Disclaimer
WWE belongs to those that own WWE. Original characters are mine. Don't steal, don't sue.
Author's Notes
This story is loosely based on an episode of M*A*S*H, where the main characters of the show find a baby sitting outside their tent one night, fathered by someone in the Army. I took that idea, applied it to WWE, and came out with this. The story is a kind of uncomfortable mesh between what's seen on television and what's real, meaning that while the correct people may be married and have children, I'll be using their in-ring names and making up names for their significant others and kids. Based in current time, though I may be changing storylines as I go, just to fit the story. There may be some legal inaccuracies within the story, and I may have to ignore some real laws in order to make this work, but I'll chalk it up to creative licensing.
Promise an Ocean
Chapter One
She had been stupid. She had made a mistake and she had paid for it. She had spent over a year paying for her mistake, and now she was going to try and right the wrong. There was nothing malicious in what she was doing. The last thing she wanted was to cause someone trouble, cause pain, but there had to be something better out there. Something better than she was.
It had been a mistake, all right. At the time, it had been fun. It had been daring. She wasn't the type to sleep around. She could count the number of sexual partners she had throughout her life on her two hands, most of them during high school and the first year of college. But then she had settled into a new way of living. She had grown up, she had smartened up. She was an adult, fully conscious of her actions. Well, something had happened from those actions, she thought to herself. Something small with big wondering eyes and a smile that could light up a room. Maybe she was biased, because it was her child, but it wasn't just hers. There was someone else who had a hand in making her.
God, she had been a fool. Just one night. One night of sex, and not exactly incredible sex at that. They had both been drunk, not altogether surprising since they had met at a bar. He admitted that he wasn't the type to just pick someone up and take her back to his room. But sex it had been, and it was good. Not great, just good. They had enjoyed themselves. They both got off. Never once had there been a question of any sort of birth control. Yeah, she was on the Pill. Yeah, she fucked up once or twice and skipped a pill. But there had been no condom, no discussion about it. They had been too drunk, too caught up in their fun to even think about it. The next morning, the enormity of the situation hit her. What if he had something and she caught it? She knew that she was clean. He didn't, but he hadn't seemed too concerned about it that night.
Oh, she had caught something all right. Something that grew inside of her for eight months and three weeks. She gave birth just a few days before her scheduled due date. She had never contacted him to let him know. He was a daddy now. Maybe he had been a daddy before, but he was one now, even if he didn't know it. It hadn't been an easy go of it. The novels and the television shows and the movies didn't accurately portray what it was like to have a child, to be a mother, to have someone else depend on you. Someone who was too small and weak to help itself.
Who the fuck was she kidding? She was a waitress. She lived on a shit salary and depending on the tips that customers gave her because she wore a low cut shirt to show off her tits, and tight pants to show off her ass. The more you flirt, the bigger the tip. No one really went too far. There had been a few instances of ass slapping and arm grabbing, but usually, the customers were too drunk to do anything, and the bouncer would lazily make his way over and glare at them. She wanted to deal with that while dealing with her growing body? Hell no. She wasn't going to work ten hours shifts, constantly on her swollen feet, trying to hold her breath so she wouldn't have to breathe in cigarette smoke and body odour and that horrible smell of vomit that she had never really noticed before.
She could've asked for maternity leave, sure. Her boss was a jerk, but he wasn't that bad. One of the bartenders had a kid, and he got time off every now and then, in order to show up for meetings with the teacher and to see his kid play baseball. One of the waitresses, a married girl who was older than her, had gotten time off when she was pregnant, although she had worked for the first five months of her pregnancy. But she wasn't going to. No, she put in her notice and looked at her meager savings account and shrugged her shoulders. She could do it.
But she couldn't. The money became tighter, and she was forced to apply for social assistance. Welfare. God, the word sounded horrible, but it helped. She kept up with the rental payments on her apartment. She had electricity. She couldn't afford cable or a real telephone, but a pay and talk cell phone with minutes whenever she could swing it was good enough for her. She had friends who helped her out, until she was into them for too much money. And then the only reason they came around was to see if they could collect. Pregnancy was expensive. All those fucking pre-natal vitamins and birthing classes and buying all the shit that the baby would need. There wasn't much of a baby shower. But every now and then, the food shelter, which she had started to frequent despite the fact that the idea made her sick, every now and then, they would get some baby stuff in, like diapers and formula. She had amassed a nice little stockpile before she had the kid.
