Work Text:
Two Nights Ago
Bayley stirred awake, opening her eyes to find her sweaty hair stuck to her face and the hotel sheets kicked off the bed. She glanced at the air conditioner to see if she’d accidentally put it on a timer – she’d learned the year before that New York City humidity in August was no joke – but it was still chugging along full blast. She shrugged and rolled over to try for a few more hours of sleep when she caught a quick movement from the corner of her eye.
It didn’t take long to figure out why the room was heating up like an oven. “Hey! Been a bit.” One of the shadows moved of its own accord, pulling apart from the normal room shadows and placing itself on the wall opposite her bed. Bayley felt the hair on her arms stand on end. A good year and change and she still wasn’t used to this. But to be fair, she supposed demons in your bedroom wasn’t one of those things you were really supposed to get used to. “You know, Finn’s a floor up. You can both visit.”
The shadow tilted what would be its head, a faint flash of red washing over it and fading. She didn’t hear words exactly. It was more the impression she’d heard words, like remembering a phone call made in a dream. “That doesn’t even make sense, your match isn’t until Sunday. My match is tomorrow and you’re not worried about my beauty sleep.” She sat up to take some of the sting out of that; the demon usually didn’t have a problem with teased before but still. Demon, after all. “I heard you’re a king now! That must be exciting.” The shadow puffed up, for all the world looking like it was preening.
Bayley picked at some fuzz on the fitted sheet. “Are you nervous?” she said without looking up. It wasn’t a question she really needed to ask; the air in the room was charged with it, an anxious frisson that set her nerves on edge the longer she breathed it in. It made sense – Finn had lost plenty of times over his career, the same way everyone did, and he’d figured out how to deal with it. His demon had only lost once. “Because I am. I know I’m playing it really cool and confident but I just really don’t want to get choked out again. Especially not here.”
That strange hearing-but-not sensation rushed through her again. “No, I don’t want help. But thanks.
Admitting out loud she wasn’t quite as 100% confident about fighting Asuka as she’d been pretending felt like a giant had just climbed off her shoulders, even if the only person who’d heard the confession was a semi-malevolent shadow entity. And it seemed to have an effect on the demon, too; the shadow had shrunk down from its full puffed up Demon King grandeur, its edges less defined.
Bayley lay back, watching the shadow waver in the dim lights. “I was starting to think the two of you had forgotten about me since the big call up.”
The shadow’s edges got sharp and defined again
Bayley always felt bad when teasing went on too long. “Okay, I didn’t really think that.” She lay back on the bed and patted the empty space beside her. “Plenty of room.”
Bayley smiled at the knock on the door a few seconds later.
***
Two Years Ago
It wasn’t Carmella’s fault. They’d been practicing counters, just normal a Performance Center day; Bayley was on the top rope and Carmella was supposed to jump up on the second rope and take her over into a suplex. They’d been at it for most of an hour, the timing was tricky and Carmella was still pretty new, and looking back Bayley would admit she probably should have called for a break. Letting your focus drift was always disastrous, especially when you were perched up high like that. Bayley jumped up from sitting on the turnbuckle to standing on the rope when Carmella started the run towards the corner and her footing wasn’t exactly right. Carmella hit the jump but when Bayley leaned forward to brace for the impact her left foot slipped. Bayley overcorrected, the exact thing the trainers always told them not to do, and too quick for her to even panic she pitched backward headfirst toward the floor.
For a split second all she saw was the floor mat rushing up, just enough to time well, so much for wrestling to drift through her head. At almost the very last instant she felt something grab her heel and yank back hard enough to flip her in the air. She landed hard enough on both heels to clack her teeth together and her legs gave out immediately, dropping her into an undignified heap on her butt. Painful and ungraceful but miles better than literally landing on her face.
That was when the adrenaline hit and hit hard; she shook too hard to get up and lay flat on her back trying to get her wind back.
