It's Not Over
Usual disclaimer - see Chapter 1 for the full details, but I own nothing, all the people own themselves, WWE owns the trademark names, I'm doing this to exercise my creativity and for the sheer pleasure of writing. Ask my therapist!
Chapter 4
Dacey's days were busy leading up to the reveal of Sphinx and the launch of Darkness. Makeup worked with her to create a hairstyle that worked her long hair into a form of braid they called the Wedding Perimeter, which in essence braided her hair across the top of her head and then down the sides, catching into a tie at the end. She let them cut a few short wispy bangs to frame her face, and the look was done.
At the same time, she was continuing to wrestle as Ginger, and the matches that were the most fun were against her old Brat Pack friends. Shawn had an incorrigible sense of fun, and he and Dacey had become friends. Despite the Brat Pack being officially disbanded, the pranks and mayhem continued virtually unabated. Their matches always worked well, especially one night in New Mexico.
Shawn took great delight in telling her dirty jokes sotto voce while they were in the ring, and she had to bite her lips to keep from laughing. Backstage, she chased him until she caught him and tickled him mercilessly in his one weak spot - which she had found by accident one day while blocking out a match. She only let him up after he cried "uncle", much to the amusement of Paul Levesque. Unfortunately, at the next hotel, she found her bed filled with water filled condoms as revenge - one of which burst on being removed. The hotel complained about the water bomb battle which ensued in the hallway, and she and Shawn were both reprimanded for their behaviour. It kept them out of trouble for about a week. Management counted themselves lucky to have gotten even that small respite.
Still, Dacey's momentum as a heel was growing, and crowd reaction was good. The plans for the confrontation with Kane to reveal Ginger's true identity were coming together. The set up for the confrontation would follow a match on Smackdown, to close the show. The taped segment of the reveal would be shown on Raw the following week. But before that, there were teaser spots in which Taker and Kane were seen discussing the fact that someone on the shows was calling to them, to their dark natures. It was this calling that brought them together, and they were trying to find out who it was.
Dacey spent time in Wardrobe having a new version of her Ginger costume made. The waistband had to be lowered, to show off the semi-permanent ink, and the top constructed so it could be torn apart in the confrontation with Kane. She and Glenn spent an interesting afternoon or two testing the designs. Dacey wore a lycra crop top under the costume, and Glenn experimented with tearing it apart in a fight. It needed to come apart thoroughly so that when Dacey fell back, the camera could zoom in and show her tattoo. They finally had a design which worked, and they had blocked out the scene to everyone's satisfaction. All that remained was to shoot it.
The plan was that Ginger would have a match against Jeff for the Intercontinental Championship, which she would lose because of interference from Shawn. The resulting rampage backstage would lead her to Kane, and she would start a brawl with him. They shot the scene the day after the match, so that they could make sure the continuity was right in terms of her appearance.
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That morning, Dacey arrived to don her modified Ginger outfit. She picked up the bra that she would be wearing under it, and gave Julie a hard look. It was a push up bra, and Dacey didn't really need any help with her cleavage.
"Just wear it Dacey," Julie said. "It's only going to get a few seconds of air time, it'll titillate the men and you can use your outrage over it to kick some serious ass."
Dacey laughed and realised Julie was right. And it was a sexy bra - pity she had no-one special to wear something like that for. Maybe some day she'd meet someone, but right now the only people she met were wrestlers and that wasn't exactly an ideal situation. She finished dressing, and headed to Makeup to have her hair mussed in conformity with the footage from the night before. She inserted the heart shaped belly jewel and they touched up the ink on her "tattoo". She lazed quietly while it dried.
Glenn had arrived and was in costume when she made her appearance. She had done a warm-up routine, to simulate her pumped up post-match condition from the night before, and spent a few minutes walking around muttering to herself, getting back into Ginger's furious frame of mind. Now she was ready.
There were cameras set up for multiple angles of the fight scene, because they were really only going to get one shot at it. It needed to be spontaneous. When the director called for action, Dacey took a few deep breaths and then let out her warrior scream as she ran down the hallway to the area set aside for the fight. Glenn was cued to walk around the corner just as Dacey hit her mark, and she slammed into him at full tilt. When he grabbed her, she attacked him, punching and kicking. He went on the offensive, and as planned, grabbed her shoulders to try to break the chokehold she was trying to put on him. As she resisted, the top she was wearing tore apart and she fell backwards onto the ground, her torso bare but for her bra. The various cameras zoomed in on her belly, showing the tattoo, her face, showing shock at being exposed, and Glenn's face, showing shock and growing realisation.