Without any medical plan, she had received a bill from the hospital during her stay. She had been in labour for over twenty four hours. On the twenty-eighth, she finally gave birth. Alone. No friends, no family, no one to hold her hand and brush her hair back from her face and feed her ice chips. Nothing. No one. Her little girl was born and she was healthy. Ten fingers, ten toes, two eyes, two ears, one nose, one mouth. She was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen, even if she was kind of ugly, what with her scrunched up red face looking like it had been sunburned and the wrinkled skin that looked like it belonged more to an old person than a newborn. She had never seen a newborn before, but the nurses cooed that she was beautiful, and even if she wasn't the most attractive thing, she was absolutely gorgeous to her mother.
If she thought pregnancy was expensive, she had no idea how expensive having a newborn could be. The diapers she had gotten were too big for her six and a half pound baby. The formula she had made her little girl throw up immediately. Another trip to the doctor, to be told to buy different formula. Another bill. Both of those bills were in collections now. She still hadn't made a payment. She couldn't work, not with her little girl, and she couldn't afford any sort of sitter or daycare. There was just her. Suddenly, the welfare cheques weren't enough. She was in danger of getting evicted from her apartment. She had been caught trying to shoplift from a grocery store. The bills were piling up in her mailbox, and she was too afraid to look in there.
Her baby was healthy, though. That was good. But her baby deserved a better life than the one that she was giving her. She wanted to do more, but how could she? She couldn't work, she couldn't afford the little girl...so she was doing the only thing she knew to do.
Maybe it was just luck that they happened to be back in town. She hadn't known who he was before, but she found out after. World Wrestling Entertainment. I slept with a fucking meathead, she berated herself. Even if he was one of those fucking jock meatheads that she had hated in high school and hated in college and hated when they came to the bar, even if he was one of those steroid freaks, he had more money than she did, and he worked and he could provide for a little girl. She just didn't want to be involved anymore. Her situation weighed heavily on her shoulders, but maybe, just maybe, if she handed over the little one to her daddy, she could go back home and get a job and straighten her life out. And eventually, maybe years down the road, when she was back on her feet and had her life in order, maybe then she could welcome her little girl back with open arms.
None of the fucking romance novels wrote about this, and if they did, there was a happy ending. There was always a happy ending. Maybe this would be her happy ending.
She didn't want to ask at the front desk of the hotel what room he was in. She had watched as some of the wrestlers, fucking meatheads all of them, had come back from wherever they had been, and watched what floor they had gone to. There was a good number of them staying in that hotel, it seemed. She didn't know any of them, didn't see him anywhere that night, but it didn't matter. Any of them would do. She walked through the lobby with the baby in her cuddle seat, and had smiled at the front desk clerk when she walked past, trying to make it seem like she belonged there. No one said anything. She went up in the elevator and went to one of the floors that a group of the wrestlers had disappeared onto, and stopped outside one of the doors.
She tried not to cry. This was her baby girl, her little daughter. And she was leaving her out on someone's door step. So fucking cliché, she told herself. But it wasn't that bad. She wasn't leaving her out in the cold. She wasn't dumping her on the side of the road, or throwing her in the trash. She was just giving her a better life.
And so she left her outside the door to a hotel, wrapped up in a blanket that had a stain on it but was better than nothing, a diaper bag that had seen better days beside her, and a note tucked inside.
Then she left. She knew that her daddy would find her eventually.
Mornings on the road had its own ritual for the married couple, just like mornings at home did. In the hotel room, he would wake up first and turn on the coffee maker that she always requested, and then jump in the shower while she woke up. By the time he would come out of the bathroom, fully dressed which was ingrained in him from years of traveling with people other than his wife, she would be sitting in bed, going over paperwork with a cup of coffee in one hand, a well gnawed pen in the other, and CNN playing quietly on the television screen.
"So, what's the emergency today?"
