Disclaimer: I do not own the characters or real people in this story. The characters belong to the WWE and the real people own themselves.

A/N: I'm a glutton for punishment obviously since I'm starting yet another new story. I just have so many ideas and I want to write them all. You can thank Jodi (StephanieIrvine) for this story. We were talking about Shane and Marissa and how they had grown up together and we speculated what it would be like if Chris and Steph had grown up together and this is what came out.

To preface, it's a slight AU. I've fudged the ages because I wanted to so both Shane and Chris are only 2 years older than Stephanie instead of the usual 6. Other than that, it's probably not that different. I've got big ideas for this story and I hope this first chapter lives up to expectations, I just hope it's okay. Please leave a review and let me know what you think, if you want to be brutal, I've no problem with that. I just hope you enjoy. :)

I've known Chris Irvine for 29 years.

He was the little blond boy across the street. I remember when he moved in, okay, I don't really, but my parents do. His father was a hockey player and they decided to move to Connecticut because he was playing for New York, but didn't want to live anywhere near the city, too stuffy, I remember my dad telling my mom after he went over there. I think my dad was relieved to have a sports player in our snobby neighborhood. He's in the sports business too, a different kind sure, but still, it was nice to have some solidarity with someone around here.

I don't remember much from our first meeting. My mom took me over there, she tells me, because she knew they had a young son. He was two years older than me and what I do remember from that day is his shy smile as he sat next to his mother. My mom says that I smiled back and that he hesitantly asked me if I wanted to play. I nodded my head silently. My mom also tells me she couldn't understand why as boisterous a kid as I am suddenly turned silent around this young kid. I'd been around huge (and in the case of Andre the Giant, massive) wrestlers, but this little boy vexed me.

We went off to play with one another, our mothers talking and discussing. He only had boy toys. He was an only child, I understand now that he was such a handful that his mother probably only wanted one child. Luckily for him though, I liked playing with trucks and cars and trains. I think he was surprised. I remember him handing me a toy and watching in fascination as I played with it, my brown hair in the stupid bowl cut falling in my eyes as his blue eyes trailed me across the room. I like to think he was impressed and had never seen a girl like me before. He's never told me exactly what he thought though, one of the mysteries of life I suppose.

He's the same age as Shane, but he never excluded me when they were together. I think Shane was all too happy to leave me in his dust when he was running around the backyard, but Chris never did. He always waited up for me, much to Shane's chagrin. Shane would whine and yell, "Chris, come on, we can leave the baby behind." Chris never left me behind though, letting me tag along wherever they happened to go. When we'd ride bikes around the neighborhood, he'd keep up with my slow self, training wheels still affixed to the sides of my pink bicycle. I wonder if Shane teased him about always being conscientious of me.

I think a lot of it had to do with the fact Chris was an only child. He told me when he was a little older, he must have been around 9 that he always wanted a little brother or sister. I think I was that surrogate sister he'd always wanted. His dad was away a lot, so was mine, so our moms would often have the other over for dinner. I spent so many nights at a table with Chris, Shane, my mom, and his mom that they became like a second family to me. We even had joint Thanksgivings since his parents were Canadian and didn't really celebrate Thanksgiving so my family always invited them over. They were more family to us than my actual family.

I think I fell in love with him when I was 10.

I don't think I actually knew what it was, love that is. I knew I loved my parents and I occasionally loved Shane, but when I was around Chris, I just got these butterflies in my stomach. I'd had crushes before, but usually they were on actors or people I didn't interact with regularly. Chris was always there though, he was around and I don't know, I just started to feel differently about him. I think the moment was when I was watching him in one of his junior league hockey games. I was sitting on the end of the bleacher, Shane next to me. His parents were watching us for the weekend while my parents had business. He was skating over to the bench to take a break and he looked back and smiled at me and the most peculiar feeling settled in my bones. It wasn't euphoria, but it was pretty damn close.

