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Liv exhales a long, dejected sigh.
She's waiting in front of the elevator with her arms crossed and a bitter pout on her lips, her bag hanging from her left shoulder because the right one hurts like hell and she can't even remember how it happened.
Tonight was supposed to be her big night, her one-way ticket to Wrestlemania and finally a title match, but here she is, bruised, pissed, and disappointed, heading back to the hotel alone because the segment with Sarah drained her emotionally and all she wants now is a hot shower and maybe a drink.
Seeing Sarah again reminded her of how lonely she's been feeling during this past year without the Riott Squad. She's been doing her thing with a bold, brave face, but the endearing smile she wears every day is kind of starting to feel a bit tight.
She's tired of working hard and never getting anything in return. How is she supposed to prove herself if nobody throws her a decent bone?
“You gonna walk in or not?”
Liv looks up, blinking, and finds herself staring into pale grey eyes. Rhea Ripley is gazing down at her with a charmingly arched brow and a chuckle painted across her unfairly pretty lips.
“Yeah, right,” Liv mumbles, stepping into the elevator followed by Rhea—just the girl she didn't really need to see right now. Rhea fucking Ripley and her beautiful face. And beautiful smile. And beautiful shoulders. And pretty much beautiful everything.
The doors slide closed behind them and Liv clutches the strap of her bag, now bruised, pissed, disappointed, and awkwardly frustrated.
The space is way too small for her taste. Rhea stands confidently with her legs wide apart, a backpack slung over a shoulder, her presence seemingly taking up all the room around Liv, filling it with warmth and an inebriating scent of tropical fruits. She doesn't look particularly happy herself.
“Rough night, uh?” Liv can't help asking. They were both fan favourites in this Royal Rumble and they both came out of it with nothing but bruises, physical and emotional.
Rhea shifts her weight from one leg to the other, nodding stiffly. “Yeah. I just want to grab a beer and pass out.”
“I feel you.”
Liv can hardly look at her. She has no idea when and how she got this stupid crush on Rhea. It must have started during one of their matches side by side; all she knows is that she ignored it for as long as possible, so it grew, and grew, and grew, until it was too loud to ignore and also too strong to control. At this point, the situation isn't 'Liv has a crush on Rhea' anymore; it's rather 'the crush on Rhea has Liv'.
After a pause of silence, Liv hears herself say, “You deserved to win this one.”
Her honesty must be shining through more than she realises, because Rhea's chuckle slowly blossoms into a genuine smile that seems to warm up the temperature in the elevator even more.
“Said the one everybody wanted as a winner,” she jokes, the lack of make-up making her expression look hauntingly soft. “When you smiled and pointed at the Wrestlemania sign... I felt that.”
That had been the moment Liv almost forgot she wasn't going to come out of this Rumble as a winner. Almost.
She shakes off the disappointment and tries to sound optimistic as she replies, “It was what it was. There will be other chances.”
“Yeah, other chances that'll be handed out to people who just show up to cash in a cheque.”
Rhea's vitriol comment hits another sore spot—not just for the two of them, but for all the women who took part in this Rumble. Every single one of them deserved better than how it ended.
“Meanwhile,” she sighs, “the rest of us work our asses off every day just to collect some scraps.”
Rhea arches her eyebrow again, this time a little teasingly.
“Sounds like you could use a beer, too.”
Maybe it's the way Rhea is looking at Liv—with that subtle little smirk in her look—or maybe Liv is just so desperate for something good that she's simply reading too much into a meaningless line, but before she even knows she's returning the smirk, though a bit coyly.
“Is that a proposal?”
She wonders for a moment when this bout of bravery is coming from, blaming it on the tiredness of both her brain and her heart, but after a brief reflection she realises that it's not bravery, just plain stupidity. As far as she knows, the rumours about Rhea being newly single might not even be true, and here she is, assuming she's flirting.
It doesn't really help that Rhea's does look, in fact, pretty flirtatious as she tilts her head to one side and eyes Liv up in a way that makes her feel naked.
“Only if you want it to be.”
Liv's boldness—no, stupidity—fluffs up like a proud bird. She tries her best to shrug off her kicked puppy face and put on one that can match Rhea's radiant confidence.
