Afraid of the Dark

Chapter 1: Shawn Michaels is being a #%$

"Oooh speak of the devil! It's Rey's number one fan!" Shawn Michaels teased Batista as the Animal entered the men's locker room after a mixed Raw/Smackdown pay-per-view show.

"Shut your trap," Batista shot at him.

The guys all sniggered. Rey had only recently been informed by Shawn Michaels that the entire roster of both wrestling shows (male and female, but most persistently, male) were all completely infatuated with him. He took it well, all things considered, and remained good friends with all the guys he had always been friends with but still insisted that he was straight.

This was hardest on Dave Batista, who was not only Rey's best friend, but the one Rey had discovered to be the most infatuated with him by far. Shawn had told Rey that Batista had been beating up other guys behind Rey's back. Because to Batista, everyone was misperceived as a threat and everyone was a rival in winning Rey's affections. Rey and Batista had had their little falling out over Rey's discovery of this development and they had since made up and maintained their close friendship.

Triple H had recommended an anger management therapist named Dr. Adalia Jimenez to Dave, who he had recently begun seeing on a weekly basis.

But Batista still ached to try to win Rey for himself. Rey knew it, but he wouldn't give in to Dave's advances no matter how protective and sweet or controlling and brutal Dave's seduction tactics became. Rey remained calm throughout it all and was a fiercely loyal friend to Dave. Everyone suspected (correctly, I might add) that this calm loyalty was what held Batista together even though Rey never returned any feelings of romance.

The guys all tried to plant little lures like candy and things to bring Rey over 'to the dark side' as it were, but they never succeeded. Rey, as far as they could tell, was straight as a ruler.

"So, have you tried to give Rey-Rey any presents lately? He still accepts them even though he won't accept anyone's advances. Seems like he sends mixed signals to me…" Shawn put out there, letting his voice trail off suspiciously.

"Rey just accepts stuff so that he doesn't hurt anybody's feelings, man, give it a rest. Rey's not sending mixed signals. You're mixing Rey's signals," C.M. Punk said, blowing HBK's theory out of the water.

Shawn stuck out his tongue at Punk. The Straight Edge superstar just rolled his eyes and turned back to his locker, shaking his head. "I can't believe you're older than me, you're twice as immature."

"Well, at least I'm mature enough to be able to tell who Rey likes the best lately. You claim he's not returning any love to any of us poor guys here, but I've been seeing him giving extra glances to one of us."

"I said shut your trap," Batista warned, but couldn't prevent curiosity from sneaking into his voice.

"I'll give you a clue…he's on Raw right now," Shawn said.

"Shut it, HBK or I'll snap your-"

But Shawn cut the Animal off before he could finish his threat. "And he's prone to saying 'motherfucker' like every other word."

Just then John Cena barged in.

"How's your anger therapy going, motherfucker?" Cena asked Batista, grinning.

Oh, crap.

"It's failing miserably from the looks of it." Shawn noted.

"It is not! Shut your goddamn mouths or I'll break your jaw! And that's against the goddamn treatment, so SHUT UP!!!" Batista yelled.

Rey Mysterio came into the room, sighing, with Jeff Hardy behind him.

"Are you guys fighting again? 'Cause I can leave while you all play a game of grab-ass."

"Not fighting!" Cena blurted, holding up both his arms in surrender.

"Unh hunh. Then why does Dave look like he wants to rip you a new one?"

Cena twiddled his thumbs. "He started it."

"I FUCKING DID NOT!" Batista roared, twisting his towel into a rope.

Rey looked calmly at Cena.

"You started it, John, you have that look on your face that Dominik has when I catch him playing video games instead of doing his homework."

Cena flushed. "Uh…yeah. My bad."

Rey quirked his eyebrow.

Cena whipped around to face Batista.

"Sorry man, sorry. I'm just fucking with you, we all proud of you and shit that you're getting your shit together, I think that's nice."

"Riiight," Batista growled.

Rey looked at him next.

