Chapter Text
The thing about watching someone you secretly admired get absolutely dismantled on social media was that it made you feel like a powerless little creature hunched over a glowing phone at two in the morning, full of bad judgment and cinnamon sugar, one bad tweet away from committing to a course of action that would almost certainly complicate your life.
Alexa Bliss was that creature.
The cinnamon sugar was coming from Cinnamon Toast Crunch. The bad judgment was ambient. The time was 2:17 AM. The place was a Holiday Inn Express in Indianapolis, which felt like a setting specifically designed by the universe to make personal crises look less glamorous than they deserved.
The source of the crisis was, as it so often was these days, Charlotte Flair.
The internet was being irritating about her again.
Not regular irritating. Advanced irritating. Competitive irritating. The kind of irritating that made Alexa set the cereal box down with slow, ceremonial care because she could feel herself about to become a person with opinions.
She scrolled.
@WrestlingOpinions69: “Charlotte Flair wins the Rumble and somehow manages to make even THAT feel self-indulgent. Just smile and point at the sign like everyone else, your highness 🙄”
@TheRealMattyB_IWC: “Once again WWE rewards Charlotte for literally just being Charlotte. Never mind that Roxanne Perez had one of the best Rumble performances in years. Nope. Just hand it to daddy’s girl.”
@BiancaFan4ever: “friendly reminder that Charlotte Flair has been handed every single opportunity she has ever gotten and the fact that people are CELEBRATING this comeback is beyond me”
Alexa stared at the screen.
Then at the ceiling.
Then back at the screen, because apparently she enjoyed suffering recreationally.
She had been in that Rumble too. Number twenty-one. She remembered the surge of the crowd when her music hit, that full-body electric shock of recognition and welcome, and the sharp, familiar realization that no matter how long you were gone, your body still knew how to do this. She’d lasted nearly twelve minutes. Liv Morgan had tossed her. It had been her first appearance in two years, and afterward she’d cried quietly in the back while pretending she absolutely was not crying, and a production assistant with kind eyes had handed her a bottle of water and said, “That was great,” in a tone that suggested he had no idea how much she needed someone to say exactly that.
And then Charlotte had come in at twenty-seven and won.
Which, objectively, was both narratively sound and the sort of thing guaranteed to make half the internet behave like they’d been personally wronged by a blonde woman in expensive ring gear.
Alexa scrolled farther, which she did not need to do.
She knew she did not need to do it.
She did it anyway.
@IWCHot_Takes: “lol Charlotte’s ‘return pop’ was like 60% boos. She’s been gone a year and this is the best they could do?”
@PWTorchReader: “The problem with Charlotte winning isn’t Charlotte specifically, it’s the message it sends. Roxanne has been carrying NXT. But sure. Charlotte Flair. Again.”
@Wrestling_Dad_Of_3: “My daughter asked me why Charlotte keeps winning everything and honestly I didn’t have a good answer. Maybe because her dad made WWE what it is? Just a thought.”
Alexa turned her phone face-down on the duvet and let out a slow breath through her nose.
The duvet had the rough texture unique to hotel bedding that wanted to be mistaken for luxury and was losing the argument. Above her, there was a water stain in one corner of the ceiling vaguely shaped like Wisconsin. She looked at it for a while, because sometimes the only dignified response to public stupidity was to stare at a suspicious patch of drywall and attempt spiritual detachment.
It did not work.
Eventually she picked her phone back up and opened Charlotte’s official account.
Charlotte had posted a photo from the Royal Rumble: professional lighting, perfect timing, exactly the right angle to capture that specific Charlotte Flair expression — the one that suggested victory was less an event than a natural state of matter around her. The caption was simple.
The Queen has returned. Las Vegas, you’re next. #WrestleMania
The replies were a wasteland.
“Handed.”
“Boring.”
“Daddy’s title shots.”
“Drop it at Mania like usual.”
That last one made Alexa’s jaw go tight.
Charlotte hadn’t even gotten the title. She had gotten a title shot. There was a difference. A very obvious difference. A difference visible to anyone with access to reason, pattern recognition, or basic literacy.
Which, unfortunately, was asking a lot of Twitter at two in the morning.
The thing was, Alexa had history with Charlotte.