“Oh my God! Oh my God, sweetie, are you okay?”
Bayley opened her eyes to see Carmella leaning over the top rope and absolutely beside herself. Bayley forced herself to nod. “Yeah, yeah, I’m okay,” she said, even if okay wasn’t strictly the word she would there was no reason to freak Carmella out even more. She even managed a jaunty little wave. “See? Everything works!” A crowd was starting to gather and all Bayley could think about was getting out of there. “Why don’t we take fifteen, huh?”
Carmella jumped out of the ring to start fussing and Bayley pushed herself up, waving to the junior trainees gawking and pretending she didn’t desperately want to sink into the mat never to be seen again. She looked around for the trainer who’d made the save but there weren’t any close enough. Bayley shook again as she tried to figure out what was going on when she saw a quick flash of movement from the corner of her eye, a shadow moving in the opposite direction of all the other shadows. She looked up and spotted Finn Balor standing in the doorway, one hand braced against the doorframe like he’d been the one who just almost took a header onto the floor. Bayley caught his eyes and felt…something. Concern and shock and background simmering rage like white noise all jumbled together into a confusing ball she felt like a physical presence sitting on her chest. He looked away, the strange sensation lifting, and Bayley realized she had to apologize to Konnor and Viktor because everything they’d been ranting about after the last Takeover was absolutely true.
She didn’t get the chance to talk about it with Finn until two nights later. Finn had invited some of the roster over but the party was starting to break up – Carmella and Cass and Enzo had decided to drop in on whatever chaos was happening at Mojo’s, which was more their speed anyway (Carmella and Enzo’s speed at any rate, and they hadn’t given Cass any say in the matter) while Sami had fallen asleep on Finn’s couch watching some true crime show. Bayley squinted at her side of the Lego set she was helping Finn put together. “Does this look lopsided to you?”
Finn glanced over and tapped one of the blocks. “Take out these two. It’ll balance then.”
“Oh! Yeah, okay, I see that now.”
Finn let a few seconds slip by, then said. “You can meet up with your friends if you like, I won’t be offended. I know I’m not all that entertaining.”
“What? No, trust me, I do not have one of Mojo’s parties in me tonight. It’s so nice to have a night off I don’t need another night off to recover from.” She fit the little Lego prow on her little Lego pirate ship. “And besides, I’m committed to finishing this. It’ll bother me all night if I leave before it’s done.”
Finn smiled at that. “I’m the same way.”
After a few more minutes of working in happy quiet Bayley glanced over her shoulder to make sure Sami was still sleeping. “Thanks for the save two days ago,” she said, keeping her voice low.
Finn’s hand froze mid piece placement. “I can’t…really take credit for that.”
“So who can? Or is it what?”
Finn tried to brush that aside very badly. “You’ve been listening to the Ascension.”
“Are they wrong?”
Finn dropped his gaze, tapping the piece in the hand against the table for a few seconds before putting it aside and steepling his hands in front of his face. “It’s a little complicated to explain.”
“I can handle complicated.”
He gave her a sad, almost helpless look, like he’d heard that before. Bayley took a deep breath and put her most determined expression because whatever reaction he was fearing, she was determined he wouldn’t get it. “It’s not a…separate thing from me. Or at least not completely, is the better way. I can’t remember a time it wasn’t there, but I’ve gotten better at…sharing, might be the right way to put it.”
“Is it really a demon?” Well, that was a question that just slipped out.
But at least Finn smiled at that, so she hadn’t completely torpedoed things. “It’s the best word I can think of. I don’t know if it’s the right one. I don’t know if there is a right one. It doesn’t seem offended by it, at any rate.”
“Does it do things on its own all the time? You said you couldn’t take credit….”
“Nothing like that has ever happened before.”
“Oh.” Bayley had no idea what she could possibly say to that. “Wow.” She drummed her nails against the table, ruining her manicure and not caring. “Is it here now?”