Chin up, shoulders square, she whispers, “Then it's a yes.”
The elevator stops, the doors slide open, and Rhea gives way to Liv before stepping out herself.
The seductive posture costs Liv a light whimper of pain, which Rhea immediately connects with her limp right arm.
“What's wrong with that?” she inquires.
Liv doesn't really want to talk about injuries; she'd much rather go back to flirting and discussing having drinks together. That was much more interesting and much less depressing.
“It's my shoulder,” she grudgingly admits. “I'm not sure what happened, the joint hurts if I lift it too high.”
“Let me,” Rhea interjects before she's even done speaking, and in less than a blink the weight is lifted off Liv's unharmed shoulder and promptly loaded onto Rhea's—which, admittedly, could effortlessly carry fifteen more of Liv's bags and probably Liv herself.
The fleeting idea of being fireman-carried over Rhea Ripley's shoulder makes Liv blush behind her glasses. Hoping Rhea didn't notice, she mutters, “Thanks, you're an angel.”
It might sound ironic, but that is exactly what Rhea looks like right now: not a devil from some nightmare as she likes to portray herself, but an angel in leather and chains. A dark angel, perhaps, but an angel nonetheless.
“Not the best compliment for a goth,” Rhea predictably quips, but Liv has her retort ready.
“Lucifer was an angel, too, you know?”
They're walking in the dimly lit parking lot and Rhea stops for a second to look at her, a wistful shadow passing across her chiselled features. They're standing close. Her eyes idly caress Liv's face on their way down to her lips.
“Before he fell.”
Her look is gentle but Liv feels it burning all over her like raging fire. She can sense every inch of Rhea's body as if it were plastered against her—and it would be, if it weren't for this cursed couple of inches of cold air between them.
Feeling hazy and slightly light-headed, Liv can only gulp and nod weakly.
“Yeah.”
Her heart is drumming in her chest. She feels like something could happen—should happen, but she's like paralysed and her tongue is suddenly tied.
A car drives past them, hitting them with its harsh lights, and Rhea nearly doesn't pull Liv away in time—except that, in the heat of the moment, she grabbed Liv's right arm without thinking, causing Liv to cry out in pain.
“Fuck, Livvy, I'm sorry!”
Liv blinks, the pain dissipating so quickly she almost thinks it was never there. Her heart has just skipped a couple of beats.
Livvy.
A rush of heat rises to her cheeks. She really shouldn't find this nickname so cute—so intimate. Hell, she and Rhea really started to know each other just a couple of months ago, why is such a simple sound making her head swim with bliss?
She melts when she feels Rhea's hand on the side of her face.
“Are you okay?”
Words escape her. Rhea is scrutinising her so closely it's basically an invitation to do something extremely stupid, but her concern is so sincere it keeps Liv' boldness at bay.
“I'm fine. Better a sore arm than being run over by a car, right?”
“I guess,” Rhea laughs, but a lilt of regret lingers in her voice.
They resume their walk to the hotel, which unfortunately isn't far. Liv can't even remember when they decided they'd walk there together, if they did at all.
Liv has a hard time keeping up with Rhea's long stride, until she realises their pace has considerably slowed down to one more suitable for her shorter legs. It doesn't escape her that Rhea must be making quite an effort to accommodate her own walk to match Liv's.
“I heard you broke up with your boyfriend,” she blurts out, unable to resist any longer. She needs to know the truth, she needs to know how far her foolish hopes can go.
Instead of the uneasy reply Liv expected, Rhea responds with a relaxed, “Yep,” that ends with an emphatic pop of her lips that just makes Liv want to grab her face and kiss her.
“Sorry to hear that,” she mumbles, caught by surprise by such nonchalance.
Rhea glances down at her with an impish little grin.
“You don't look very sorry.”
Busted, Liv thinks. She can't bring herself to feel ashamed for not being sorry at all. She's not sorry. In fact, she's so happy she might scream. This awful night brought her one good thing, after all.
“It was meant to happen, sooner or later,” Rhea adds, as if owing Liv an explanation—which she definitely doesn't, but Liv would lie if she said she isn't curious about what happened. “If you start to need looking for reasons to stay with someone, then you shouldn't be with them at all.”