Not dramatic history. Not tragic history. Nothing with a soundtrack.
Just history in the quieter, more dangerous sense: time, memory, accumulation. NXT. Shared rooms. Shared roads. Years of being on adjacent tracks without ever fully becoming part of each other’s orbit. Enough moments to build familiarity. Enough distance to keep that familiarity from becoming anything she had to name.
There was one memory in particular that had lived in Alexa’s head for years with suspicious durability.
She’d had a bad night. Bad enough that her skin still felt hot with embarrassment an hour later. She’d missed a spot, felt the crowd cool on her in that awful subtle way that was somehow worse than open rejection, and afterward she’d been sitting on the floor in front of her locker with her gear half off, staring at nothing, trying very hard not to spiral in public.
Charlotte had appeared at the edge of her vision, sat down beside her without asking, and said, “I botched a Figure Eight at a house show in Tulsa last week. My foot slipped and I folded like patio furniture.”
Alexa had looked at her.
Charlotte, who even back then already carried herself like someone the room bent around a little. Charlotte, whose confidence had always seemed so complete from the outside it was almost aggravating. Charlotte, sitting close enough that their shoulders were nearly touching, all long lines and calm presence and the faintest trace of perfume under the locker room air.
“Why are you telling me this?” Alexa had asked.
“Because you look like you’re about to spiral,” Charlotte had said, with characteristic elegance. “And I thought accurate information might help.”
“That’s almost sweet.”
“I read it on a motivational poster,” Charlotte had replied. “Don’t tell anyone. I have a brand.”
Alexa had laughed, which had obviously been the goal.
And Charlotte had stayed.
That was the part Alexa remembered most clearly. Not the joke. Not even the relief of it. Just Charlotte remaining there for another hour in companionable silence, present in a way that asked nothing and offered everything. Not trying to fix it. Not making it worse by overhandling it. Just staying.
Alexa had not been in love with Charlotte Flair in NXT.
That would have been absurd.
She had merely been a young woman with anxiety and eyes, sitting next to a beautiful, intimidating, unexpectedly kind blonde wrestler who smelled expensive and knew exactly when to stop talking.
Which was completely different.
Anyway.
The years after that had a way of sliding past each other. One of them would be rising while the other was in a different kind of story. One would be champion while the other was healing something unseen. They were never quite in the same place at the same time for long enough to become close. They passed each other in hallways, in locker rooms, in catering, in cities that blurred together at the edges. They had history, but not momentum.
Then Charlotte got hurt. Then Charlotte disappeared for a year. Then she came back and won the Royal Rumble.
And now Alexa was in Indianapolis at 2:17 in the morning with Cinnamon Toast Crunch on her lap and an increasingly hostile relationship with the internet.
So naturally, she made a terrible decision.
She opened Twitter and created a new account.
She thought about it for forty-five seconds, which was unusually responsible by her standards.
Then she typed in the username:
@QueenDefenseSquad
She stared at the blank compose box for a moment, feeling the particular thrill of a choice that was either going to be deeply satisfying or profoundly embarrassing. Possibly both. Usually both.
Then she wrote:
@QueenDefenseSquad: Hot take: Charlotte Flair was gone for a YEAR with a serious knee injury, spent months in rehab, came back and immediately delivered one of the most electric Rumble entrances in years, and the main critique is that she’s “handed things”? She outlasted 29 other women. That’s not being handed something. That’s DOING it.
Alexa read it once.
Twice.
Then posted it before she could regain perspective.
She put the phone under her pillow like that changed anything, as though consequences were sound-based and could be muffled by hotel linens.
She was asleep by three.
⸻
The next morning, @QueenDefenseSquad had forty-seven followers.
Alexa discovered this while sitting in the hotel lobby with a paper cup of orange juice and a plate of eggs that looked like they had once heard rumors of eggs and were doing their best with limited information.
“Forty-seven,” she said softly, to the orange juice.
The orange juice, having seen things, offered no opinion.
She checked again.
Still forty-seven.
This was already more attention than she’d expected for an account born out of insomnia, irritation, and aggressively processed cereal. Unfortunately, now that people were looking, she felt a very strong and immediate urge to continue being right in public.