Batista dropped his eyes from Rey's. "Yeah, yeah, we're cool. Whatever."

"Water under the bridge, people, water under the bridge," Triple H reminded all of them and stalked off to the showers.

"Let's time him," Jeff suggested suddenly.

"What? Time who?" C.M. Punk asked, turning around. "Time who doing what?"

"Triple H's shower," Rey explained with a sigh. "I swear, that guy's hair is so long… how does he get in and out of there so fast?"

"Is that one of those things you just have to find out before you die or somethin', Rey-Rey?" Cena asked.

"Why? Are you gonna go in there with a camouflage wetsuit and do some reconnaissance with a naked Triple H?" Shawn asked, teasing.

That was a scary image for too many reasons to name.

"I would if Rey-Rey wanted to know how he gets out of there so fast," Cena confessed bravely.

Most of the guys would climb Mt. Everest if Rey asked them to. Or fight bears. Or fight bears while climbing Mt. Everest.

"That's not necessary," Rey assured everyone. "I'm just curious. We should put him on Ripley's Believe it or Not or apply him to get into the Guinness book. Because really….I cannot wrap my mind around that." Rey stared off in the direction of the showers, his brow furrowed.

You could see the wheels turning in his cute little head.

They heard the shower turn on. Triple H was the only one in there at the moment.

"Mark," Punk said and looked at his watch, beginning to time the shower.

Chris Jericho swaggered into the locker room and walked through to see everyone standing very close to Rey (which was not at all unusual) as he stared at Punk's wrist.

"What the hell are you peons doing?" Jericho demanded, perplexed.

"Shhh. We're timing Triple H's shower," Jeff informed him and started biting his nails as he watched the seconds tick away.

"So?" Jericho said arrogantly.

"So, don't go in there, bitch, 'cause Rey-Rey's interested in how long it takes Triple H to get in and out of there," Cena said, stretching out his fingers to crack the joints in case Jericho wanted to start a fight over getting into the showers.

Just then they heard the shower turn off.

"Sweet Jesus!" Jeff Hardy exclaimed.

"Are you kidding me? Seriously?!" Punk gasped.

"That was weird…" Randy Orton said.

"That was amazing…" Shawn contradicted.

"That was badass," Cena declared. He looked at Rey, suddenly unsure of his comment. "That was badass, right?"

Rey nodded, awed. "That was…muy loco. Very, very crazy."

"One minute flat," Punk announced.

Triple H stormed out of the showers with a towel around his waist as he wiped his ears dry with another one.

"What are you fools all looking at me for?" he asked, frowning.

"You just took a shower in one minute," Punk informed him.

"Really? That's cool," Triple H said.

"How did you do that?" Cena asked him when Rey seemed too embarrassed to question the man directly.

"I don't know," Triple H shrugged.

"Do you not wash your hair in there?" Hardy asked.

"Ooh," Randy said, catching on. "That would explain it."

They all nodded. "Oh, yeah."

"Yeah, that doesn't count unless he washes his hair in there," Edge stated.

"I do wash my hair in there," Triple H interrupted.

They all chattered amongst themselves for a minute at that new development.

"What do you wash it with?" Punk piped up.

"Just soap," Triple H responded.

"Aw, buddy, don't tell me you're washing those golden locks of yours with that same industrial crap that you put on the rest of your body!" Shawn asked his friend, exasperated.

"Yeah, why? Is that bad?"

"OH MY GOD, is it BAD?!" Edge groaned, shaking his head and looking up at the ceiling. He tossed around his own lovely fluffy hair. "No wonder you can't manage to get any body at all in that mess!"

"Hey!" Triple H said defensively. "My hair's wet whenever I go out into the ring, you guys know that!"

"They only do that because they don't know how else to explain how your hair got so damn flat in the first place. You end up looking like you crawled out of a damn sewer somewhere, man!" Cena informed him.

Triple H pouted sadly, feeling attacked.

