Work In Progress

Taylor hated saying things she didn't mean.

She laid on her side on the couch with Johnny, her head pillowed on his lap, while they watched TV. She didn't watch much TV, mostly either wrestling or Paco-San, but she didn't mind watching whatever Johnny managed to find while channel surfing. He always found something.

"Mmh." She nestled her head down onto his thigh and stretched her arms and legs down like a cat. She peered up at him with a lazy smile.

The upstairs TV, in the living room, was your average flat screen. The theater in the basement was huge and spectacular, but sometimes the quaint ambiance in the living room was cozy. It was quieter, simpler, more homey. Taylor loved to lay on the couch with Johnny, or on Johnny, while he watched TV. Sometimes she would read, but she had plenty of train-time for that. Johnny-time was special. As dedicated as they were to each other, they were both busy, running off to other cities and training and fighting and attending promotional AFW events, and time together could get a little scarce.

Plus there was the business, the t-shirt stuff that she had more or less passed off to Morrigan and Jiro for the time being. Once the Friction title came into her life, she had much less energy left over to worry about t-shirt designs.

"We should start an AFW football league," she mused sleepily. "And only let our friends play. Or at least people we like."

Johnny was by no means a guy who likes to veg out and watched tv. Unlike his wife, he had some things here and there that he liked to catch, but it usually seemed like he spent the most time on the couch when Taylor was with him. It was nice to be able to just have the contact, even if they didn't say much. Sometimes they just didn't want to do anything but be around each other. If they wanted to be active, they could train or have sex, though sometimes there was hardly a difference.

However, Johnny had inadvertently stumbled upon a Japanese medical drama. It had featured a rather muscular Japanese man who had to pretend he was a doctor. Johnny wasn't sure how, but after a few episodes, he was actually hooked, so he say with wide eyes, idly stroking Taylor's hair until she spoke.

"Huh, wh?"

He took a second to process her words and the nodded. "That'd be cool, babe. I could really work out my legs running up and down the field and junk." He then grinned. "You gonna be skins with me, babe?"

After a small laugh, he tilted his head. "Do we have enough people we actually like to fill a whole team?" They DID have a fair amount of acquaintances, but a surpringly few amount of "true friends" even though Johnny tried to get along with most people.

Taylor giggled. "I'm always skins with you, Tiger," she flirted. "But we couldn't be on the same team. It just wouldn't be fair!"

She watched the TV for a moment while she thought. The muscley protagonist was intended to be some kind of manly heartthrob, but Taylor didn't dig him. The thought never even crossed her mind that he might be considered sexy, not when she had Johnny.

"Sure we do, I like lots of people," Taylor said cheerfully. "There's like, the dojo girls and the family, and like... Mai and... Ro and her friend, and John Mitchel, and... hm. Morrigan could bring Brittany," she laughed. "And we could get Angel. And Adrian, oh god. She'd probably cry the whole time. Mercy could be the cheerleader."

She turned onto her back and looked up at the ceiling. "There's the Gastins, they're from the south so they're probably all about football. Should we let them play?" An impish smile spread slowly across her lips, and she shook her head. "Nah. Gotta save room for Ace and stuff. And Tai. I'd actually like to see that, you and Tai in some manly competition... heh. Poor Tai."

"They'll just have to learn how to get better, babe." Johnny quipped. He then listened to her rattle off their list of friends, which quickly devolved into something else. "I ain't seen Ro in a while." Johnny commented. His list of personal friends had hovered around three and a half for a time. Shinobu and him were tight still. Even more so now that he was dating Cassie. However, Ro had all but vanished and while he had attempted to be friends with Kozue, it just didn't quite work out. Probably for the best. The only other person was Bree, but she was more like a stray cat who had been lured into the life O'Reilly that was domestication. Some would probably say stalker, but Johnny preferred to be nice about it. She was a good kid, even if she was a little weird... and grabby.

Are you sure you wanna play football, babe? Sounds to me like you want to start a Yakuza style gang rumble." He said, patting her head. "Man, that'd almost be funny to see since it wasn't happenin in our home. I'm pretty sure by the end of it someone would probably be dead for real, dude." Johnny laughed.

Johnny slowly slid his body so that Taylor eased off of him. He then turned and straddled her, pressing her shoulders down as he leaned in close, teasing her a bit by keeping her just out of his lips' reach.

"Sometimes you're so bad, babe." He said, grinning wildly, staring into her blue eyes. But... we could have a cookout somewhere far, far away from our house and see who shows up..." Johnny finally eased in and kissed Taylor's lips. He was definitely no longer interested in what was on the television.

"Yeah, forget football," she laughed softly and gazed up at Johnny while he maneuvered on top of her. She enticingly bit her bottom lip until he came down to kiss her.