“It’s always here.” It took Finn a minute to realize what she had no idea how to ask him; he chewed his lip for a second, then pushed his chair back from the table a few inches. “It’s easier to control with the paint,” he said, closing his eyes. “But we’ll try this.” He let out a long, measured breath, like he was about to deadlight a weight he wasn’t at all sure of, then the lights in the apartment flickered. The temperature creeped up as Finn opened his eyes; Bayley almost asked him what he’d done when she looked down and saw that his shadow wasn’t his shadow anymore.
The shadow spread across the floor was roughly human shaped but much bigger than Finn, bulky and broad across its shoulders. “Oh. Um. Hi.” The shadow climbed up the wall, like it was trying to get to eye level with her. She could feel it looking at her, the hair on her arms standing up and little pinpricks of heat rushing across her shoulders. Bayley forced herself not to look away even though every instinct she had screamed at her too. “Thank you.”
The shadow seemed to shrink, receding back to the floor, and Finn chuckled. “Think you embarrassed it.” The change in his face was amazing; tension lines around his eyes and mouth she’d always assumed were normal were gone. “I don’t usually get to relax around people like this. I was beginning to worry I’d forgotten how.”
“But other people know, right? You’ve known Becky for….”
“Becky’s sweet. Too much so, I think. The times I’ve tried to show her she didn’t see it. Usually people are the other way, they see it and I know they would rather not, so they pretend. Or it doesn’t want them to see perhaps, I can never really be sure.”
That had to rank up there with the saddest things Bayley had ever heard. “What is it like?”
“Crowded.” Finn shook his head. “And noisy, a lot of the time. We don’t always agree.” He went back to working on the Lego set, the click of the pieces fitting together loud in the quiet room. “We agree on you.”
Bayley felt herself flush bright red. Suddenly she didn’t know what to do with her hands, or where to look, or pretty much how to do anything.
She didn’t know if Sami choosing that moment to wake up killed the moment or saved it. “Mhm. Hey, sorry guys, I didn’t mean to do that. Where’d everyone go?” He sat up, getting a better view of the room. “Oh wow, you guys got far.”
Finn gave her a conspiratorial smile; his shadow was his own again and the temperature back to normal. “Do you want to help us finish?”
Bayley scooted her chair over as Sami pulled his up. He launched into a bawdy story from his indie days as he worked and Bayley caught Finn’s eye, holding up three fingers just out of Sami’s line of sight. He frowned so she glanced up at the wall clock and then nodded back to Sami, raising her eyebrows in what she hoped was a clear Just wait. Two minutes and thirty-three seconds later came the words, “So that’s when Kevin….” showed up and Finn broke into a huge, genuine grin, enough that Sami noticed. “What?”
“Nothing. Nothing, you just reminded me of something that happened in Japan. I’ll tell you all about that when you’re done.”
Sami settled back into story mode and Bayley shrugged; it wasn’t that impressive a trick, all of poor Sami’s stories circled around back to Kevin eventually nowadays whether they’d started there, but Finn was clearly delighted at being included in the inside joke.
They finished sometime in the early hours of the morning and Bayley loved that if Sami noticed Finn’s hand brushed against hers more times than was strictly necessary he was a great enough friend not to mention it. Because Sami was the best, Kevin Owens stories or not.
****
London
Nia hit so hard.
Bayley stretched some stiffness out of her neck, wondering how much of her was going to be one big bruise by morning. But, she’d won, it was a gorgeous night and Bayley was more than ready to do some late night London sightseeing to celebrate. When her phone rang and she saw Finn's name blinking on it felt like the one thing the night had been missing. “Hey, Still Champ!” she said, balancing her phone between her ear and shoulder as she checked to make sure she had her room key. “You have any plans for the rest of the night? Some of us were planning on...going out....” Bayley was never entirely sure what made the words trail off. Her phone was a little too warm, like the battery was overheating. “Is everything okay?” There was no answer, not even breathing. Bayley sat on the hotel bed and glanced around the room to make sure all the shadows were where they were supposed to be. “Are you okay?”
