Häagen-Dazs and Heartbreak?

"Yeah, well..." Mercy said as she took another bit of the tub of iced cream that rested on her stomach. It was Chocolate Decadence and it was awesome. Not as awesome, unfortunately, as the movie that was playing on Taylor's indoor theatre. What in the world had compelled her to rent Flowers for Princess? She didn't like the movie when she saw it with CLYDE. Maybe he had distracted her and mde such a fuss about it that she couldn't enjoy it? He WAS pretty fussy about pretty much everything. She was pretty sure that had to be it.

"He's just always calling me. He KNOWS I work, like ALL the time. KNOWS when I have my lunch breaks and it's always just "Hey babe, watcha doin?" I'm working Clyde. I'm ALWAYS working. He wanted me to go down to his apartment all the time and it's just such a ride. Well, then he'd get all uppity about going to MY apartment! Like THAT'S going to happen!" She waved her spoon at Taylor. "It's ok to fool around but he gets that foot in MY door and that's just the end of it. No going back, you know? Really, I'm just so relieved it's all over. No more Lilly. No more Clyde. No more having to chase down psychopaths with sledgehammers and give-"

Mercy flushed instantly and paused. She quickly took another bite of her iced cream. "Well, anyway, now I don't have to constantly listen to him talk about whether or not I'm ok and that he needs to protect me. I'm NOT some damsel in distress! I'm Mercy P. Wrenn! Maybe I'm not some roided out wrestler chick." She paused and looked at Taylor."No offense, I mean, you're like hot but, like, the other girls..."

mercy huffed. "Anyway, I can take care of myself! I think I proved that well enough!" Mercy blushed. "Even if I swear my head still hurts." Mercy rubbed her head with her free hand. "Why can't I find a nice slab of beef like Johnny? Or maybe I need to go back to girls. I mean, they are much softer. Do you know how disgusting chin stubble is? I swear, it's like now matter how much he shaved, it was always there just scraping away! I have delicate skin!"

Mercy took another bite. "Really, I'm just so glad it's all finally over. I need to take some me time before I start thinking about any of that. That's what I was missing out on. Just some time to have a night where I could have a nice, hot soak and not have to worry about my phone blowing up because Clyde can't handle being away from me for two seconds. Who NEEDS that kind of attention, anyway? I mean, Johnny doesn't smother you or anything, does he? Though, maybe if it were him..." Mercy said.

Mercy dipped her spoon into the tub once more. She was charging through her pint pretty quickly. "Ok, sorry... I'm not like, all over your man or anything, Taylor. I just... I'm curious, that's all. You've got something good going and it seems like you manage to be a career girl. But, my work has got to come first! Clyde... he just didn't seem to understand that! I'm an independent woman, after all!"

Sometimes Taylor wondered if maybe, somewhere deep down inside, she wasn't really a girl. That would explain how she cared so very little about chick flicks

She laid sprawled out in front of the seats, covered by a little pair of cotton pajama shorts with a drawstring, a pair of white knee socks, and one of Johnny's hoodies that was way too big on her, propped up on several pillows so she could see the screen. She stared blankly at it, too worn out from training to care about how stupid princess was and stuff.

She let Mercy talk without interruption. The girl needed to talk, and she was certainly good at it. She had always figured that Clyde wouldn't be a long term thing for her... it just didn't seem to fit at all. What did they have in common? Was he really anything that she wanted? Was she really what he wanted?

Well, she was a cute, petite girl. That might've been all the macho goon needed.

She smiled absently when the subject of Johnny came up. She was used to women everywhere lusting after him. It was only natural. But she got him first, so... neener-neener. Suck it, bitches.

"Well, dude, I mean..." She began, her tired voice competing with the flowery and needlessly dramatic orchestral score of the movie. "It sounds like you didn't want him in the first place. So like... Ya know, it's just whatever. Me and Johnny... I mean, I love Johnny. I loooove Johnny. Being ridiculously good-looking only gets you so far, because anyone will get tired of fucking the same person if it's just about their body, and probably if you were dating him you'd just think he was a big dope or something. He's a pretty simple guy, and like, he's not a genius or anything, but he's sincere and kind and sweet and supportive and easy going and we make each other laugh and we love to really fuckin'... go at it hard, ya know? We love being physical. He's mine and I love him."

She propped herself up on her elbow and looked up at Mercy, sitting so prim and proper in a front-row seat. "And no matter what, Johnny always comes first. If after Avalanche I've got the Friction title, and then Johnny needs to move to Greenland or something, then fuck it, we're going to Greenland. I can always find something else to do, I can wrestle anywhere, we've got money, whatever. Even if we didn't, I'm glued to Johnny for life, not to my career or anything."