She smiled at him, tilting her face upwards as he bent down to kiss her. "So far? I need a manicure. Other than that, I seem to be good. Dad hasn't called, none of the writers are complaining about continuity, none of the road agents are unhappy. It might be a good day today."
He took the cup from her hand and took a sip, making a face at the sugary taste before handing it back. "The world isn't ending yet? Did it stop turning overnight or something?"
She pursed her lips and chuckled, tapping the papers that were spread out over her lap. "So far as I know, we're good. Hell didn't even freeze."
He snapped his fingers and looked at her with mock regret on his face as he went to make himself a cup of coffee, without all the sugar and cream she had put into hers. "And I brought all the rock salt."
Stephanie McMahon-Helmsley grinned from her position in the bed, shifting some of her papers so that her husband could sit down with her. "You might need it yet. I need to talk to Jericho about extending his angle. I know he doesn't like this whole 'beating up on the legends' bit, but he's just such a good heel. Maybe when we move him in the draft - "
"You're sending Jericho down to Smackdown?"
"You're not supposed to know that," she admonished him gently, sipping her coffee. "I swear, if you start going around, gossiping like an old hen, I'm going to make sure that you lose your title to someone like Dolph Ziggler." She laughed at the look of horror on his face. "Okay, okay. But I was thinking that when we move Jericho over, we have two choices: have him remain heel and fight the Undertaker and continue the whole 'legends' angle, or we have him turn face and feud with Edge for awhile. Either one is appealing. We're just lucky that Chris is one of those guys that can turn character at the drop of a hat, and the fans just eat it up."
He murmured his assent and peered down at one of the papers she was looking at. "Well, you know Jericho. He doesn't complain too much, and I think he likes being a heel." Hunter Helmsley passed the paper back and reached to put his cup of coffee on the night stand. "Wanna talk about something that isn't business?"
Stephanie grinned and dropped the pen in her lap. "Well, the kid is staying with his Grandma for a few more days while we're on the road. Shane's gonna come and take over for me next week so that I can spend some time at home and in the office."
"You started out so well," he complained good naturedly, as she moved to lean against him. "And don't call my son 'the kid'. He has a name."
She rolled her eyes and smacked him on the stomach, laughing at his affected grunt of pain. "He's my son too, you know. If I want to call him 'kid', then I'll call him 'kid'. Shane and I never suffered from any identity crises because Dad called us by nicknames."
"Yeah, but you both turned out pretty damned weird."
She snorted. "Hey, you married the weird."
"I fell in love with the weird. You were the one that wanted to get married." If there was one thing he had forever admired about Stephanie, it was her unpredictability. As he looked down at her, she screwed up her face like she was a child and stuck her tongue out at him, making him chuckle and realize that she was the muse behind the same expression that their son had adopted as of late. "Okay, try again. Non-work related."
"Dad wants us to have dinner over at the house next weekend," she said.
"Nope. Dinner with your parents and your brother always leads to business talk. And then he starts trying to groom me for a backstage position with the company. You know, I kind of feel sorry for Shane's wife. She just sits there with that smile on her face, like she understands everything we say."
Stephanie laughed again. "She does, you doofus. They've been married for seven years. Just because she doesn't start critiquing storylines at the dinner table with us doesn't mean that she doesn't understand. It's just not her thing. I respect that. Besides, who else would I go to the spa with?"
"Your mom?" he ventured.
"Oh, she'd go. But she wouldn't enjoy it the same way that Renée and I do. She'd be too busy sneaking a peek at her cell phone every few minutes. She's good for short trips, but anything longer than a facial and she's ready to bust out of there." Stephanie's smile faltered a bit. "Besides, Renée needs some cheering up. I set up an all day package thing for us next week. Mom already said that she'd babysit."
Hunter winced, rubbing his hand up and down his wife's arm. "Still a no-go, huh?" he asked.
Shrugging her shoulders, Stephanie cuddled closer to him, the papers crinkling on her lap. "Yeah. According to Renée, the doctor said that there's nothing wrong with any of them, but I can see why she'd be getting frustrated. They've been trying for what...five years to have a kid? They've tried damned near everything."