His line was "It's you", and it came out softly, with a kind of wonderment. They held positions for a long moment, giving the cameras time to get plenty of footage, and then the director called "Cut!"
Glenn reached down to help Dacey up, and she pulled her top together. The director confirmed with the cameramen that they had all gotten good footage, and then dismissed Glenn and Dacey. They walked back to Wardrobe together, and Glenn was unusually silent. Dacey wondered what was wrong. By the time they were back in their street clothes, and heading for the carpark, he still seemed distant, and they got into their rental car to head to the airport. They had a few days off and were both flying home - Glenn to Tennessee and Dacey to Connecticut.
Dacey had spent enough time with Glenn and Mark recently to become friendly with them, especially with Glenn, who was the more gregarious of the two. So it was unusual, if not downright strange, to be driving with him and having him not say a word.
"Ah, Glenn?"
"Yeah?"
"Something wrong?"
"Why would there be?"
"I dunno, just that you've barely said a word since we left the arena, and that's not like you. I usually have to fight to get a word in edgewise around here," she joked.
"Sorry Dacey, just a bit . . . preoccupied, I guess," he said.
"With?" Dacey hoped she wasn't prying, but it seemed that this might have something to do with her. He'd been fine up to the point where they had shot their scene, but now . . .
"Dacey . . ."
"Look, Glenn, we're going to be working together more and more, and if you shut down on me, this whole angle is not going to work. Is it something I've done?" Dacey was frustrated, and it showed in her voice.
He shot an embarassed look at her. Glenn - embarassed? Dacey had a cold feeling in her stomach.
"Sorry, Dacey, it's just that it was really weird shooting that scene with you today," he finally managed.
"Because we really haven't worked together before?"
"No, it was more . . ." he hesitated, then went on. "Dacey, it was just really strange to see you in that bra, okay?"
Dacey laughed. "Come on, Glenn! You've been in this business a long time, you mean to tell me with all those Divas around you've never seen a woman in a bra before? What are you - blind?"
"Dacey, this was different. You aren't a Diva," he said slowly.
She felt like she'd been punched in the gut. Okay, she knew she couldn't compete with the Divas in the looks department, and she didn't want to. But it hurt like hell to have someone come straight out and say she just wasn't attractive. She tried for a light-hearted tone, to cover up the pain she felt.
"Cheer up - it may look like crap when they see the footage and the whole thing will be scrapped. Wouldn't be the first time, would it?"
They lapsed back into silence and, blessedly, arrived at the airport a few minutes later. Dacey got out of the car quickly and retrieved her pull case from the trunk, said goodbye to Glenn and headed for the terminal. He had to return the rental car, and frankly, she didn't want to be around him just now. She needed time to think.
Glenn watched her walk away. He'd blown that, for sure. And she wasn't about to give him time to explain himself either. He had been feeling very odd about seeing Dacey in that sexy bra. Somehow, he'd never really noticed her body before. He'd seen her in workout gear, he'd trained with her sometimes. She was fit and toned, and very well muscled. Hers was an athletic body, attractive for that reason. Her wrestling costumes were very fitted, but in them she was Dacey, his colleague. Casually, she usually wore jeans and T shirts. He'd grown comfortable around her as a friend.
But today . . . seeing her fall back with her top open, wearing that bra, it had been like a shock right to his groin. Dacey was sexy! Damn sexy. How had he missed seeing that before? And why did it make him feel so weird? Dacey was right, he had been around half dressed women most of his career, it wasn't like he hadn't seen a woman in a bra before. But they were Divas - that was their job. This was Dacey - and there was something disturbing abouut seeing Dacey as sexy. It made him uncomfortable. And it made him want her.
But from the set of her shoulders as she had walked away, he got the feeling that she certainly didn't want him. And that was going to make things very weird. He was going to have to put these thoughts of Dacey out of his mind for good. Because no matter what she said, he knew that footage was going to be white-hot, and Darkness was going to be huge. He grabbed his own case and headed for the rental car counter to turn in the keys.
Dacey checked in for her flight, and with a half hour to spare, she headed for the ladies room, where she knew she could get some privacy. She locked herself in a stall, and sat down on the closed toilet seat. And, muffling the sound with her hands, she wept. She didn't know why it hurt so much that Glenn found her so unattractive. There was the fact that, if that showed in the footage, the company may decide to scrap the whole angle. It was a huge break for her. She just hoped that Glenn was a good enough actor that his feelings about her looks hadn't shown on his face.