She laid back down and cozied into the oversized sweatshirt. "If I didn't have Johnny, I wouldn't be anywhere near the Friction title. I sucked when I was alone. I'm just not myself without him. I don't think I ever really was until I met him, and even then maybe not until we got married. It's crazy when I think about it."

She paused while the two main characters on the screen shared a tender kiss that slowly built into something more passionate. The man pressed the woman back against the wall and she spread her arms out to the side like she was totally helpless. Taylor snorted.

"I dunno, man. If you're so independent that you don't want to bother with anyone else, then you probably just aren't looking. Which is fine, I mean, you can do that, but like... If that was true we wouldn't be here, ya know?"

She reached over and grabbed a small handful of blueberries from a carton on the floor next to her and ate some.

"What? No!" Mercy said, shaking her head vigorously. "We're just hanging out. We're friends! I just wanted to pick up some ice cream because ... I'm celebrating! Finally free!" She gestured happily with her spoon and forced a smile. "You said we should watch a movie and..."

Mercy looked at the screen and furrowed her brow. "Well, this movie sucks but it was the first thing I thought of! Clyde and I saw it on a date! We both hated it but I think maybe he liked it a little." Mercy smiled cutely. "He hated it when I would drag him to chick flicks." Mercy snickered. "So, I'd always try and go to them when he came with even if I didn't want to see the movie! He was just into macho stuff, like that Jean Claude Van Damme. I told him I watched Time Cop once and kind of thought Van Damme was hot and after that he's always "You gotta watch Blood Sport, babe! It's the best movie ever!" Mercy said in her best impersonation of Clyde.

She shook her head. "Well, I watched that movie once just to show him and I was right! It's really bad! It's just men being men and kicking each other with their shirts off! ugh! I guess that when I told him I wouldn't watch it because it was stupid, I wasn't really lying to him anymore." She added with a shrug.

"But, that's great, Taylor! I AM a little jealous of you and Johnny and I'm glad you're happy and have someone you can really get behind. Clyde was always talking about Texas and stupid stuff like that. I'm pretty sure he wanted me to go ranching with him or something."

Mercy poked her spoon at Taylor. "I grew UP on farms! They. are. disgusting. I've smelled enough manure for about three lifetimes!" She said. "I don't think that Clyde's ever even been ON a real farm! There was a couple times I almost let it slip that I can ride horses. oooooooh man, I'd NEVER have heard the end of it if he'd known THAT! I might have been around stinky old farms when I was growing up but I'm a city girl through and through! I don't really care for Tokyo too much though. I really sort of want to go back to New York. Clyde would have thrown a fit though. He'd probably die if he lived there!" Mercy rolled her eyes.

"But seriously, now that I have this free time, I'm really enjoying things. We never really got to hang out too much and this has been fun. Just some girl talk and some ice cream... well, blueberries for you, I guess." Mercy smiled. "It's ok, I'm happy enough to pig out for the both of us! But tomorrow, it's back at the zumba! Maybe I'll take up some yoga lessons too. Those pants make my ass look AWESOME! I'd wear them for Clyde sometimes, just to tease him. He loved it though, really."

Mercy giggled. "A lot of times when I'd come over, I'd ride the train straight from work so i was dressed in my suit. Anytime we'd fool around, I'd always ask him if he wanted the tie on or off. He'd always say on." She smiled at Taylor. "You should get yourself a tie, Taylor. It drives the guys WILD! Maybe Johnny doesn't even realize he's into it." She giggled.

Mercy took another spoonful of her iced cream. "This is just so great! Like a weight's off my shoulder. Thanks sooo much for having me over. It just really means a lot. Finally I can just get Clyde off my mind and just relax!"

Taylor chuckled at Mercy's Clyde impression. Everything about the man was just begging to be impersonated.

"I've got ties, dude!" She said, jabbing a finger up in the air in the general direction of her bedroom, wherever that was from here. "Two of 'em, anyway. A black one and a red and black one. You've seen me wear a tie, too! I was on TV! At like... Remember the interview thing before Summer Splash? Where Adrian came out and people did questions? Black tie, white shirt, pleated skirt, bracelets, choker, and some killer boots. I love that look."

She picked herself up off the floor and plunked down in the seat next to Mercy while she pulled her arms out of her sleeves and pulled the sweatshirt tightly around her. Now that she thought about it, her bare legs were cold, but when selecting pants she could never pass up shorts. Her legs looked too goddamn good!