“It's hard to shake, sometimes.” Finn's voice was very, very quiet. “It never wants to go back into the box.”
“Okay. Okay. Where's your room? Are you upstairs or downstairs?”
“No.”
That was not the most promising of answers. “Are you...are you still at the arena?” she said, her stomach dropping as she finally placed the echoing acoustics of the call.
This time she made out a soft intake of breath before Finn spoke again. “I'm afraid of what I'll do if I leave.”
“You know, that's funny, I'm almost positive I left my...something there. I was just about to head back---” Bayley felt a stab of heat through both palms, then enveloping cold, like she'd been plunged headfirst into an ice bath.
The sensation passed before she could even properly register it, let along panic; when her vision cleared again she found herself in the arena's damp basement. Stored equipment cast strange shadows in the emergency lighting, all of them moving in ways shadows shouldn't move. She braced one hand against the wall and tried to hold her dinner in against the wave of nausea that almost bowled her over. After a few seconds she was able to look up, finally spotting Finn sitting against the wall with a look she'd never seen on Finn's face before. “Don't you ever do that again,” she said, pointing one finger at him.
“It was faster.” He looked so pleased with himself, Bayley could tell that wasn't really Finn talking, or not just Finn. “It wouldn't have worked if you'd resisted.”
Finn was still in his wrestling gear, smudged war paint from his match untouched. “What's going on? What’s different about tonight?”
“We...reconnected with an old friend,” he said, chuckling in a way that made the hair on her neck stand up. “Very old. We forgot about London. About the last time we were in London.” Bayley really doubted he meant the last time Finn had toured England.
Maybe she hadn't actually beaten Nia. Maybe this was all a terrible concussion dream. “You need to leave Finn alone for a while.”
“He thinks he would like that but he wouldn't. He would lose.” He took a deep breath. “He shouldn't have called you.”
Bayley took a hesitant step forward. “Did he call me?” Finn met her eyes and she'd never seen a more perfectly baleful expression on someone's face. “Okay, fine. Why not?”
Finn smiled. “Our friend did some rather bad things,” he said, his accent dipping from its normal Irish to an almost cockney English for a moment.
Bayley took another step forward. “But you don’t want to.” Her next step took her in the shadow and Bayley felt pinpricks of heat rush up and down her arms.
Finn closed his eyes, not moving as she walked up to him. “Why do you toy with them?”
“What? Toy with who?”
“Your opponents. You're superior. You know that. The one tonight got much farther than she should have.”
“I am not. Nia's great, she....”
“The others think this is humility, but you know it's fear.” Bayley felt like her shoes had frozen to the basement floor. “Turn it all inward. No need for anger, then. Then abandonment will be justified.”
“Stop.”
Finn opened his eyes. “If you keep holding back you will lose.”
“I'm going to lose someday whether I hold back or not. And I don’t. Sometimes you just lose. That's just the way things work.”
“It doesn't have to be.”
He sounded so sure of himself. “No wonder he only lets you out on special occasions, this must be exhausting.” She sat against the wall next to him, visibly startling him. “Finn said the two of you agreed on me. So what was that about? Did you agree that I have no killer instinct and am going to drop the title in a super embarrassing way someday?”
He didn’t answer right away and Bayley tried very hard not to be insulted. “It's easy to be quiet around you.” He sounded vaguely put out about that.
Bayley squeezed Finn's hand as hard as she could. “Hey, if you need to keep fighting with me because you're still painted up and spoiling for it, then go ahead. Do your worst.”
The expression on Finn's face turned very thoughtful. “I don't want to.”
“Well, you're doing a good job of it anyway.”