“True,” she agrees, more cheerfully than intended. Oh, well. “People are naturally drawn together. If you have to force that, what's the point?”
It's a little ironic that she's saying this while she and Rhea keep bumping into each other's sides as they walk, as though a gravity of their own kept pushing them together.
Rhea stops again like she did in the parking lot, watching Liv with this tender expression that makes her stomach flutter in the funniest way.
“What?” she stutters. Her knees are starting to feel dangerously weak. She wasn't feeling very pretty after this match, especially after the very half-assed effort she had put in removing her ruined make up, but Rhea is looking at her like she's a breath-taking sight.
She rises a hand and carefully tucks a lock of Liv's hair behind her ear while the pad of her thumb traces along her cheekbone. Her smile has gone all soft again.
“You're just... lovely.”
Liv feels helpless and weak, not just in her knees, but everywhere. Especially inside.
She would have enjoyed a teasing game any other day, but today she feels too fragile to play with her own feelings.
“You should be more careful with words,” she warns, trying to make it sound at least partly playful. She doesn't want to offend Rhea or scare her away, but she needs to know where they stand. “A girl might get the wrong ideas.”
Rhea takes a step forward, closing the last thin gap left between them. She still has her own backpack and Liv's bag thrown over a shoulder like they weight nothing and her eyes are boring deep into Liv's, stealing her power of speech.
“What kind of ideas?”
Every breath seems to draw them closer. Driven by whatever the opposite of reason is, Liv cups her left hand around Rhea's neck and rises to her tiptoes until their lips almost touch. Liv is fairly positive it's the most agonising almost she's ever experienced.
She wishes Rhea's lips didn't look so full and soft. So inviting. She wishes Rhea didn't feel so wonderfully warm in the cold of the night.
Dizzy from the emotional overload, Liv suggestively nudges the tip of her nose against Rhea's, eyes fluttering closed for a second.
“This kind.”
What she hears afterward is a dull thud she cannot place until she feels the unmistakable marble strength of Rhea's arms around herself—both of them—and a whisper upon her mouth.
“Not as wrong as you might think.”
There is something surreal in all of this—the empty street, Rhea's hands on Liv's hips, their foreheads touching while they linger on a borderline it's quite obvious they're both dying to cross.
Liv's hand curls around the nape of Rhea's neck, into the soft, short hair that feels so good under her fingertips. She can hardly believe this is happening: she has been thinking about this so much it almost doesn't feel real.
“I thought you were straight.”
“Ouch!” Rhea exhales a quiet laugh and playfully swats Liv's side. “I'll pretend I didn't hear that.”
Liv laughs, too, feeling light and carefree. The disappointment for the Rumble fades behind an overwhelming euphoria.
“Are you gonna kiss me or what?” she mutters, panting slightly because Rhea's grip on her hips is firm and possessive and it makes her wish they were upstairs in one of their bedrooms rather than out here.
Rhea pulls back slightly to brush her hair back and gaze at her intently, looking so beautiful Liv kind of wants to snort. She's such a goner, it's ridiculous.
Softly, Rhea asks, “Are we about to make things very complicated between us?”
Liv's heart sinks. The only way this could complicate things instead of making them better would be them being on entirely different pages about this—whatever this is.
“Only if it's just me not wanting it to be just a kiss, I guess,” she answers feebly.
“Well, in that case,” Rhea takes Liv's face between her hands with an achingly sweet smile, “I have good news for us.”
Liv's own surfacing smile gets lost in the kiss Rhea presses down to her lips.
It's delicate and tentative, as though Rhea still wasn't entirely sure that this was the right thing to do—what Liv really wants. So Liv decides to show her. She hooks her good arm around Rhea's neck and tugs her down to deepen the kiss, her lips parting pliantly to indulge the slow but eager pace Rhea is setting. She wraps her right arm around Rhea's waist at the same time Rhea engulfs her into a tight embrace that elicits a happy moan out of her throat.
They both smile over it. It's amazing to feel it through the kiss and it just makes them smile more.
Their luggage lies on the ground, forgotten.
Sighing blissfully, Liv mentally updates 'the crush on Rhea has Liv' to 'Rhea and Liv have each other.'