"Any time, though. Like, we're both busy and stuff, but you can come over any time you want. We've got space if you don't want to make the trip back in the same day. We kind of picked this place because it's far enough away from Tokyo and Kyoto and AFW and stuff... It's like our Superman fort. What about work, though, how's that going? Any other crazy bitches on your ass?"

"Oh yeah..." Mercy said, vaguely remembering. She looked over Taylor as she switch spots."That went surprisingly we'll... I'll tell Rally we should do more of them... you looked good."

Mercy then sighed. "Thankfully, no." She began. All the mischief makers seem to calm down a bit during pay-per-view time. Don't want to bite the hand that feeds them if they think it might cost them a spot on the card."

Mercy smiled but then suddenly frowned. "Now that Clyde's out of my life, all that baggage is just gone. He was always worried about me getting hurt or put in danger. Really, I think he likes having that danger in his life. He complains and frets but he was a smoker and a drinker. He's got that addictive personality. why wouldn't he be addicted to danger? I made him stop his other vices. Obviously he just wants to be a complete wreck. THAT'S what makes him happy. Me?Nooooo thanks! I tried to shape him up. He was on the road to getting his GED. I told him a thousand times that he needs to think of his career after wrestling. I don't think he WANTS one. He just wants to die in the ring with some big b-boobed s-SLUT riding his face after breaking his legs! What a real HERO!"

Mercy wrinkled her nose, disgusted by her own words. She then looked up. "OK, I can't take it anymore! I really hate this movie. Don't you have something with some more action in it?"

Taylor blinked at Mercy like she had just asked the dumbest question, and gestured grandly at the wall of movies next to the screen. Her tastes usually drifted toward the emotional side, but she always found herself wanting action in a movie.

She slid off her seat and crawled over to the shelves. She hoped she could find stuff without Morrigan.

"Yeah, I kinda get that feeling too..." She remarked while she began poking through the movies. "The he just wants to be a wreck part... Like the Heather stuff, the drinking... I don't think he's a bad guy or anything, not at all. But he really wants to be like... Like James Dean, only a... Oh, jeez, what's that word..."

She stopped to think, and then finally swatted at the Blu-ray player recessed into the wall to stop Flowers For Princess from getting any more horrible so she could think straight.

"Fuck, I'm stupid. C'mon, Smarty-Pants, what's the word where like you want bad stuff to happen to you because you think it'll make you awesome. Like he's a..." She shrugged, and pulled a movie off the shelf. "Anyway. Do you think he's drinking himself to death over you like he did with Heather? When I saw him after that stuff, he was plaaastered and followed me into a park at night and tried to fight me. So I beat his ass. Do you think I'll need to go flying knee him in the fucking chest again?" She grinned, with one eyebrow mischeviously cocked.

"Masochist?" Mercy offered as Taylor fumbled for the word. "James Dean... heh... maybe in his wildest dreams." She muttered as Taylor continued. "I hope he's not. I wasn't really trying to tear his heart out. It was fun while it lasted, I guess, but there's no way he could seriously believe it could last, right?"

Mercy giggled when Taylor said she beat Clyde up after a drunken escapade. "Well, don't mangle him." She said. "But if you need to toss him around a bit, then go right ahead."

Mercy then got quiet and began to slowly suck on her spoon after dipping it into the tub while Taylor found a new movie.

"Um... Taylor..." She said nervously, suddenly. "While I was with Clyde I took a train ride from Kyoto to Hokkaido with Heather. It was kind of weird, being there with his ex but ... her and I were friends, actually." She paused and looked down at her tub but didn't take another spoonful. "We had a nice chat on that train ride and after some drinking we kind of... uh... fucked." She didn't beat around the bush.

Mercy looked at Taylor though she didn't really know what she was expecting. "Actually, I kind of lost a lot of respect for her then. It was... really sad, actually." Mercy continued. "I mean, it wasn't really a proud moment for me either but I just remember thinking, this is the girl that Clyde was so head over heels in love with that he wanted to marry and here I am, like... doing... things to her..." Mercy bit her lip. "While... thinking about Clyde..."

Mercy deflated completely and shoved the iced cream away from her, further down her lap. "He WASN'T all bad, you know. Just... very... veeeeery... misguided. He has no clue what priorities are but maybe he'll shape up one day."

Mercy capped her tub, licked her spoon and set her iced cream down. "I know that sometimes I can be a bitch and maybe I should have paid a little more attention to him but I never actually meant to do anything to hurt him for real. I just had to tease him, you know?" Her voice became much softer as she continued. "I'm just an independent city girl and he's some love struck cowboy with delusions of some kind of fairy tale life. A life he doesn't actually want to try and build. Really, it just could never work out." Mercy shook her head again.

