Häagen-Dazs and Heartbreak?

"I think so." Mercy said without batting an eye. Allison probably strangled puppies for fun. Like Cruella DeVille, but worse. "She has a nice spa." Mercy said and turned her head. "I .. um..." Mercy swallowed hard. "Actually, I've never told Clyde about this but... I've met her before. There was a point in time where my former employer, the one I came over here with, fired me. I was completely out of work and stranded in Japan. I was desperate and everything seemed to keep going from bad to worse."

Mercy sighed and took a big drink from the screwdriver. She was pretty drunk now and her words began to slur a little. "After a string of horrible events, I ended up in her spa. There was a scuffle, of sorts and, well, I had to bash a bottle of wine over some girl's head. She was trying to kill us, it was pretty bad. Then... the woman pulled a gun. Here in Japan, she pulled a gun."

Mercy's eyes lit up. "Aha!" She said. She looked at Taylor and grinned widely. "Thank you Taylor, I know what I can do now! You're the best! I'd kiss you but you're married and with how buzzed I am, I'd probably try and intentionally miss your cheek and just spill everything everywhere sooooo." Mercy threw her head down and just grinned widely and giggled to herself.

Taylor raised an eyebrow. "You're welcome..."

It took her a moment to figure out what Mercy was planning. Mercy thought that she could throw her weight around and be untouchable because she knew about the law, but Taylor knew how little that meant if you were in a room with someone. Sending someone to jail in a week meant almost nothing if you were being killed today.

"Be careful... Don't go getting shot or anything. I mean, it's crazy that she's waving a gun around in Japan, but you said she was calculating and stuff. What if she's already thought this stuff through?"

She decided to cool it with the vodka. She was already buzzed, but didn't want to get tipsy. Especially now that her friend might go charging into harm's way.

"Well, I'll just have to think through more." Mercy said simply and watched as Taylor put the bottle down. She took one more sip and then passed it along for Taylor to set aside. She was already breaching the edge of drunkenness where she thought about kissing Taylor's mouth. Anymore and things could get irrevocably embarrassing.

She then looked at Taylor and lowered her eyes. "Just don't read the obits for a week or two." Mercy said with a bit of a gallows humor smile. "But, seriously... I'm, like, the queen of caution! The only reckless thing I ever did was get drunk enough to have stranger sex with Clyde!"

Mercy sighed again. "If THAT hadn't have happened, then we'd never have dated at all, that's for SURE! Stupid! So stupid!" She said and mashed her palm against her forehead.

"Aaaanyway, I'll make sure to text you when I've finished things up with her so you know I'm not dead." Mercy smiled. "And... you should take care of yourself more too." Mercy added out of the blue. "I mean, in the ring. I'm always looking at injury reports for cost prevention and your name comes up way more than it should. You're going to end up retiring way earlier than you want to if you wrestle like that." She said with a frown. "I know medicine is the best it's ever been but sometimes I don't think that's a good thing. People have the means to heal anything as fast as they can and that's the sort of attitude that keeps letting them throw their bodies against the wall. "Oh, the doctors can fix it." They'll say."

"What are you saying, I'm too expensive?" Taylor joked with an embarrassed smile. It was true. She seemed to be getting beat up a lot lately, and half of it was because of Kelly Conway.

"Well, don't worry about me, man. The worst I've ever had was my broken ribs and shit, and I got through that. I broke my hand, had that hip injury, concussion, but I'm fine. Really, as long as nobody fucks up my face, I'm alright. Like... I don't mind getting hurt. I don't WANT to get hurt, but I reeeaaally don't want anything to happen to my teeth or my nose or something. It just... yeah. I like them the way they are." She shuddered. "I guess it's a miracle I haven't lost a tooth or anything yet, right?"

"You're in a job where it's not only legal, but encouraged, to get punched in the face. I'd say that's a minor miracle." Mercy grinned. "But yeah, you're one or two injuries from breaking the bank." Mercy said and stuck out her tongue. "Just... when you start listing off the injuries you've suffered and you run out of fingers or run out of brain cells to remember the whole list, then maybe it's time to hang up the tights, ok?" She said with a genuine smile of concern on her face. "That's whatever comes first, by the way." The paralegal added with a wag of her finger.

Mercy then yawned cutely and snuggled into the sweater, curling into a ball facing Taylor.

"I am going to miss the snuggling though. That's always the part I miss. Being able to just curl up next to someone and getting comfy and falling asleep. Mercy took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes. She looked at the tv which was blurry to her now. "Heh, we didn't even start the movie. I guess that's good, that we could talk." She added offhandedly. "Thanks again, Taylor." Mercy said through another yawn.

"Yeah..." Taylor said. She put hand on Mercy's back. Her troubled blue eyes stared at the black space below the colored glow of the screen.

It was something she thought about a lot, more now than before. What would she do when it was finally time to be done wrestling for good? When she left before, it was for personal reasons, and while she didn't leave with the intention of coming back in a year, she knew that she could if she wanted to. What would happen when she was too old, too broken down, too slow, no longer competitive...

She could train younger wrestlers, sure. But would she even want to stay in the wrestling business? Her dream was to start a youth program, like the Jackie Joyner Kersee Foundation, and teach and coach kids in athletics and life stuff and help them to not grow up the way she did. That was the dream, but it was so big and so daunting that when she thought about doing it she felt dread in the pit of her stomach. How could she ever believe that kids, or their parents, would ever want anything to do with someone who beat the shit out of people for a living?

And she was terrible with business. She knew that. She had no hope of ever being able to handle all the intricacies of starting something like that. It was a pipe dream, something reserved for people way smarter than her.

So the question remained, what could she possibly have left once wrestling was out of the picture?

But she couldn't worry about that now. She was heading into the height of her career. A win at Avalanche would be her dream come true, and she couldn't let it go to waste by worrying too much about the future. She was happy now.

"Oh, thanks for coming. We like having people in the house." She knew Mercy must be pretty lonely, and she wasn't just going to ditch her and run upstairs to Johnny. "I'll grab blankets and stuff."

She went to a closet to fish out bedding supplies to make a bed on the floor under the movie screen. A "slumber party" was such a comforting thought, as if it called back fond memories of simpler times. It didn't. Taylor never had people over to her house growing up. Maybe that was why she tried so hard to have people over now.

Either way, she was tired too. Once the bed was in place, she picked Mercy up and laid her down and covered her up, and then laid down herself. She lay flat on her back, her head pillowed on her hands, and stared up at the ceiling while listening to Mercy's shallow, even breath.