"Why doesn't it count if he didn't wash his hair in there?" Batista demanded, taking the heat off of poor Triple H.

"Next time you'll say it doesn't count because he wasn't shaving his legs in there!"

"Do you shave your legs in there?" Rey said jokingly, chuckling.

"Uh, yeah," Batista answered, as though that was obvious. "Don't all of us?"

"No!" Rey said, surprised. "Why the hell would I?"

"I don't," Jeff put in.

"Well, I do. I care about how my body looks on screen, maybe you guys don't but I do," Randy said defensively.

"Are you serious? Is there seriously a whole bunch of you guys that do non-facial shaving in the shower?" Rey questioned.

"Why do you think the showers are clogged sometimes?" Shawn said with a wink. He was lying. That never happened. But the thought was disgusting.

Rey gagged at that.

"I thought that was soap scum," Randy said innocently.

"I don't want to think about it," Rey said, shaking his head.

"Why did you think we wouldn't shave our legs?" Batista asked Rey. "Do you think that's gross or something that we do that?"

They all listened in. If Rey liked hairy men they would stop shaving their bodies this very instant. Screw the viewers and Mr. McMahon and showmanship and all that other stuff.

"No, I don't have a problem with it! I just…God, I guess I just thought that you guys were all way less hairy than you evidently are," Rey explained.

"Oh, I see," Shawn said, grinning. "Rey, you thought we all look like you and just naturally don't have a lot of body hair."

Rey blushed intensely.

They all stared at him.

Rey's chest was naturally that smooth, he didn't ever shave it or anything.

He crossed his arms self-consciously.

"Well, Rey doesn't need to shave his legs, he wears pants, like me," Jeff said, coming to Rey's defense.

"No, Rey doesn't shave his legs because they're almost entirely smooth, you've seen him in the summer when all he wears at night is boxers," Cena argued.

Rey glared at him.

"Sorry, dawg, you know it's true," Cena muttered sheepishly.

"Whatever. If you guys all think looking like Sasquatch makes you seem more masculine than me, then you're wrong," Rey said bitterly.

"I don't know, Rey, maybe you've just still yet to hit puberty," Jericho said cruelly.

Batista tried to hold Rey back as the luchador lunged after Jericho, but Rey was too fast for him.

Rey stood still for an instant, long enough for Jericho to recognize that Rey was on top of him and it was too late to do anything about it.

Rey raised his hand and everyone in the room flinched.

Jericho opened his eyes a second later to see Rey lower his hand.

Everyone blinked in mixed relief and surprise.

"If you don't start restraining your mouth, Jericho, I'm gonna stop restraining my fist, you got it?" Rey warned.

Jericho nodded profusely.

Rey stalked back towards his locker.

"Wait, does Rey-Rey's smooth skin mean he has less testosterone than the rest of us?" Edge asked.

Rey was about to make another lunge.

"It's got nothing to do with testosterone," C.M. Punk cut in, sighing. "It's a genetic thing."

Rey paused and watched Punk, waiting for more information to come spilling out.

"Explain that," Jericho ordered.

"It's an ethnic thing," Punk illustrated. "I was watching Dr. Oz the other day on Oprah-"

"Oh my God I love him," Edge blurted.

"So why don't you marry him?" Randy teased.

Edge frowned at him. "Maybe I will."

"Anyway, go on," Rey urged.

"Well, Dr. Oz said that it's like a survival adaptation. A lot of white guys are hairier than other races because their ancestors lived in places in Europe that were near swampier areas and the hair deters mosquitoes from reaching their skin. Like, hairy guys can feel the little fuckers get stuck in the hair and then swat them before they catch malaria from the bugs, as opposed to guys like Rey who had less hair would have gotten bitten easier and so they tended to die of malaria or something and they couldn't reproduce anymore because they were dead. So a lot of people whose ancestors are from swampy areas are hairier, but Rey's ancestors must have lived somewhere drier."

"Such as Mexico," Rey put in.