From then on, whenever he'd smile at me, that same feeling would creep into me, like ivy climbing my skin, circling around my torso, threatening to choke me with feeling. He was older, there was that appeal, but then he was my friend, my best friend and there was that appeal too. Even when I started high school and was a stupid, lowly freshman, Chris made sure to hang out with me. He didn't care what his friends thought, what other people thought. High school had such a dichotomy, with the upperclassmen and the lowerclassmen being such a huge gap when it was only four measly years.

Chris didn't care about this stupid separation. He hung out with me regardless of my age. It was a comforting thing to have someone look out for you when you were scared of this new place, this new school. He showed me everything and even introduced me to some of his favorite teachers. He looked out for me and he didn't have to. I knew his friends would tease him about associating with a freshman, which was idiotic now that I look back on it. Teenagers can be so cruel. There are two years between me and Chris, two years! It wasn't like there was a whole decade between us or something.

I was really sad when he went off to college. He wanted to become a wrestler at this point. I guess my dad had really drilled that into him, but his parents, plus my parents as well, encouraged him to go to college. He resisted at first, I tease him about being such a rebel now, but it was a smart thing. He ended up going to the same college as my brother and I was jealous that Shane was going to be around him when I couldn't, when I was still stuck in high school. Chris trained on the side and after graduating, he started traveling the world, gaining experience everywhere. He went back up to Canada and then he went to Japan and Europe and all over the place, only coming home every so often.

He would always make it a point to spend time with me whenever he was home. I appreciated that and he made sure to be home for my high school graduation before he flitted to Mexico and I headed down to Boston to follow in my brother's footsteps, attending the same university he and Chris did. Chris and I definitely kept in touch and he'd send me tapes his matches and I'd praise him and tell him that someday, we were going to rule the wrestling world. We would turn it on its heels and send everyone running for the hills with our reign of terror. He'd laugh and tell me he liked that idea and his laugh would send shivers through me every time.

Now, I know that I loved him by this point, but telling him was another story. I never felt like I could. There was never some perfect moment, never a time when we were sitting somewhere watching the sunset and I could just turn to him and tell him that I loved him, that I wanted to be with him for always. There was never a moment and so I tried to bury it, but it never stayed buried long. I'd lose myself in other guys, but other guys were never Chris and they never lasted too long because no matter how hard I looked or tried to change them, I wasn't a witch, I couldn't magically make them the one man I wanted.

Chris dated too, he told me if he had a girlfriend, thinking that I wouldn't care and just talking about his life wherever he was. He'd never know the little pangs it brought to my heart, where it felt like my chest was collapsing unto itself. Nobody in his life every lasted long either, but that was because he was constantly moving from place to place and never had time for one girl. He was never really a ladies man anyways, preferring to train for wrestling or hang out with me. He was kind of shy in high school, which is strange to think now because he's so loud and obnoxious (some of the time...all of the time).

When he went to WCW, I think my whole family was in shock. When he came home and we all had dinner, his parents, my parents, my dad asked him about it and he said that they'd made an offer. My dad confessed that he was about to make an offer to Chris himself and someone over at WCW must have heard about it and offered it first. Chris felt bad for signing and he made sure to tell my dad that the second his contract expired he'd come over to the WWF and that made that dinner a little lighter.

By the time Chris's contract ran out, he wanted to be gone from WCW. My dad wanted him on board too so it was like a match made in heaven and once again, Chris was around all the time. It was like old times again and despite all this time, my feelings hadn't changed at all. He kept dating and I kept feeling like the loser best friend who couldn't get over a decades old crush. We both dated other people, but relationships are hard and I can't get over Chris and I know I should, but I can't and he just couldn't have a relationship last for the life of him.