“It keeps the more dangerous things quiet. But I shouldn’t.” His thumb stroked absently along the back of her hand, like he wasn't aware he was doing it. “You push everything down so deep. A volcano hidden at the bottom of a still pool.”
“I am an open book, ask anyone. Not everyone has a demon lurking.”
“Of course they do.” He closed his eyes again, leaning his head back against the wall. She could see strain lines around his eyes and mouth through the paint and squeezed his hand again, at a loss of what to do. “I shouldn’t have spoken to you like that.”
“Oh good, we’re back to ‘I.’ I’m hoping that’s a good sign.” Finn gave her a side-long, not quite offended but getting there quickly look and Bayley leaned her head against his shoulder. “I’m teasing. Sorry. Not the time for teasing, gotcha.”
“You apologize too much.” The strange undertone to his voice was still there but not as distinct as before. A few hushed minutes passed by. “You’re getting all of this in your hair,” he said, suddenly trying to pick out the red flecks as if he’d just noticed her against his shoulder.
Bayley pushed her hair over her shoulders, wishing she’d been able to grab a scrunchie before whatever he’d done whatever he’d done to get her here. “It’ll wash out. Blouse is probably dead, but that’s okay.”
“You were planning to go out,” He almost recited the words, like the phone conversation was filtering through on a delay. “You look so different out of your costume,” he said, just his fingertips stroking the hem of her skirt.
“You know, it’s funny, it never feels like a costume, though. You look pretty different in yours,” she said, nudging his shoulder and hoping teasing was back on the table.
It wasn’t. Bayley didn’t think she’d never seen anyone look so tired. “I’m always in mine.”
She bit her lip and shifted around so she was in front of him, sitting directly in the shadow cast by the dim overhead security lights. She didn’t like his thousand yard stare any more than she’d liked the muffled dismay washing through right along the pinpricks of heat up when she’d moved. “Hey.” It took a few seconds but he met her eyes again and she very slowly wrapped both arms around him, giving him plenty of time to react if this was the wrong thing to do.
Instead he sagged against her, his weight almost pulling her off balance. She maneuvered around so that now she was the one kneeling with her back to the wall, Finn’s head against her shoulder. “You feel a steadier yet?” He nodded, wrapping one arm a little more securely around her waist. “Good.” She deliberately stayed quiet for a few more minutes; she could feel the coiled up tension under his skin easing second by second. “How about we get out of this terrible basement and go back to the hotel now?” she said into his ear when he seemed to be as relaxed as was realistically going to happen. “Clean you up a little bit. Clean me up a little bit.”
He was so quiet for so long Bayley would have thought he’d fallen asleep if she couldn’t have seen his eyes were open. “I’m not ready to put back on the costume yet.”
“You won’t need to. You’ll be with me.”
His head cocked to the side for a moment, like that option hadn’t occurred to him. He pulled back to his hands and knees, for a moment looking almost exactly as his did when he crawled to the ring during his big entrances. He held her gaze for several long moments and she made very sure not to look away.
When he kissed her it was barely enough to brush her lips and that was still enough to make her heart feel like it was about to jump out of her chest. “Everyone will not abandon you if you don’t live up to who they want you to be,” he said, staring right into her eyes.
Bayley felt herself flush bright red. Somewhere along the way she’d lost track of who was trying to make who feel better. “You’re the one who said everyone had a demon.” For an instant he smiled, a sly, secretive expression that came and went so quickly Finn blinked, as if he wasn’t sure what had come over him. This time she kissed him, still not deep but still plenty. He sighed when she pulled back, looking more like himself than he had all night. “You ready?”
He nodded and squeezed her hand, heat racing down to her fingertips.
***
Dallas
Bayley leaned her forehead against the cool of the concrete wall. She didn't want anyone to see her, she was completely done with the “Aw, you poor thing!” looks from everyone from the medical staff to the caterers. Her legs shook and she dropped into a crouch, not willing to sit down. Her stomach kept twisting when she thought about coming to hearing someone else's music playing, to sitting on the floor nauseous and light-headed watching Asuka celebrate and holding up the title.