Punk nodded. "Yeah. Like the deserts of Mexico."

Rey nodded. "That makes perfect sense."

Everyone else nodded too. It did make sense.

"I think Rey's less hairy because he adapted to be cuter than the rest of us in order to survive," Shawn said, grinding his fist playfully into Rey's head as he walked by the smaller wrestler.

Rey glared at him. "I am not cute."

"Oooh, yes, you are," Batista told him and patted Rey on the head.

"Everybody get their damn hands off me, I'm gonna kick the next guy that tries to touch me!" Rey blurted, frustrated and waved Batista's hands away from him.

"Okay, okay, Jesus!" Batista said, raising his hands in surrender. "I won't touch you."

Rey exhaled angrily through his nose and was about to open his locker when the loudspeaker came on.

Rey Mysterio, please report to my office, pronto. Mr. McMahon's voice ordered.

"God, one damn thing after another," Rey muttered and walked out of the locker room.

The door slammed after him. Rey almost never slammed doors.

"Aw, you made him mad," Shawn said, winking. "See, he wasn't as mad at Cena earlier, even though John was annoying him. You annoy him even a little though, and he just goes off on you."

Batista bit his lip. All he'd tried to do was ruffle Rey's feathers a little. Usually Rey would laugh it off and hit Batista with a towel or something. They could have a cute little moment of play fighting. But this time Rey seemed to have gotten irritable right away.

Dave failed to notice that Shawn was the one who had riled Rey up with the first noogie. Even Rey had his limits. He didn't like non-relatives poking at him all day. Batista also failed to notice that Rey let him get away with more noogies than anyone else.

The minute Rey stepped out into the hallway he was met with a surprise. All of the Divas had been gone all week, including for tonight's show. And suddenly they were all back, carrying luggage and milling around in the hallway, making more noise than a flock of seagulls.

"Ah…um, hi, ladies!" Rey said, recovering relatively quickly and smiling brightly.

He nearly got squeezed to death by Kelly Kelly.

"What's up, girl? Where were all of you this week? Mr. McMahon never told us where you went!"

The blonde leaned back from nearly choking the life out of Rey. He looked at her calmly.

"Oh my God, Rey, we were filming this special and it was for Halloween and it was amazing but it was so scary and I'm totally not allowed to talk about it and I totally just told you too much already but I'm so glad to see you, we were all alone and we missed all the guys because we couldn't even call our boyfriends and I haven't even heard a male voice in like forever."

"Oh, okay. That sounds like you guys went on an interesting trip," Rey said, managing to have heard the entire deluge of words correctly.

She squeezed him hard again. "Bye, Rey! I gotta go! I want to go see my boyfriend! It's great to see you again; I missed you so, so much!"

Rey laughed. "Okay, bye Kelly!"

He sighed as she ran out the door. "Jesus Cristo, that girl can talk even faster than I can."

Melina laughed at him. "Hey, Rey."

"Hey."

They hugged briefly. Rey hugged everybody, it was just his thing. The girls loved him because he was so incredibly respectful and, thinking of his wife, or maybe missing having any contact with a woman at all while traveling for work, he would always remember to ask them how they were.

He enjoyed talking to them because in a way he related more closely with some of the girls than with some of the guys. Rey was very talkative and was addicted to being around people. He always needed someone to talk to and being in wrestling, most of the guys were the strong silent types so it wasn't unusual to see Rey being the only guy to sit with the Divas sometimes. He'd be laughing and discussing relationships and all the drama that girls love to talk about. They loved for him to tell stories about his kids and he loved to tell them.

The girls were fiercely loyal to Angie and they all would have reported any misbehavior on his part, but Rey never gave them anything to confess to her. He worshipped his wife and referenced her constantly. He'd known Angie for the majority of his life and so there was no other woman that could ever hope to rival what she meant to him emotionally. Rey literally couldn't imagine living his life without Angie. He might have thought that some of the Divas or some of the women he interacted with on his travels were pretty, but he couldn't ever see being interested in them romantically.

