Disclaimer: We do not own the people or characters portrayed in this story. The people own themselves (I am not a number, I am a free man!) and the characters belong to WWE. The story is tame, so it's open for all ages!
A/N: So, yesterday, StephanieIrvine (Jodi) and I were talking, and I mentioned I had this one line I wanted to write a fic around. I posted it, Jodi wrote some more to it, I added more, and so forth and so on, so this is a joint story from the two of us. That's pretty much all you need to know about it. Hope you enjoy and reviewing would be awesome, tell us if you liked it, or if you want to be brutal, sure, you can do that too! :)
For a minute, for just one minute, a long stretch of seconds...she was his.
Their fingers brushed in those seconds and the thump of their hearts joined. He closed his eyes and never wanted time to move on, never wanted to pull his fingers away and lose that jolt that prickled his skin. But seconds always ticked on by, wasted opportunities for more, hope cut in half.
If he had minutes, maybe, just maybe he'd keep her, maybe he could spout words to make her stay, but no, he had seconds and the words he wanted to spout stuck in his throat and he watched as she was pulled away.
He could believe in those seconds that this could have some sort of happy ending, that just over the horizon was a future. He almost could see it in her eyes. Her words were never beautiful, they were matter-of-fact, clinical even, but he knew they were defensive because her eyes always gave her away. Her eyes wanted their happy ending just as much as he did, but the disconnect between her eyes and her heart and her mouth and her brain was a chasm, so he contented himself with staring into them, knowing that somewhere in them, they lay spread out, together, for all the world to see.
But then, she would pull away, her brain always winning out, reminding him that she was never his for long. That he had but a minute, a moment with her, and when she went back to her husband, she had minutes, hours, days, months, years, and he was stuck there, paralyzed by her future, and their past, and then there was just nothing waiting for him. A minute was too fast, too quick, too everything it shouldn't be. No matter how long he stretched those moments, they never stretched far enough.
That's why he lost himself in his tours. If he put her out of sight, she was out of mind (as he liked to kid himself). And on those nights where he screamed his heart out pretending he didn't want her to hear his words, he could pretend he was victorious and that he'd banished her from his thoughts. But just as with his marriage, it was a lie, he couldn't bid her away, not even for a second. And when he lay down to rest, his eyes closed, he was staring into piercing blue and watching her smile at him in simpler times. Times when he had hours instead of seconds. Times when he could squint and pretend that the hours he spent with her were the making of a life. But then his bus would ride over a pot hole or someone would pound on his hotel room door, and his eyes would snap open into the darkness she had left behind and leave him staring at a clock watching the hands tick on by.
He supposed that's why he always went back, to fight for those simpler times. And sometimes when she'd look at him, in those moments that lasted less than seconds, the promise in her eyes that showed him she wanted it too were almost enough to run after her, but then it was like a time warp and everything sped by so fast that he couldn't pick her out of the crowd and he was destined to repeat the last few years of his life.
Tour and try and to forget her.
Scream until his throat was raw because of how he missed her.
Return and hope their fingers brushed.
He was not subtle sometimes. He couldn't be, not with her. He had tried overt gestures before to no avail. He'd left everything he loved once behind for her, had tried so hard to be everything she wanted him to be. The big gesture, the biggest gesture really. He'd left his life in pursuit of her, but it was still not enough.
He poured his heart out to her through his lyrics, unsure if she would ever listen, but still, he wrote. He picked up his trusty pen with those fingers that used to brush soft caresses against her skin, and he would write the pain out through the tip of the pen, the ache of his heart transferring into the scratch of his pen against paper. Word after word, lyric after lyric, all about her. When he screamed those words, it was his heart screaming for everything he wanted, it was words floating into the ether, hoping they somehow reached her. Song after song, and nobody knew, oh, Rich would look at him after he gave him the lyrics, sympathy riding high into his words and looks, but there was one time Rich mentioned something about Jessica, and Chris knew Rich had read him all wrong.
These words were never about his wife, they were always about Stephanie, every single line, always about her, his heart on a page, his heart in a song, his heart beating inside her chest, hoping to finally reach a sync with hers.
And then he'd come back and realize she would never listen to his songs.
Maybe that's why he stupidly tattooed her name onto his hand, a drunken gesture to show the word she was his. To show Paul that the woman he called his wife gave her heart to another man, to prove to the world that what they had was real. To prove to himself that he hadn't dreamt all those moments.
When he woke up wondering why there was a painful itch to his hand and looked down and saw it, his face became stoic. And if anyone had seen him in that moment, happened to wander upon him, they may have told you they had witnessed him break, but there was no one in that room except Chris and yes, there was an aching in his heart.
He covered it up, a garish 'F' now covered her name, his brief rebellion of sticking it to the world gone, but in the right light he could see the scrawl of the 'S', all the way to the flick of the 'H' and it'd remind him of the nights where she'd stroke his hand and they'd whisper about their lives 10 years on and how they'd have a house and two more kids and argue over the way he left his jeans in the heap on the floor.
Unconsciously his thumb grazed over her name and he thought the past decade hadn't amounted to a great deal of happy.
He still had a house, but it was empty.