Her title.
Bayley was not going to cry. Everyone looking at her like she'd just contracted some hideous disease would be a million times worse if they saw she'd been crying.
I told you.
Bayley knew what she would see before she opened her eyes, that quick flush of pinprick heat always gave the demon away and besides, she'd felt those words, not heard them. The monstrous shadow hovered to her right, taking up the entire wall. She edged over a foot until she was standing directly in the shadow and held her breath as every negative emotion curdling her stomach intensified, the disgust and the outrage and especially the spiteful, simmering rage.
It felt great. Like taking a burning hot shower.
So go and take it back.
At the prompting Bayley again felt the overwhelming urge to grab the nearest chair and go after Asuka with it she'd first felt while sitting on that floor. Indulging in that also felt pretty great, especially with the sensations of it kicked up to eleven by the demon like this. She could feel the cold steel in her hands, the way the reverb from the impact rushed up her arms.
There was even the smallest split second where she thought she really might do it. “No.”
The next thing she felt was a jumble of emotion, mostly frustration and annoyance.
“Because that's not how I do things.”
Later after his match Finn sought her out, wrapping her up in an enormous hug before he even changed. “Good for you,” he said into her ear, like she'd been the one who'd successfully defended that night.
“It wasn’t wrong.” She had been holding back. Or at least too overconfident.
Now she had to figure out how to not do it again.
***
Takeover: The End
Backstage was eerie and quiet. Usually after a fight where Finn let his demon out the energy after made everyone jumpy and antsy but tonight the atmosphere made everyone feel like they’d tied cinderblocks to their shoes.
Well, except for Joe. He was walking around like he’d just tossed a thousand-pound weight off his shoulders. Bayley guessed in a way he had. “Hey, when you see Balor tell him he tried,” he said, crowing to her from across the room.
Finn was always hard to find after big matches; coming down from letting out the demon usually meant staying as far away as possible, usually leading to her finding him in basements or in out of the way storage rooms. Lowell had been horrible; he hadn’t let the demon out for that match – it was supposed to be a quiet house show loop, why would he? – and it had been incensed about it, a constant voice in his head mocking him for not taking Joe seriously enough. If the demon had taken that loss so badly Bayley had expected this reaction to be even worse.
But when she found Finn this time he was sitting on the floor of the regular dressing room already showered and changed, the few people milling around studiously ignoring him the way everyone did when someone lost a big match. No out of control shadows, no heat supernaturally cranked up to boiling, nothing like what had happened after Lowell. The quiet unsettled Bayley so much more than the chaos would have.
She waited until the room cleared out, then locked the door. He hadn’t looked up once since she’d entered the room and still didn’t when he finally spoke. “I don’t understand what happened.”
When the demon had one of its extra handholds in Finn’s mind Finn’s vowels got a little sharper, the ends to his words crisper. It was a very subtle tell but after all this time Bayley couldn’t unhear it even if she’d wanted to.
She had never imagined it could ever sound humbled. “Joe was a little bit better tonight, that’s all.”
“They’re already saying he slayed me.”
Bayley sat down next to him. “He didn’t ‘slay’ you, that’s dumb. It was a match. You’ll have other matches.”
“That isn’t how you felt after Dallas.”
Which was true. “So was that whole ‘take a chair to her’ thing you trying to make me feel better then?”
“I wanted you to feel something different.” He paused for a beat, some of his more usual maliciousness mixing in with the stunned desolation. “And I would have liked to see it.”
“It wouldn’t have changed anything.”
“No. I understand that now.”
Bayley hugged her knees to her chest. “I don’t know how to make you feel better.”
He closed his eyes, lines of exhaustion marking his face that hadn’t been there that morning. “Keep doing this.”
“You weren’t getting much choice about that.”
