Nathalie Christiaens vs. Theodore 'Theo' Logan - The Devil In Blue

[BlackAkuma]

Match Type: Standard
Victory Conditions: Pinfall, submission, or knockout.

***

This was it—Theo’s first solo match.

It wasn’t quite what he’d wanted when he asked management to let her go out for a singles bout - he’d wanted a regular match, but they instead set him up for another beach brawl, not unlike the tag match he and Willy had against Artistry a few months back. Spring Break was closing in, they wanted to attract some tourism, which was a good way to bank off that. He got the business sense of it, and it wasn’t the end of the world. Just meant he had to wrestle in swim trunks for the theme and that there was a higher-than-usual chance of him getting sand in unwanted places.

Small prices to pay. His career needed this. So far in LAW, it had just been one loss after another for BlazeWave. Some of them were more humiliating than others, but it was all a streak that kept staining their reputation. It might not have been that big a deal to Willy, since they still had their music deal with LAW to fall back on, but Theo was never the type to rest on his laurels. If they were going to be in the ring, they needed to act like professional wrestlers, which meant winning matches.

He was ready. He was focused. He could do this, he knew it. But there was one little problem.

”Dude, I checked your opponent out, and she is stupid hot.”

Willy was here, too.

The two of them - Lucy was under the weather and decided to sit this one out - were hanging out in a dressing room near the beach ring, with Theo getting in a few quick stretches before they had to go down. The ‘they’ part was annoying him. He’d told Willy that he didn’t need to come down for his first solo match, but his tag partner insisted. ‘Needed to support his boy’, he said.

Sure. Had nothing to do with the chance to hang out with a bunch of Spring Breakers on the company’s dime. Right.

Theo sighed and turned to Willy, who was waving a cell phone in his face with a picture of his opponent on it. ”Yeah, I’ve heard.” He took the phone and gave it a look over, finding himself looking at a svelte, curvy, sexy…redhead? ”Dude, that’s not her.”

Willy snatched the phone back and gazed at it with a furrowed brow. ”What? How do you know?”

”Because, unlike you, I read the damn cards they give us that tell us these things.” He sighed and stretched his arms out. ”And it doesn’t matter how hot she is, man. This isn’t that kind of match.”

”Which is a damn shame, because you need to get laid.” Willy gave him a hearty slap on the back, a touch harder than Theo would’ve appreciated. ”You been in a dry spell too long, bro. Starting to make you cranky.”

Theo would’ve liked to point out that a good part of that dry spell was because Willy’s drunkenness had gotten them kicked out of a couple bars right when he was making good progress, but now wasn’t the time or place - his phone was buzzing, indicating it was time for him to come down. He just shook his head and slipped out of dressing room, with his buddy following close behind.

A couple minutes later and Theo found himself in the ring, doing stretches while he leaned against the turnbuckle and breathing in the fresh sea air. It was getting late-ish, with the sun starting to set in the distance, but there was more than enough daylight left for about thirty or so minutes of good wrestling, and he doubted it would take that long. The crowd was looking pumped up, too, as they stood behind the barricades, waiting in the sand, taking photos and enjoying a few drinks. A nice, casual day on the beach, a hot crowd. Willy was chatting up a few girls at ringside, but Theo didn’t let that distract him.

No, all he wanted to do right now was focus on his opponent, who would be showing up any moment now.

[Winter]

Nathalie Christiaens watched them from a distance as they emerged from the dressing room.

She stretched in solitude, bending her long legs over the top of a bench that overlooked the ring. She preferred it this way. After her explosive introduction to the LAW fandom - which had elicited precisely as much uncertainty and discussion as Nat had hoped - a less-formal affair on the beachside suited her fine. It offered her a fresh, more intimate introduction to the crowd, one that could endear her and lend credence to her words when she had kicked dear sister to the curb. She supposed the skimpy, tight bikini she wore would only add to that appeal. She proudly straightened it around her bust.

More importantly, she would wrestle a man. The LAW crowd had a reasonable tendency to rally behind "their women" against men, which would only further earn her support. The specific man, or men, in question offered even more of an opportunity for fun, however. While they seemed popular - they had a band - she had seen the film. Despite looking the part, neither of them seemed to have won much of anything in their time with LAW. The bigger one, the one she would not be fighting, appeared to love his women, and she didn't need to watch their matches to confirm it. He drowned in a sea of them already.

She tapped her fingers on her hip and smiled wistfully. She might like to capture his eye while she smeared his partner's confidence all around the canvas. That might produce some sparks.

Caught up in her mischievous thoughts, she almost missed one of the members of the camera crew motioning for her to come down. After a pensive lick of her lips, she moved to do so, jogging down toward the sand. She only slowed once she reached the side of the ring where the aforementioned "bigger one" - Willy, she believed - mingled with his crowd of women. She began to angle her slender frame between some of the bikini-clad bodies, and as he went to spin, she "accidentally" bumped headlong into his back. She peered up into her face, a beckoning evident in her brown eyes.

"Oh, pardon me," she apologized, emphasizing the romance in the French accent, and she placed a hand on his elbow. "You cut such a large figure, I ran right into you." Her fingers squeezed a muscle there before she pulled away, albeit with a lingering look. Once she finally turned away, a Cheshire smile crossed her features, and she sashayed her way up to the ring with a twist of her rear.