So while waiting for the coffee to become drinkable, she posted again.
@QueenDefenseSquad: Also, can we talk about how nobody gives this exact energy when certain OTHER people come back from injury and immediately get inserted into title pictures? If your issue is with the system, critique the system. But if Charlotte specifically is always the villain no matter the context, maybe the issue is not as objective as some of you would like to pretend.
Sixty-two followers.
“Oh no,” Alexa said, with feeling.
⸻
She saw Charlotte for the first time since the Rumble two weeks later in Gorilla.
Charlotte was in the middle of a conversation with a producer, looking down at a clipboard, wearing a dark green silk robe that probably cost more than Alexa’s first car and almost certainly looked better doing it. Her hair was in full Charlotte mode — glossy, arranged, the kind of styled perfection that implied either a gifted glam team or blood sacrifice. There was a stillness to her in professional spaces that Alexa had always noticed: a kind of contained authority, like Charlotte entered a room having already decided what the room was for.
Alexa looked for exactly the appropriate amount of time for a coworker conducting a neutral visual assessment.
Which was to say, longer than was technically necessary but not long enough to be legally actionable.
Charlotte looked up, saw her, and gave one small nod.
Alexa nodded back.
That was where they were, socially. Not strangers. Not close. Not warm. Not cold. Somewhere in the middle, in the strange suspended category of people who knew more about each other than they talked about.
Also, independently, Alexa’s anonymous Twitter account now had 340 followers and had been quoted by one midsize wrestling journalism account, which was not relevant to this interaction in any way whatsoever.
This was fine.
“Bliss.”
Alexa turned.
Charlotte was suddenly closer.
This was one of Charlotte’s specific talents — moving with such measured certainty that you often didn’t register the distance closing until it already had. The Gorilla corridor was narrow enough that Alexa was instantly aware of her: the warmth of her body, the low clean scent of hairspray and perfume and something more expensive underneath, the unnerving effect of having Charlotte Flair direct her full attention at you from less than a foot away.
“How’s the knee?” Charlotte asked.
“My knee is fine,” Alexa said. “It has always been fine. It would like that reflected in the record.”
“You favored your left leg in the Rumble when you hit the ropes.”
Alexa blinked. “You were watching my Rumble performance?”
“I was in the Rumble,” Charlotte said. “I watched everyone’s performance. It’s called being prepared.”
“Right. Of course. God forbid I forget you’re frighteningly competent.”
Charlotte ignored that with the composure of someone well accustomed to being described accurately. “Your left side telegraphs when you’re about to go to the apron. Your shoulder drops slightly.”
She tilted her head as she said it, and the motion brought her even closer. Close enough that Alexa could see the faint fatigue still living around her eyes from the return, the subtle shadow of strain under all that poise. Close enough that Alexa had to remind herself to stay very normal about the fact that Charlotte’s voice at this distance did inconvenient things to the structure of a sentence.
“I’m telling you,” Charlotte continued, “because we’re on the same show now, and it’s the kind of thing someone might exploit if they notice it.”
There was a pause.
A real one.
The kind where something warmer than the words themselves settled briefly into place.
“Thank you,” Alexa said, and meant it enough that the sarcasm dropped away. “That’s actually… really helpful.”
Charlotte held her gaze for a second longer than was strictly required. “Good.”
Then she nodded once, neat and decisive, and stepped back toward the producer and the clipboard and the rest of her evening, conversation apparently complete. Charlotte Flair: elegant, controlled, and somehow capable of making practical concern feel like an event.
Alexa stood there for a beat too long after she left.
Then she took out her phone.
@QueenDefenseSquad had 412 followers.
One of the latest replies said: finally, someone with common sense.
Alexa typed back: Progress. I’ll take it.
She slid her phone away and went to get ready for her match.
Across Gorilla, Charlotte was still talking quietly with a producer, one hand braced on the clipboard, all crisp angles and focus and impossible competence. The overhead lights caught on the green silk of her robe. Someone said something. Charlotte answered without looking up. The room around her seemed to settle into the shape she needed from it.
Alexa watched for half a second, then looked away before she could turn it into a thing.
God, this was going to be a problem.
She meant the account.
She was maybe thirty percent sure she meant only the account.