She’d really hoped that would get a smile. It didn’t. “I don’t like how they all looked at me tonight.”
“Like you’d just died and they’re all worried it’s catching, I know. It sucks.”
“I don’t ever want them to look at me like that again.”
“Finn’s lost before. You learn to get past it.”
“This is the first time it’s felt like it’s counted.”
Bayley remembered the first time she’d lost in NXT, on TV, and thought she could understand. “You could still always go after Joe with a chair. He even deserves it, mostly.”
That did tip the corners of his lips up. “It won’t help,” he said, sounding as if he didn’t know why that was true, only that it was. He laced the fingers of one hand through hers. “I’m going to miss you very much.”
Bayley felt a sudden pit in her stomach. Everyone had heard call up rumors of course, but nobody actually discussed them. Bad luck. “Hopefully not for too long.”
“Which title would you rather?”
Talk about impossible decisions. “Both,” she admitted.
He squeezed her hand. “Brooklyn first, then.”
***
Brooklyn
Bayley felt the shadow fall over her, the telltale pinpricks of heat traveling up and down her arms; she’d been brave-faced for as long as she could stand it after Asuka got her pin before needing to find a quiet place to cry her eyes out. The way Finn handled his after matches made a lot of sense sometimes. “Gonna tell me how I held back and blew it again?”
“Why do you want me to lie?”
She looked up and he held his arms wide. Bayley almost knocked him over jumping into the hug; he held her off the ground for a second, squeezing so tight she could barely breathe. “They want me to show my face for the main event,” he said when he finally let her go.
Bayley hoped the disappointment wasn’t all over her face. “Of course they want you too. You’re gonna be Universal Champion tomorrow, gotta hype that up. U Champ? How are they abbreviating that, it’s a little long.”
“I don’t think it’s been decided yet.” He smoothed her messy hair back. “Are you sure you’re all right with it?”
“Of course! It’s your job, go, show your face. Root for Shinsuke for me. I need to be by myself for a while anyway.” He kissed her on the forehead and hurried away, leaving her free to curl back up on the floor in an undignified heap where she belonged.
About ten minutes after Joe and Shinsuke’s music stopped echoing through the Barclays’ halls she noticed a shadow detach from the wall and creep its way across the floor to her, like it was sinking into her. It wasn’t comforting exactly – the demon was always too prickly and unsettling when it manifested like this, that undercurrent of roiling anger always hitting like a jolt of espresso on an empty stomach – but it was trying. “I guess I’m not a very good liar, huh?” She hadn’t expected to miss Finn so much since the draft. She’d never understood what Sami had meant those last few weeks when he’d said that the longer he stayed the more he felt NXT pushing him out the door, but she understood it now. “We tried. That’s all we can do.”
She closed her eyes and leaned back against the wall, trying to guess what was happening in the match based on how the crowd noise echoed. “You’re probably missing a really good match.” She felt a rush of contrariness that she pretty sure translated to bah. Bayley had a feeling that if the demon was its own separate person he’d be the type who only watched his own matches. “Just saying.”
There was another impression of emotions, this one more unsure and harder to parse. “No, I didn’t really mean it,” she finally said after figuring it out “Don’t you even think about leaving.”
***
Earlier Today
Bayely ignored the Do Not Disturb sign and slammed the door shut behind her, wincing when it was louder than she’d expected. The oversized Hoodie of Secrecy Raw’s production manager had given her to at least stall rumors hitting the internet didn’t work the way they seemed to expect it to, she was pretty sure she’d be spotted a couple of times already, but she didn’t want anyone to accuse her of not even trying.
She supposed she could have stayed at the hotel and not tried sneaking into the arena so early the way everyone had told her but no, that was one hundred percent not an option today.
Bayley was just relieved Finn was alone. That would have been some awkward explaining if she’d just barged into a meeting.