Making a face, he looked towards the television, where the news anchor was barely audible, talking about a suicide bombing in another country. "I really don't want to know about my brother-in-law's sex life."
Pulling herself away from him, she gathered her papers into an untidy pile and pushed the covers off of herself, taking her almost empty coffee mug over to the counter to refill it. "I don't know. I feel kind of bad for them. No wonder Shane wasn't here over Father's Day. Jericho had his kids here, Orton had his wife and kid here, we had Ken up...it was like WWE Day Care backstage. I can't really blame him for not wanting to be around. And speaking of kids, did you hear? Jeff Hardy got his girlfriend pregnant."
His eyes widened. "And you accuse me of being a gossip," he exclaimed.
She smirked as she finished making up her coffee, going over to the closet to dig in her suitcase for a moment. A pair of rolled up jeans landed on the bed, followed by her favourite sweater. Hunter nudged the jeans with his foot, causing them to unroll and lay flat. "That's because you are, sweetheart. Most of my gossip comes from you. No, you know the way Jeff is. I was talking to him and his brother about a new storyline and he just popped out with the news. They're both happy with the idea of being parents. I already sent along a bouquet of flowers with a congratulatory note from us."
Hunter laughed and got up from the bed as she gathered her things out of her bag to take a shower. "Motherhood has definitely mellowed you, Steph. You never used to care like this. I think I like this warm, fuzzy side of you."
"Yeah, well, you can like this warm and fuzzy side of me better after I shower and brush my teeth. I feel like hell. Besides, it'll give you time to go down to the gym before the panic of tonight hits. Got to love a pay per view," she added, rolling her eyes as she straightened up, her toiletry bag in hand. "Bring me back a muffin? There's a Starbucks next door."
"Yes, ma'am," he joked, throwing her a quick salute. She smirked and started for the bathroom, closing the door partly shut behind her. "Anything else while I'm out doing your bidding?"
"Call my mother and make sure Kenny's behaving himself?" she asked, as the water in the shower started.
"Will do." He gathered his duffel bag from the corner and strung it over his shoulder, before opening the bathroom door and watching as his wife undressed, giving her an appreciative whistle. She laughed and waved a hand at him as she pulled back the shower curtain. "Love you."
"Love you," she shot back as she stepped into the shower, closing the curtain behind her. Hunter left the door open like she had, and walked to the other door in the room, opening it to step out into the hallway. He stopped short when he saw what was sitting outside the door, his expression one of surprise as a baby looked up at him from the car seat she was strapped into, kicking a foot into the air and gurgling to itself. He cocked his head to one side, racking his brain to see if he could remember any of the guys backstage that had a kid that fit that description and coming up empty. The round blue eyes that stared back at him looked like they could have belonged to any number of people that he worked with, but this was definitely a baby he was sure he had never seen before.
The baby scrunched up its face suddenly and opened its mouth, as if it were about to let loose with a wail. Without even thinking, Hunter dropped his bag and bent down with a groan, unbuckling the baby from the car seat and gathering it in his arms, before the cry could really get started. His son may have been older than the baby in his arms, but he definitely knew what to do. His hand rubbed in a soothing pattern on the little baby's back, which he guessed to be about six months old or so. The cry turned into a train of hiccupping whimpers as he brought his foot forward and nudged the car seat and the diaper bag into the room with the practice of a parent who had done something similar many times before.
"It's all right," he crooned, the weight on his shoulder getting heavier as the baby started to fall back asleep. He kicked at his bag, making a face when it slammed into a nearby wall. The baby was startled back awake, and he kept up the comforting rubbing on its back as he stepped back into the room, closing the door behind him.
"Well, that was quick," his wife called from the bathroom, laughter in her voice.
He pushed the door open and stood there, rocking lightly from side to side as the baby closed its eyes again, settling against him. "Um, we got a delivery?" he asked, making it sound more like a question that a statement.
"From who?" she asked, poking her head out from behind the shower curtain. Her eyes widened and her mouth dropped open as she looked at the little dark haired baby in his arms, one little fist wrapped in his tee shirt. "Holy shit," she murmured, shaking her head slowly.
"Not in front of the children," Hunter admonished her.