He still had his kids, but three of them had the wrong mother and the other three had the wrong father.
When he'd introduced Ash to Aurora, when he'd seen those two small hands shake, and those nearly identical smiles and eyes meet each other, he thought he might burst with a happiness unbeknownst to him. They were here, a third of his legacy, standing across from each other shyly, not knowing how to proceed. He wanted to kneel down and take them both into his arms, hug them, tell them that they were brother and sister, that they were a family, but he couldn't, not in front of thousands of people, not in front of her husband's family...not in front of Jessica.
But how he longed to, and when he looked up at Stephanie, her eyes gave her away again. Her eyes were looking back as well, to the times when they'd made idle promises, telling each other how they would introduce the children, telling each other how well they'd all get along, telling, telling, telling, but never doing, doing, doing. Stephanie looked away then, he remembered, to say hello to Ash, holding her hand out to him, a hand that shook hers timidly.
"So cute!" Jessica crooned, and her voice pierced through his body like a lance, reminding him the circumstances were neverthe way they pictured them.
Then she hugged him, and that itch in his hand, the one he felt the morning he woke up with her name scrawled haphazardly across his hand, it was back, as if her name seared through the ink that covered it, as if it glowed, like a beacon meant to carry her back into his arms. She knew nothing of the tattoo, knew nothing of the way her name would be with him for all eternity, how someday, far away from now, he'd be old, gray, and wrinkled, and her faded name would keep him company where she couldn't, but where she should be.
He pulled away then, his hand burning, and his heart completely burnt to a crisp.
Maybe she saw the ache in his eyes when he pulled away, maybe she missed his arms around her after such a long time, maybe this, maybe that, but as he started to walk away, he couldn't help but glance back and there she was reaching out for him.
It could have been a throwaway moment she didn't want him to see, but he had and when he glanced up and caught her eyes with his own they were screaming out to him. All he wanted to do was take the steps back to her and whisper words of promise, but Jessica was pulling at his hand and Paul was standing next to Stephanie, his hand, far too big, resting on her back.
And their kids, his kids, were chasing each other and giggling as they ran around in circles and he knew they had to talk and not hide from what they could have together. They had to grasp at each other and turn their seconds into years.
His eyes bore into hers, and he watched her bite her lip and the breath he released when he saw her slight now and ghost of a smile was like she was breathing life into charred remains of his heart, keeping the embers red hot and glowing.
He didn't want to leave this time. This time, he did not want to leave. The first time he'd left, he couldn't handle it anymore. He couldn't handle her anymore. The second time he'd left, she'd left him in near ruins. Their relationship had taken a tumble, falling down a wretched path of heartbreak and revenge. So he'd left to keep his sanity, except without her, he felt reckless and without direction. This time, though, it was different, this time felt different. He could feel her reaching for him somehow. He barely spoke to her, but her eyes, ever the truth was set in them. She came back for the 1000th show, to have a segment with her husband, with Paul Heyman, with Brock, but she was there, and she was in his presence again, and he did not want to leave if it meant he had to leave her. But Fozzy called, beckoned, and he couldn't just ignore that.
So he had to speak with her, just once, just for a moment, just for that one second longer. He wanted to grab at all the moments, but they were so few and far between now that he grabbed what he could. Before he could stop himself, his hand sought its namesake, grabbed her around the arm and pulled her into the deep recesses of the arena.
"Stephanie," his voice, hoarse with emotion.
"Chris," she said back, her voice tinged with reverence.
"You're here," he said for lack of anything else, his breath stunted as he took her in. "You're really here."
"I had to be, 1000th show and all," she said nervously, and his hand burned from her skin.
"I missed you," he told her, gazing into his eyes, and seeing, as he always did...the truth.
She'd missed him too.
"What now?" he asked, hoping she would answer with what he wanted to hear, hoping the words would spill carelessly from her mouth, that her arms would find their home around his neck, that her lips would meet their twins.
"I've got to go, Chris," she pulled away or tried to.
"Stephanie, what now?" he repeated, pressing himself closer to her. "Please, tell me what now?"
"You're leaving for Fozzy, Chris, you're leaving soon, so soon. You'll be touring the world, you're going to make great music."
"You've listened," he realized with clarity that his words had not been in vain, every single of one of them was seared into her skin. The looks, everything, she knew, and maybe that's why she called out to him, maybe that's why her eyes always sought his for the truth.
"You're leaving," she repeated herself, "you are going, you are going to be great."
"Stephanie, what now?" he asked her.
"You are leaving, I am going out there."
"Stephanie," his voice sounded firm, "what…now?"
She looked around, like the answers would be scrawled on the walls, and then her eyes migrated to his hand around her arm. It fell on his tattoo, and he wasn't even sure if the light was hitting it just the right way, but she could not stop staring at it, and he imagined that her eyes were sweeping over his tattoo, were seeing through the ostentatious F and finding the hidden treasure underneath. She flicked her eyes back up at him.
"I don't know," she admitted with a hopeless shrug.
"Can we find out together?" Raw and with every emotion he could never cover up around her. Her eyes gazed downward towards his hand again. She looked back at him and nodded.
For a lifetime, for just one entire lifetime, a long stretch of years…she was his.