Reality (Linstead AU)

Chapter 1

A/N: A brief note before the story begins. This is a Linstead AU. To make the story flow better, Erin is Hank's actual daughter in this one, so she's Erin Voight. Okay, let's get to it!

-----

It all began with a storyline. Or, more specifically, it began with a summons to a meeting. A summons like many others that had came before it.

"Jay! The boss wants to see you. There's a creative meeting starting down the hall. Last door on the left."

"Thanks, Jeff," Jay Halstead called to the road agent who had stuck his head around the locker room door, a guy in his fifties by the name of Jeff Jarrett.

As one of the top wrestlers in WWE, Jay Halstead was used to the boss wanting to see him in person quite often. In fact, Jay was the number one bad guy, referred to as a heel, in the company. Fans pretty much universally despised him, and he took a lot of pride in that. Whenever a paying customer booed him or shouted abuse it only meant that he was good at his job.

Top guy or not, he didn't get to keep WWE's owner waiting. Hank Voight often had little patience, and a short temper. Over the past few years, Jay had learned the best ways to deal with the boss. Some people probably called it politicking. Whatever it was, it worked.

Dressed quite casually in jeans and a dark red polo shirt, Jay got up and made his way out of the locker room. He noticed a couple of the lower card guys, guys who were never going to reach main event level the way Jay had, looking at him. Jealous, he assumed. Wrestling locker rooms were like that in every company. Some people had the main event spots locked down. Those who didn't, wanted them. And those who knew they were never going to get them became jealous and bitter.

The hallway outside the locker room was busy, as they always were before episodes of WWE's weekly TV show Monday Night Raw. Talent and crew were coming and going, busying themselves with whatever they needed to get done. For Jay, it was a short trip to the end of the hallway. Last door in the left, he recalled.

Creative meetings were never fun. Sitting around a table with Hank Voight, a writer or two, and sometimes other wrestlers, wasn't Jay's idea of a way to kill time before the show. The conversations often went on way longer than they needed to in his opinion. All he wanted was for his character to look strong on TV in the long term. Whether he had to win or lose each week was of lesser importance. You could lose and still look strong if you knew what you were doing.

Last door on the left, Jay thought as he approached it. It wasn't Hank's actual office. Every week a room was set aside backstage at whatever arena they were using for the chairman, where meetings with talent, writers or road agents could take place. This meeting though, was taking place in a separate office – one that had a paper sign on the door saying 'Do not enter. Meeting in progress.' That meant the meeting was important. Obviously the instruction didn't apply to Jay, so he knocked the door and opened it.

"Hey, Hank," Jay said as he walked in. He was high enough up in the company that he had surpassed having to use 'Mr Voight'.

It wasn't the boss, sitting at the head of a small table with only two seats on each side, that caught Jay's attention, though. Hank's daughter, Erin Voight, was there. Erin was about Jay's age, late twenties, he thought. He didn't know the woman at all. In fact they had barely ever said more than hello to each other since she had first started appearing on TV for her family's company several months earlier. She seemed quite shy backstage, preferring to keep herself to herself. Why she was in a creative meeting that he had been called to, Jay didn't have the first idea.

Opposite Erin was Adam Ruzek, one of the other top male wrestlers in WWE. Adam's character, by contrast to Jay's, was intended to be popular with the fans, which made him what was known as a babyface. Pretty much all wrestling storylines pitted one or more babyface characters against one or more heel characters. The dynamic made it easy for most of the audience to decide who to support, and who to oppose. Of late, Jay had been in a rivalry with Adam, as well as a separate one with Hank's on-screen character, who was also currently a babyface.