with him embarrasses me. I'm sorry you heard it if it upset you, but it was a conversation with Dave. Not with you." Meg's tone was now clipped, and signaled an end to that discussion. "Was there something else you needed to talk about?"

"Yeah. How do I set up appointments with you? I need workouts after each match. My back and sides lock up." 'There. Easiest 'in' ever. How could you be so...easy?'

"Hate to break it to you, Joe," Meg switched from clipped to pity, and quickly slid around him to the door, "But you actually don't have access to Concierge services. You signed an agreement to emergency medical only. You're recovering from major surgery and Talent Relations, the Wellness Board, and the Liability Directors all decided that CS wouldn't be handling you. We can offer palliative care to emergent situations backstage only; anything else and anything off-site is 9-1-1. I'm sorry."

Joe lunged at her; Meg held stock-still and waited, eyes open but glazed, for the punch she believed would be coming. "And you didn't think to tell me that before I signed that shit?" He towered over her, fists clenched at his sides, but didn't move further. "So you're no fucking good to me, is what it means."

"Joe," Meg whispered, "I was never any fucking good to you. You told me so. Remember Tampa?"

Randy's footfalls, light and quick, were headed down the hallway at record speed. The door to the triage bay was still open, and he could see someone's shadow cast out on the floor in the hallway. Dave, heavier and slower, struggled to keep up behind him, Tenille sticking close to Dave's side to make sure he didn't keel over.

"Meg, all I want to do is talk to you. Just talk." Joe's hands had relaxed and the regret was immediately obvious on his face. 'Why the fuck did I say that? Why do I jump to angry every time you tell me I fucked up? I know I fucked up, Meg, I can't tell you you're right if you don't give me a chance.'

"I'm not going to do that, Joe. I don't have anything I need to say, and you don't have anything I want to hear."

"Please, Meg. I miss you." His voice was desperate.

"And you'll see me around. That'll be enough."

"Just seeing you is not enough anymore!" Joe's hands sped toward Meg just in time for Randy to wrap an arm around her from behind and lift her up, backwards, out past the door and into the hall, where the group of four watched as Joe embraced nothing but the air where Meg had been standing.

"Don't come back here, Joe." Randy's voice, atonal, was terrifying in its complete lack of emotion. "Don't come back to this room, don't come near her or Dave, just don't. There is nothing here for you. Show up, do your job, leave. That's all that's here for you, anymore." A smirk crept across Dave's face, and even Tenille couldn't resist a half-lovey sigh at Randy's defense of Meg. "Now. I believe you were walking away. Your promo gets filmed down there, not here in triage." Less a question and more an absolute statement, Joe slunk from the room and out towards Renee, now visible at the end of the hall with her hands on her hips, wondering what the hell had just happened to her interview.

'That asshole. All I had to do was hold her. If I just held her, she would have understood. I know she can still feel...something...for me. She's fucking kidding herself if she thinks she loves him. He's using her. I never had to tie her up to show her I loved her. I never had to put her in whore-boots and parade her around in front of people. However Meg came to me was enough. He's such an asshole. I just need to see her, and I can't see her. I just need a way to see her.' Joe's slinking turned to stalking, and he fairly sailed into Renee's interview area.

"Did you read over the script?" Her tone was cautious; while she hadn't heard what had gone on outside of triage, she'd watched the scene play out, and it didn't look like Joe had come out on top.

"Fuck the script. I don't sound like that, I don't play like that, and I'm not reading that."

"You...we...can't just go off-"

Snatching the microphone from her hand before she could even begin her introduction, Joe waved to the camerman to begin filming, and began to speak. Renee just gestured upward, and stepped back.

"Some of you don't seem to understand who I am. What I'm about. Some of you think I'm weak. That I don't handle my business, or now that I'm by myself you can try to push me around, tell me how it's gonna work for me, what I can and can't have. Where I belong. What belongs to me. What doesn't belong to me. I'm here to tell you, that's not how it works here. That's not how it works out there, that's not how it works backstage, that's just not how it works. I get what I want. I can have what I want. I can go where I want. None of you get to tell me I can't. Some of us need to talk some things out. Some of us need to get together and work some things out. I'm gonna promise you, it's gonna happen. There are some things I'm gonna get back. Believe that." He slammed the microphone into Renee, nearly knocking her down in the process, with the camera cutting to her very real look of pain while she rubbed her arm. Shaking her head, she refused to entertain the idea of cutting the promo a second time even if Joe had gone off-script, deciding to walk down to triage herself, suggest a drug test for him, and an ice pack for her.

'That asshole. He does not get to tell me I can't talk to her. I promised her if she ever told me to go away I'd do it, but she never said that. She just said she didn't want to talk. She doesn't have to talk, she can just listen to me. All I need to tell her is how much I still love her, that this whole marriage thing is a mistake, that it should have been her. It always has been her, it still is her.' Joe took the long way back around to his locker room, thinking about what he could do to isolate Meg just long enough to explain himself.

"Tenille, do me a favor?" Meg's smile was gentle, belying the amount of irritation she felt at the situation.

"Sure, love. Anything. You are so lucky. He's head over heels for you. That was so romantic!"

"Heh. Yeah, which one?" A dry chuckle escaped Meg, she couldn't help it. Eying Randy as he talked to Dave, who was doing his level best to calm him, she continued. "Look...about that shit with Joe...I know what Randy did was sweet, but until things die down...Talent Relations doesn't need to crawl up Randy's ass, you know? And I don't want things being harder than they need to be for Joe. It'd really help me out if you just let their little pissing contest kinda...die...as a topic of conversation. You know, don't mention it to anyone." Meg clutched Tenille's hands. "Please? I need a smooth day. This shit with Joe...it's not helping my nerves. You know how it is being new. And you especially know how it is when outside bad press follows you."

"My lips are zipped. I'm not up for starting shit for anyone. Besides, all those hot stories? I wanna keep my open invitation to triage!" Tenille beamed at Meg and scooted off to the women's locker room, Randy approaching Meg to take her place.

"Everything gonna be cool with her, or do I have to giver her the 'Don't be a newbie and start gossip' speech?"

"No, she gets it. She went through her own outside drama with that shoplifting thing; she's not gonna spread anything. If it gets started, it's on Joe." Dave slid past the two of them, nodded, and shut the door to triage.

Randy pulled Meg into a tight hug. "It'll be alright. He'll get used to it. And if he doesn't, fuck him. I'll get you a can of mace." He tilted her back and brushed a small, stray lock of hair out of her face. "Your leg holding up okay?"

"As okay as it's gonna be on a concrete floor. I'm not used to playing dress-up like this, but it's part of the job. Plus, I'm here with you, so I'll gladly suffer the girly shoes."

"Have you looked inside those things? They are not girly. There's enough metal in there to...I dunno...do something metallic." Meg rolled her eyes and kissed him gently. "But...they're working, right? Your leg doesn't hurt as much as before?"

"Ran...it's a lot better. You did good. Go take care of your match and leave the first aid shit to me."

"As long as I get to take care of you later." He pulled her in for one last kiss before he had to head back toward gorilla. "I can't believe you pulled this off, Meg. Coming back here. Surprising me. I keep thinking I'm going to blink and you'll be gone."

"Nah. Part-cat. Nine lives. And you authorized sneak tactics." She winked at him and waved him away, tucking herself back into triage after he turned the corner and vanished from her view.