So here I am, about to turn 32, single, no prospects, crushing after a guy I've known since I was 3, who I've been in love with for 22 years, who doesn't even look at me like that. I'm pathetic, God, I'm the most pathetic thing on the planet. It's not like I couldn't have a boyfriend or a husband or kids or a real life. I just can't commit to something I know will be second best and it kills me to feel this way, but telling him now? After all these years, I just...I'm scared. I'm a wuss. Like I said, I'm pathetic and scared. If he doesn't want me, we can't be friends, it'll be too awkward and one of us will have to go away or something, I don't even know.

"Hey, Scout," Chris says to me as he passes me at the production table. He's been calling me Scout since he was 11 and he read To Kill a Mockingbird. I'm the Scout to his Jem and somehow Shane is Dill, which doesn't even make sense because Jem and Scout were brother and sister and Dill was the friend, but I guess it's his way of claiming me as his sister. See what I mean about him not thinking of me in any romantic terms whatsoever.

Sometimes when he has his arm around me or his kisses my cheek in greeting or he holds my hand, I can pretend for a while that he's mine. It's sad, I know, but it's all I have right now and it's probably all I'll ever have so I try to make the most of it. Sometimes I just let my hand linger there for a moment, possessively, like I can actually be possessive of something that isn't mine in the first place.

"Hey," I say back, expecting him to go to his locker room, but he makes a sharp left and comes and sits next to me. He leans his head on my shoulder and watches the monitor in front of me.

"When are you coming back?" he asks me, something he's asked me nearly every day since I started being on TV less and focusing more on backstage stuff.

"Chris..."

"Come on, Scout, you need to be back on TV. It's no fun without you," he whines. "Nobody wants to see your dad or your brother. They want to see you."

"Name one person who wants to see me."

"Me," he said cheekily. I looked down at him and he has his eyes closed.

"You tired?"

"I did just have a grueling match," he said. "That's what happens when you come back and you end up being the best thing ever."

Chris left for a while, a move that I could see coming. He'd been burnt out and I couldn't blame him. We put so much on him because he's never really let us down before. He's been there and he confessed to me that he was really tired and just needed a long break. I thought he meant like a couple months. When one year stretched into two, I begged him to come back and he told me that he could never say no to me and he couldn't say no then either and so he came back because that's what best friends do.

"Yeah, that's what you think," I joke with him.

"Are you saying I'm not the best?" he asks, acting like I've insulted his mother.

"Yup, that's exactly what I'm saying."

"How dare you, Scout."

"Oh, how dare I," I tell him with a laugh.

"What's so funny, you two?" I look up and see my dad standing there. I've always gotten the feeling from him that he wants us to get married because he wants Chris in his actual family instead of just a man he looks at like a son.

"Nothing Mr. McMahon, sir," Chris jokes. He does that occasionally. Whenever Dad brings around an investor or some new bigwig with the company, he always tells the story of when he first met Chris, this little boy who kept calling him, "Mr. McMahon, sir," so Chris calls him that every once in a while.

"I just wanted to tell you how great the feud with Shawn has been going," my dad says to Chris. "I think we need to give you a lot more free reign with your feuds, I'm really liking the material and the progression you come up with. Come to the production meetings from now on."

"Vince, are you trying to say that you want me to take over Stephanie's position?" I shove him in the shoulder for that comment. No way would I let him take my job.

"Well, I didn't want to break it to Stephanie like this."

"You two are not funny," I pout and Chris nudges me in the shoulder.

"I'm afraid she's mad at me now," my dad says, pretending to be upset about it.

"I'll get the mad out of her," Chris tells him and my dad walks off because he probably just thought of some other thing he has to do around here. Chris leans over and kisses me on the cheek. "Scout, don't be sad, I'll just be the Vice President of Creative, how does that sound?"

His lips burned their imprint onto my cheek and I have to revel in it a moment. Just a moment though and then I'm looking at him, "Okay, you can be the Vice President then."

"Awesome," he says, giving a fist pump. He goes back to leaning his head on my shoulder and watching the show with me. "Scout?"

"Yeah."

"I don't think anyone could replace what you do," he tells me sincerely and I can feel the smile on his lips.

I'm never getting out.