She had never worried about her looks before. But as a female wrestler, she was aware that it was the Divas who set the standards for female attractiveness in the business, whether she liked it or not. But the fact that one flash of her body had been so off-putting for someone who was working with her made her regret ever having agreed to do it. She decided to call Jim and tell him that they needed to reshoot the scene, make the reveal some other way.
She called him when she arrived in Connecticut. Jim told her the director had already looked at the rough footage, and that it was terrific. He knew Dacey didn't want to be seen as a Diva, and assured her that she would get a chance to view the vignette to make sure that it didn't make her uncomfortable. As he hung up the phone, he wondered what had gone on at the shoot. The director had told him that Glenn and Dacey had worked incredibly together, and that the scene had gone off perfectly. He put it down to nerves on Dacey's part, and figured it would all sort itself out.
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At home in Stamford, Dacey was restless. She took her bike out a few times, riding around aimlessly, just content to be on the move. She cooked huge batches of her favourite dishes and froze them in meal size portions, so that she didn't have to cook on her quick trips home if she didn't feel like it. The apartment she had was tiny, but after six years of living in a Winnebago, it felt huge to her.
Glenn's remark preyed on her mind, and she didn't know what to do about it. She finally called Jim Ross and told him that she wanted to see the vignette alone, before it was shown to Mark and Glenn. Since it was in post-production at the studios at Titan Towers, Jim invited her over the next day to take a look.
The production crew explained to her that there was still work to do in smoothing out the transitions between camera cuts, and the sound needed a little work, but what she was about to see with Jim was essentially the final version.
Dacey was tense. She didn't particularly like looking at herself on tape, it felt kind of strange, but she had grown more used to reviewing her matches and seeing what she could improve on. This was different. She felt almost sick to her stomach about this. She braced herself for the worst.
The tape rolled and the vignette played out. Objectively, she could see the wrestling action between her and Glenn had been very good, but that wasn't what she was nervous about. Suddenly, there it was - the reveal. The costume tore apart exactly as they had expected, and Dacey saw herself falling backwards. There was a quick shot of her body on the floor, showing her "tattoo", and a shot of her face, looking suitably shocked. She held her breath, waiting to see the reaction shot from Glenn - this was what she dreaded.
There was a tight shot of the tattoo, and then a shot of Glenn's face in closeup. His eyes widened behind the mask, and his mouth dropped open almost involuntarily. Then came his line, "It's you", spoken slowly and softly. He did his characteristic head tilt, and then there was a long shot of the two of them in tableaux and a fade to black.
Dacey finally relaxed. Glenn's facial expressions could certainly be interpreted as interest, from the little they showed. At least his distaste for her body wasn't apparent. She silently blessed his acting skills and turned to Jim.
"Thanks Jim, I was pretty nervous about this and I appreciate the chance to see it before Mark and Glenn did," she said.
Jim nodded, but his expression was thoughtful as Dacey left. From the raw footage he'd seen, Glenn's reaction to Dacey's appearance had been either the best acting he'd ever seen, or the man was totally taken with her. Was that what had Dacey on edge? Well, it wouldn't be the first time that two wrestlers had formed a relationship, and wouldn't be the last. He just hoped that they could sort it out between them so this angle would work, because his instincts told him it was going to be gold.
The following day, Dacey flew out to rejoin the roster in Philedelphia. When she checked in to the hotel, the clerk had given her a message from Mark, letting her know that he had checked in. It appeared that they had adjoining rooms, so when she was settled, she knocked on the connecting door and Mark opened it and gave her a grin.
"Hey girl - ready to see your big promo later?" The three of them were going to meet at the arena and see the finished product in the production van later this afternoon.
"Sure," Dacey gave him a smile that felt totally fake. "I want to shower and change though. Knock when you're ready to leave, 'k?"
He nodded and closed the door. She did the same, but didn't think to lock it, already thinking forward to getting together with the two of them in a few hours. She hoped that Glenn would have gotten over his reaction to her and could be professional about their working relationship. She was musing over this as she undressed and headed for the shower.
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Glenn arrived from Tennessee a little after Dacey had checked in. After he checked in and grabbed a shower, he headed for Mark's room. They had spent so long travelling together that it was second nature to get together as soon as they arrived.
He had spent some time thinking about Dacey while he was at home. Okay, he had spent a lot of time thinking about Dacey, and had decided that he didn't want to ruin their growing friendship over his infatutation. He had decided to make a real effort to be as friendly to her as he always had, and not to mention anything about his attraction to her, since it obviously made things uncomfortable for her.