There had been some women who were attracted to Rey, though, who thought they could gain the upper hand on Angie by being around him when he was away from her and by dressing sexy or using some crazy tactics like that. But when they actually talked to Rey they were all immediately struck with the knowledge that the romantic part of his heart was closed off. He kept himself politely romantically disconnected when at work, traveling, and basically even two feet away from Angie. The Divas always liked to say that Angie had Rey's heart, and even when he wasn't physically with her, his heart was.

"So was it fun, or was it one of the worst ideas Mr. McMahon has ever had? Where did you go? All I could get out of Kelly was that it was somewhere for a Halloween special."

Melina put a finger to her lips. "It's a secret. I can't tell you where he sent us, because you guys are probably going to be sent there next and I want to see you surprised."

Rey pretended to pout and she laughed at him.

He grinned. "But seriously, Melina. Was it a good surprise or was it a bad surprise?"

Melina shrugged. "I don't know. For me, it was kind of exciting."

"Kelly sounded like she liked it," Rey observed.

Melina sighed. "Oh you know how that girl is. Her attention span is kind of short. I love her, but she doesn't think about much in that pretty little head."

"So she did like it, or…?" Rey asked unsurely.

Melina looked sad suddenly. "Michelle hated it."

"Michelle McCool went with you?"

Melina nodded. "She saw…well, I wouldn't have believed her if she hadn't shown me…"

"Melina, you're making my head spin. Can you please just tell me where you went and what's wrong with it?" Rey asked.

Melina bit her lip. "You're right, Rey, I shouldn't toy with you. I can't talk about it. I'm sorry I even started to talk about it."

"Oh. All right. See you next week?"

She smiled sadly. "See you next week, Rey."

She left. All of the other Divas went by. Rey waved or told them goodbye. He looked around and was thinking of hurrying to Mr. McMahon's office when he saw Michelle McCool was still here. She looked like she'd been through hell and was just coming back.

"Hi, Michelle. I missed you girls this week, there was too much testosterone flying around without the Divas," Rey said, trying to brighten her up.

She smiled weakly. "I heard you trying to ask where we went."

Rey nodded. "I heard you hated it."

"I did, kind of," Michelle said. "We went to a haunted house."

Rey blinked. "Oh. Seriously? Like, an authentic one?"

"Yeah." She looked at him suspiciously. "What are you doing in the hallway at this hour with your mask and everything still on, anyway?"

"I was going to go see Mr. McMahon in his office."

Michelle nodded. "He might want to ask you to go there next."

She set her bag down and let go of her suitcase handle.

She looked faint and somewhat breathless.

"Hey, easy. Easy, Michelle," Rey said, bracing her by the arms. "Easy…" He helped her set her back against the wall and slowly sit down.

"Take deep breaths, you look winded."

Michelle did just that.
Rey didn't dare take his eyes off her. "If you feel like you're gonna pass out, then put your head between your thighs."

"Are you serious?"

"Yes, I'm serious. It looks stupid but it works."

Michelle slowly lowered her head between her knees and breathed.

Rey kept his hand on her back the whole time to reassure her and also because he was afraid she might stop gasping for air at any moment.

But he felt her body move as her lungs went in and out and after a minute, he knew she'd stay conscious.

"Didn't you say you had to go see Mr. McMahon?" Michelle asked, lifting her head up. He helped her slide her legs down.

"Yes."

"Go see him then."

Rey blinked. "Are you sure? I can stay with you-"

"Go, Rey."

He squeezed her shoulder lightly. "I won't be long. Don't you try to run a marathon or go anywhere too far until I get back."

"I need to talk to you when you get back, Rey," Michelle confessed abruptly.

"I got the feeling you needed to," Rey said, smiling sadly. "People don't usually pass out left and right at the sight of me."

Michelle chuckled. "Okay. I'll be out here. Just remember to come back."

"I will," Rey said, squeezing her hand in his.