A few cat calls poured down from the crowd as she entered, and she directed a wink their way before her attention to Theo. She sauntered in his direction, giving him an obvious once-over. While he did not impress her to the same degree as the other one - size did matter to her when it came to muscles - he had his appeal, too. She didn't wish to let him know that, however. "Hello. Your friend seems almost as popular as the match itself."

Just a touch of friction.

Spoiler

[BlackAkuma]

Theo kept his stretches going as he waited for Nathalie to appear, running the ropes a couple of times to keep the blood flowing. He was in mid-stride when he saw her coming her way - or, at least, the woman he assumed was her. He figured it was a safe bet, though, since she had a body that any wrestler would be proud of. A lean, strong, athletic figure. Not overly bulky, but fit and firm, brimming with some real power. She looked formidable, which was a good thing - while Theo was looking for a win, he wasn’t so desperate to get one over some flimsy floozy in a bikini. It needed to mean something.

Eager to get this started, he strode forward towards the center of the ring, expecting her to enter in shortly, only for her to take a detour around the side of the ring—the side where Willy was.

”Oh, come on.”

Theo muttered a few curses as she ‘accidentally’ brushed up against him. He didn’t know whether his tag partner knew she was running a game on him - with Willy, you could never be sure - but it probably didn’t matter. He was suddenly paying a lot less attention to the cute girls in the crowd and a lot more attention to the ring as Nathalie made her way in. Theo knew his friend well enough to know his types; she was ticking many boxes.

Being fair, she ticked a lot of Theo’s boxes, too, but he had the self-control to keep it from mattering in this match. He straightened up as she made her way into the ring and rolled his shoulders, staying focused, but…well, he was extremely glad he’d gone for baggy blue swim trunks in this match.

”Then it’s a good thing this isn’t a popularity contest.” He cracked his knuckles and reached out, looking for a handshake - might as well keep this cordial. ”Theo Logan. Let’s have a good match, okay?”

[Winter]

Seed: planted. Opponent: dismissive.

Nat stole a glance to see that Willy continued to trail her with his eyes. She possessed enough subtlety to simply peer over that section of the crowd rather than gracing him with another alluring smile, leaving him wanting, but the assurance gave her a rise nonetheless and compelled her to loop her index fingers into her bottoms to "straighten" them, drawing his attention to the feature most on display - one of her finest.

Theo did not sound as thrilled as she did about his partner's gathering throng of little twits, and she worked to keep the impishness welling in her chest from bursting to the surface. His outstretched hand made that somewhat easier, and though she did not care much for these empty displays of sportsmanship, she clasped it. "No, but it helps," she retorted, and she tilted her head to the crowd. "They wouldn't have come here without you to watch and without me to watch."

As they separated, she offered him something to watch, too - an idle sway of her hips as her fists rested there, enough to draw his attention without seeming overt. The Sapphire Stunner did not care if she won psychologically or physically, so long as she won, and she doubted even the most resistant man could resist her as she was dressed.

"Nathalie Christiaens." Dropping her last name - their mother's - had tempted her, but she supposed it sounded better as a name associated with her career than "Nathalie Dekock." She believed her father's only crime was saddling them with a name that the English-speakers found so funny. Otherwise, she would have given him that dignity, but she imagined he had endured too much to care anymore. Those thoughts, she wanted to keep distant.

"And yes, let's." Ugh. She sounded like dear sister, so much so that her eyes went into a search for the ref so she could skip these pleasantries and start hurting him. Said ref stepped into view a moment later, sporting her own, less appealing form and bikini in Nat's mind, and Nat looked to her with a mixture of expectancy and hauteur.

"When you're ready," she said to both of them.

[BlackAkuma]

From the sidelines, Willy watched and shook his head. ”Lucky fucker.”

Theo wasn’t the only one trying to get in on the singles scenes, as Willy had been trying to break that glass ceiling for a few months now, without much luck. Of course, the road he’d chosen was a bit harder than the his tag partner was trudging along, as he wanted to get into the hentai division and mix it up with the ladies there. Unfortunately, the requirements were way stricter for that and the spots were less numerous. A lot of ladies in LAW didn't swing both ways, and there was this loud but annoying majority that didn’t even want mixed matches to be a thing, much less mixed sex matches. Bunch of bullshit, was what it was.

Still, he would’ve traded places with Theo in a heartbeat if it meant he got to roll around with an absolute ten out of ten like Nathalie. Natalie? Nathalie. Weird way to pronounce the name, but she could call herself whatever she liked with that body. She was stacked, head to toe, and he was dreaming of all the things he would do if he were in there.

He wouldn’t have started with a handshake, though. God, Theo could be such a dork sometimes.

He could tell Theo was doing his best to be the gentleman, but Nathalie was pouring on the charm, and it was damn sure having an effect. As she swayed about, the poor guy did his best to look at everything except her chest, like the sun was burning in her chest and it would’ve blinded him if he stared directly at it. Not too subtle.

He looked relieved when the referee came in and the match started up proper, allowing him to slip into his grappling stance to kick things. Theo had on his best serious face as she started to circle the ring, putting all that Greco-Roman shit from training to good use. He threw out a couple of feints, then dived in whole hog with his arms raised, trying to catch Nathalie with a collar-and-elbow tie up.