When Mark told him that Dacey was in the adjoining room, he decided to go in and apologise straight away for the way he had behaved at the shoot. He tapped on the connecting door, and when he didn't hear anything, he tried the knob. The door wasn't locked, and he opened it a crack and called "Dacey? You decent?"
There was no answer, but he heard a hairdryer from the bathroom. He decided to go in and see her, get things out in the open right away. When he looked in through the open bathroom door, he saw Dacey bent forward, with her long red hair hanging down as she dried it. He sat on the edge of the bed opposite the door, waiting for her to finish and look up. It never occurred to him that she wasn't at least partially dressed.
Suddenly she flexed, tightening her abdominal muscles and throwing her head back, shaking her hair over her shoulders. Glenn stared open-mouthed - she was naked. He saw her full breasts, her creamy skin, and her tattoo - a little rosebud over her neatly waxed pubis. She was magnificent. And then he realised that she was looking at him.
He shut his mouth in a hurry and looked away, stammering. "Christ, Dacey, I had no idea you were naked or I wouldn't have come in here." He leapt off the bed and headed back to Mark's room, embarrassed.
Dacey was furious - she'd seen the look on his face. And she didn't stop to think, but followed him, throwing the doors between the connecting rooms open to confront him. She was so mad she hadn't even thought about her nudity.
"You listen to me, you asshole! I don't give a good goddamn whether I measure up to the Divas, because that is not what I am here for. I am here to wrestle, and if you can't deal with that, then say so now. Because if you can't even stand to look at me, this angle is going to fail dismally. Now, you may have a career of successes to cushion your fall after a piece of crap storyline, but I don't. I would rather back out now and go on to something I can work with than have this ruin my career before it even gets started. Do you understand me? You have an hour to decide what you are going to do, because either you can work with me on this without looking at me like I'm repugnant, or we don't do it at all. Am I making myself clear?"
Without waiting for a response, Dacey turned and went back into her room, slamming the door hard behind her. She dragged on her clothes and headed out, needing to walk around for a while to get over her fury. She paced around the park across the street from the hotel, clenching her fists. Finally, she burned off enough of her nervous energy and found a picnic table under a tree. She sat down and rested her head in her hands, wondering what was going to happen.
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When Dacey burst into the room after Glenn, Mark had been thunderstruck. Dacey's temper had something to do with it, but the fact that she was stark naked also played a part.
Once she left, Mark turned very slowly to look at Glenn. "I think I may have missed something here, buddy. What the hell's going on between you two?"
Glenn closed his eyes, and sighed heavily. Then he told Mark about the incident at the shoot. Mark looked at him with astonishment.
"You mean to tell me that you told Dacey that you didn't like looking at her because she wasn't a Diva?"
Glenn looked aghast. "Hell no! I meant that looking at her in that outfit was a turn on precisely because she wasn't a Diva, that it was more like seeing her in an intimate setting and it was . . . " His voice trailed off. "Oh shit. She thought I was saying that she wasn't attractive, that she didn't match up to the Divas."
"I'd bet you money that's exactly what she thought," Mark shook his head. "Oh man, if this isn't a royal clusterfuck. Listen, you better think about how you can work this out with Dacey, because I for one am not going to let this storyline go because she thinks you insulted her." He stood up.
"And where are you going?" Glenn asked.
"I'm going to find Dacey, see if I can convince her to give you a chance to make that apology. And to reassure her that there is not one fucking thing wrong with her looks, because from what I just saw, she is damn fine how she is. You might want to think about that too."
Mark went down to the lobby and asked the clerk if he had seen Dacey leave, and was pleased that the man had seen her heading for the park across the street. He walked over there, and looked around. He spotted Dacey at a picnic table and walked over to sit opposite her.
She looked up for a second, then dropped her face back into her hands. "If you're here to make an apology for that asshole, save your breath."
"Nope. He can make his own damn apology - and that's what I just told him. I just wanted to make sure that you would give him the opportunity to make it - when he's worked out what he wants to say."
Dacey sighed. "I will. But if he thinks some lame-ass "sorry" is going to cut it, he's sadly mistaken."
"He knows that, Dacey. Trust me, he knows. Would it help if I told you that this is about mis-communication?"
She looked up at him, and he was surprised to see that her eyes were red. She'd been crying.
"Dacey, Glenn doesn't think you are repugnant. Neither do I - and I had ample opportunity to decide about that while you stood stark naked in my hotel room tearing him a new asshole," he grinned.
"I'm not a Diva, Mark. I know that. But I'm proud of my body, and I'm not self-conscious about it. I just don't want it to be what I'm known for. There's more to me - more to any woman - than her looks or her breasts."