Finn looked up and it broke Bayley’s heart how utterly miserable he’d looked before spotting her. “What are you doing here?” he said, as if she’d materialized out of the floor instead of sneaking in through an unlocked door. “And why are you dressed like…are you debuting?” He looked so delighted Bayley would have been tempted to lie if it hadn’t been true.
“Surprise! It’s um, been kinda sudden.”
“When did you know?”
“Last night? Mick found me and made an offer. And then like, sequestered me so I couldn’t blab to anyone, I couldn’t even call my mom.” She nodded to his sling. “If I’d known I would have climbed out a window.”
“I didn’t even know until today.”
“Yes you did.” His eyes went guarded and she made a pointed look at his shadow, deceptively normal and docile looking. “You would have come looking if you hadn’t known.”
Finn sank back into his chair. “I wasn’t good company.”
“That’s not an excuse.”
“No,” he agreed. “It’s not.”
“How long?”
He tried to shrug and then clearly thought better of it. “Six months. Perhaps four if I’m very lucky.”
“Oh, wow,” she breathed. “Okay, I can’t pretend to be upset with you anymore because I have got to hug you right now. I’ll be careful, I promise.”
“I’m not sure you can do anything else to me,” he said, holding out his good arm.
He hugged her back so hard she regretted not climbing out that window anyway. “Maybe if I ask really nice they’ll let me do your entrance.”
“Don’t you dare. I had my moment. Enjoy yours.”
“You will always be the first champion,” she said into the curve of his neck. “Okay? No one can take that away.
“I couldn’t lose the match,” he said like it was a confession and Bayley wondered how many people had asked him why he hadn’t called things last night.
“Hey, maybe by the time you get it back they’ll have redone the belt so the crowd doesn’t hate it as much.”
That did at least get a laugh out of him. “I don’t want them to change it. I like that it’ll match yours.”
“I haven’t won anything yet.”
“Yet.” He pulled her more securely into his lap, frowning at how the sling got in the way. “I’ll just have to catch up with you now.”
“You had better.” She sighed, resting her head on his shoulder. “I was a lot less anxious about everything last night before I found out about you and Sasha and knew I’d be all alone up here.”
“You won’t be,” he said, stroking his fingertips along her arm. “How long until they need you?”
“I have no idea.”
“Don’t leave until they pry you away.”
“That was always going to be the plan.”
***
Now
Bayley paced just behind the curtain, her nerves entirely getting the best of her. Everyone knew she was here now but that hadn’t helped the jitters at all – people got superstitious about debuts and even if she could tell most people were glad to see her she wouldn’t really belong until she came back through the curtain.
Two nights before Asuka had shut her lights out in the exact same ring a few yards in front of her. Probably in front of mostly the same crowd. Maybe Mick Foley hadn’t drafted her the first time for a reason. Maybe she was just a warm body with a catchy song.
Before that spiral could go into places any more pathetic Bayley felt pinpricks of heat race up both arms, settling around her wrists like it was hiding under her tassels. She looked around and no one had noticed; Finn had been right all that time ago that people rarely looked. “You have a lot of nerve,” she whispered, unable to fully crush the anger at the demon that had pushed Finn until he broke just the night before.
There wasn’t contrition but she hadn’t expected any. Instead she felt that every present background anger mixed with something that felt very much like a promise. “I guess someone has to keep an eye on you so he can concentrate on coming back,” she said. “But my rules are different.”
Bayley closed her eyes and pictured Charlotte, mourned for a second that she couldn’t debut with them just as friends the way she’d always hoped. But she could beat Charlotte. She had before. And she could take the worst of what the Barclays could throw at her. Bayley leaned into the boundless confidence of a millennia old force that had lost exactly once until and it drowned out every insecurity and worry she’d carried into the arena with her.
Her music hit and the adrenaline surge felt like a lightning strike.
They had titles to go win someday soon. But first things first.
“Let’s do this.”
Charlotte had backup, after all. Nothing unfair about bringing some of her own.