Taylor drew the corner of her mouth back in a sympathetic expression and nodded at Mercy while she put the new movie in. She held out the carton of blueberries to her to help her feel better.

"Wow," she said. She looked down and kept nodding while she thought about it. "Really everybody has fucked Heather. Did you sit on her face and shit?"

Well, that joke was really pretty played out. Heather was pretty played out. She just wasn't funny anymore.

"Sorry, I don't really want to talk about her. But... Yeah. Clyde seems like a big kid who wants to be in a fairy tale where all the fairies come out and dress him up in the Prince Charming tuxedo and magically everything it perfect. But he wants to be drunk and in a ditch at the time, when the fairies find him. I dunno, but he's got a screw loose."

She jogged around the seats to a couch at the back of the room, and collected another man-sized sweatshirt. She returned to her seat next to Mercy and put the sweatshirt on her lap.

"Here. It's Johnny's. You can't have Johnny, but you can borrow his manly smelling cozy clothes while we figure out what you want to do next."

The movie started. It was Quentin Tarantino's "True Romance". Or... Tarantino didn't direct it, but he... did something. Whatever. She couldn't remember everything Morrigan had told her about the movie.

"Morg showed me this movie. It's like, an action movie, but there's like... other stuff too. It's old, but it's pretty good." She got comfortable on her chair and nestled into her oversized sweatshirt. "So, now that Lilly's gone, do you think you're done with the gym forever? Or maybe do you kinda want to kick some ass once in a while? It's really addictive, ya know. Do you want something to drink? Like, water? Juice? Beer? Vodka?"

Mercy's face twisted into a horrible grimace of disgust at Taylor's words. She had no idea that Taylor could be so... nasty. Still, she wasn't really interested in talking about it either so she was thankful that was all there was to it. She really had just wanted to tell someone and she obviously couldn't tell Clyde.

She nodded along with Taylor's assessment of her ex boyfriend. "Yeah, he wants it both ways. he wants to be some down on his luck scrappy underdog that still has a ranch and two-point-five kids or some such nonsense. It's not how the world is." Mercy said with a huff as Taylor tossed the sweater at her.

She WAS feeling cold. She pulled the sweater up to her and gave it a good sniff before she slipped it over her head. "Johnny smells good." She said and relaxed back in her seat. "Or, your detergent does." She added with a giggle.

Mercy watched as Taylor fiddled with the movie and put a new one on. "Ok, sounds good!" She said with a chirp and then paused. "Vodka..." She muttered. "Ooooh, big girl drinks are what got me into all this mess in the FIRST place!" She said but then waved her hand. "Eh, what the hell!" She decided. "Lemme at em!" She chuckled. "I'll just crash here if you don't mind. A sleepover sounds fun anyway."

She then considered Taylor's other words. "You know, it might be fun to keep at it. Maybe not so much though. I really don't think I'll ever actually get BACK in the ring. I mean, I really have no clue HOW I won that match to be honest." Mercy admitted. "I'm just not cut out for beating up someone with my fists. I'd much prefer to do it with the bang of a gavel, eheh. But, I felt good and it kept me in shape! I'll need it after that big tub of ice cream i almost ate."

Mercy then thought of something. "By the way, how IS that working out for you? I haven't really heard much from Morrigan lately. She had a match but it seemed to go almost... normal.. Except for... that part at the end..." She said the last part as a mutter.

Taylor returned Mercy's question with a knowing, and evasive smile. "Morg's my girl. I love her to death," she said, as if that should be enough. "I mean, she's not perfect. But every day I'm really glad that I hired her, even with what everyone thought about it at the time. Every time I see her I just want to hug her. As far as I'm concerned, she's everything that's right in the world, because, like..."

She made a face and stared off in thought. "She was a good girl. Then whatever happened, and she wasn't acting so good. But now she's getting rid of that stuff, and she's getting better and better. I don't really know how to say it, man, I'm not a writer or anything, but she's trying to be a better person, or whatever, and it makes me so fucking happy I cry."

She hopped up out of her seat again. Sometimes it was hard for her to stay put. "I'll get us some stuff. Don't worry about waking up with a new boyfriend. If you sleep with anyone tonight, it'll be a three-way, and we can't do that because Akashi would hunt me down and squish me to death."

She dashed up the stairs to retrieve a bottle of vodka from the freezer. She grabbed a bottle of fresh orange juice from the fridge as well, and then flew back down the stairs.

"Vodka's good in orange juice, right?" She asked. She figured Mercy would know. "And by the way, I mean it when I say you're always welcome here. You are always welcome here," she said firmly. "Okay? We've got lots of space, and if you ever need to get away or anything, or you want to come workout or just hang out, just come over, stay as long as you want."