"I hear you Dacey. Really, I do. You honestly think I'd go along with this storyline if I didn't think you could wrestle like a champion? You aren't here for T&A - you're here because you can wrestle. Okay?"
She nodded slowly but Mark could still feel the hurt, radiating off her in waves. He hoped Glenn could make her understand that he didn't find her unattractive, if only to make her feel better than she did right now.
"Come on back to the hotel, okay? Make sure you're on hand so Glenn can make his eloquent and heartfelt apology," Mark kidded.
Dacey giggled a little. "He's going to talk me to death, isn't he? I can just feel it."
"Well at least you'll be talking, which is a damn sight better than you screaming at him. Even if you were naked and looking mighty fine while you were doing it. By the way, that is a very good tattoo. Where did you get it done?"
They had stood up and were walking back to the hotel. "A guy in Austin did it for me. He's brilliant with those red tones. If this storyline takes off, I'll be asking him to do my new tattoo. You think people will notice if it's a little different when it's permanent ink?"
"Hell, we can explain it as your mark becoming more pronounced once we have welcomed you to Darkness." He put on a very corny Bela Lugosi type accent and swirled an imaginary cape around her shoulders, leaning down as if to bite her throat, and was pleased when she responded with a laugh.
"Get off me, you great goof," she giggled.
When she returned to her room, she finished drying her hair and pulled it back into its usual thick braid. As she was securing it, there was a knock at the door. Not the connecting door, the hallway door. When she opened it, Glenn stood there, holding a single red rose.
"Dacey, I honestly did not mean to hurt you. Can we talk about this, please?"
She opened the door wider and gestured him in. He sat in the chair while she sat easily in a lotus position on the bed.
"At the shoot, I was completely knocked out by how hot you looked when your top came apart. I mean, when we'd been testing the design, you were wearing that crop top, remember?" She nodded, and he continued. "So while I knew you would be wearing a bra, I really wasn't expecting it. And suddenly there you were, lying there in that sexy bra and looking so damn beautiful. And it honestly felt weird because I felt like - well, like I did when I came in here earlier and caught you naked. Like I'd seen you in an intimate situation I wasn't supposed to see, seeing your body in a way I wasn't entitled to see."
Dacey looked solemn, considering his words. "So, when you said that it was different because I wasn't a Diva . . ."
"I meant that Divas are always wearing get ups like that. You don't. You're . . . " he paused. "You ever listen to Alanis Morissette?"
"Yeah, sure," Dacey said, a little puzzled.
"She did this song for the City of Angels soundtrack, you know it?"
"Ah, "Uninvited", right?"
"That's the one. There's a line in that song that explains it better than I could. It says something like being an uncharted territory being greatly intriguing."
"Like any uncharted territory, I must seem greatly intriguing," Dacey quoted in a musing tone.
"Exactly! Dacey, your body is uncharted territory, so it's intriguing. It's exotic and secret. Unlike the Divas, whose 'territories' have been thoroughly charted, photographed and filmed. There's no mystery there, seeing them in something skimpy is commonplace. Believe me, you are just as lovely as any of the Divas, maybe more so because there's a mystery about you. Or at least there was, until I came barging in here and caught you in the all-together."
Dacey chuckled. "And then I came storming after you and both you and Mark got an eyeful while I was yelling at you. No more mysteries now!"
"You're wrong about that Dacey, trust me. There's plenty of mystery still, and that's the way I like it. But perhaps you'll accept this small token of my thanks for allowing me to apologise," he held out the rose. "I think it's a pretty good match for that one you've got near your, you know," he grinned, casting a glance to her crotch.
Dacey laughed and leapt off the bed at him, smacking him on the shoulder as he pulled her into a hug. "Friends again?" he asked.
"Yeah, friends again," she smiled, then looked more serious. "Thank you for being honest with me Glenn. I'm sorry I reacted the way I did, it was a bit childish of me."
He hugged her again, and laughed. "No need for apologies from you, Dacey. Now, shall we go and tell Mark that we've kissed and made up, and are ready to play together nicely from now on?"
"You go, I'll be right there," Dacey said, heading for the bathroom.
Glenn knocked on the connecting door to Mark's room, and Mark opened it and looked him up and down. "I don't see any obvious injuries. I take it your apology was accepted?"
"We've cleared the air, yes. Dacey will be back in a minute, and then we can head over to the arena," Glenn said.
"Dacey is here now, so let's go," came a voice from behind them. Glenn noticed with pleasure that she had changed her hair so that she could wear the rose in it. He guessed that meant that she liked it.