"Sooooo baaaaad..." Taylor almost whispered, and grinned. "I must be a bad girl to get turned on watching you beating down those other girls. You're so sexy when you're in control. I love seeing your power..."

She meant every word of it. Watching Johnny's matches could be nerve racking, but it could also make her hot under the collar. Though lately, with King and his crew, it had been more the former, and she couldn't help worrying more and more.

"I can't wait for your next one..." She said, but she didn't mean it. And she hated saying things she didn't mean.

"Uhuh. Uhuh. Uhuh. Yeah w- Uhuuuh. Yeah, uhuuuuh. But-yeah. Rgh... ok... hrrrrh... You know what? I told you she was busy that day! ALL. DAY! So why don't YOU go fuck yourself! You need her way more than she needs you!"

With that, the growling redhead slammed her fist on the table and winged her arm in a sweeping motion flinging her laptop off the table and sending it crashing to the ground nearby. She'd already broken two of them, so she had started getting more durable ones. She glanced at the screen. It wasn't cracked and just sat there flickering at her, mocking her.

Morrigan lifted her head and jammed it against the kitchen table. She began to tug as hard as she could on her red hair. Her job as Taylor's personal assistant had been fine,but time consuming. Her own life had taken a hit and without a career of her own, her soul mate working with one of her hated enemies and a boss that was barely around, Morrigan had lost it on the poor promotional executive.

It hadn't been the first time, and she'd apologize eventually, but Morrigan really needed to take a moment and clear her head. She stood up, took off her head set and went into the kitchen to grab a beer.

Taylor heard the crash in the other room and cringed, because she knew that she was to blame. Since the trouble with Kelly, and especially since losing the title, she had dumped more work on Morrigan as she did less and less. She hardly wanted anything to do with AFW publicists while her face was a swollen mess. She had hardly wanted anything to do with the AFW at all.

And she had been avoiding Morrigan, to an extent, because she knew that she was asking a lot of her. She couldn't help but feel like she had been treating her more like an employee. Technically, she was an employee, but Taylor thought of her more as family and had always been nothing but easy going about work-related things.

She had to make it up to Morrigan somehow, and that started with first sacking up and going up to see her.

Her mid-morning training had gone from working in Tokyo with the Dojo, to working out in the gym in the sizable garage in her house, to watching film of other wrestlers on the giant home theater in the basement. It wasn't that she was feeling lazy, she was almost never lazy, but she was unmotivated. She found herself averse to the training, because it had in some ways betrayed her, she thought. "It's complicated" with the training and her right now.

She was wearing her workout clothes with a bright red sweatshirt over the top when she came up from the basement, and she reached the fridge at the same time Morrigan did, and they grabbed the door handle together.

"Hey," she said, somewhat sheepishly. She saw the Irish girl reach for a beer, and nodded. "Yeah." She grabbed one for herself, thought for a moment, and then went to get a big serving bowl from the cabinet. She loaded it with cans of beer and then held it under the refrigerator's ice dispenser.

"Bad day at the office?" She asked, slightly awkward, while the fridge churned and spat out bursts of ice cubes into the bowl and onto the cans.

Morrigan turned when Taylor grabbed the fridge door at the same time as her. "Hey..." She muttered and then watched Taylor fill up a bowl with beer and ice. She nodded and looked at the blonde and huffed.

"Something like that..." She slurred in her Irish accent. She eyed the beer bowl and nodded. "People don't seem to understand that you've got a life and you can't just drop everything cause people want to take a fuckin picture of you!"

Morrigan cracked open the beer and began guzzling it, a little of the sudsy liquid dripping down her chin.

"Yeah..." Taylor mused. She brushed the corner of her eye, where the fracture was, with her fingers. "I don't think they want a picture of this, anyway."

She took the full bowl and grabbed Morrigan's wrist. Maybe because of Morrigan's own unapologetic acccent, when Taylor spoke, her voice was drenched in lazy-tongued Staten Island. "C'mon. Let's go sit out back. I been stuck in the basement so long, I just need to get some fresh aih."

"That's exactly what those fuckers want a picture of." She growled and then nodded when Taylor grabbed her wrist. She sat out with Taylor on her porch. She finished her beer and reached for another one.

As she guzzled down her second beer, she was mostly silent, just sighing for the moment. Then she turned and looked over Taylor. "Sorry you got dicked over by that cunt." Morrigan said. She'd been a bit more professional about it when it happened. "I know you think I'm shitty for it, but I'm glad Lilith and I fucked that bitch." Morrigan frowned. "Even if she got the last laugh, or fuck..." Morrigan shrugged and took another sip.