A/N: Obviously this is
up tonight since I live in the U.S. and only saw the show tonight, but
since it did take place on Monday, that's when the story takes place,
February 13th.
Thanks for the great reviews everyone, I really appreciate it, and
I'm trying to work Christian back into the story, I swear, I'm
just trying to see how something plays out. Be patient, he WILL be
back in a larger capacity. :)
"Tomorrow is
Valentine's Day."
"I know," Kurt
said, looking up at Ashley. She was straddling his lap right now as
they had gotten away for a stolen moment before the show. An empty
locker room had become their best friend. "Do you want anything?"
"Well, were you
planning on something?" she asked.
"Actually, yeah,"
Kurt said. "You're not doing anything right?"
"Nope, I'm not
doing anything, I saved the day in case you were…planning
something. I do have a little something planned though," she said
flirtily, giving him a sly little grin that promised a lot more than
she was letting on.
"What do YOU have
planned?" he asked curiously. "I don't want it to conflict
with my plans."
"Unless you have
plans for the entire night, I don't think they're going to
conflict," she told him, her voice getting a little lower and a lot
more seductive. Kurt raised an eyebrow as he took in the blonde.
"Hey, you're already half as smart as my ex-boyfriends because
some of them wouldn't even get what I was implying there."
"You really did go
out with some idiots didn't you?"
"I really did,"
Ashley nodded. "I think that you're good for me because you're
older and way more mature, I need an older guy."
"Ok, now you're not
exactly making me feel good here Ash."
"Oops," she said,
covering her mouth with her hand and shrugging coyly. "I didn't
mean it like that Kurt. I don't care about any age differences. I
don't think that anyone should care unless you were like thirty
years older than me. You're not, right…"
"I'm going to shove
you on your ass," Kurt told her, but then instead, pulled her
closer with his arms and leaned up to kiss her. "I'm sure that
I'll like your present."
"Oh Kurt, you are
going to LOVE my present," Ashley whispered huskily against his
mouth. "Totally and completely love it."
Meanwhile, Stephanie
was sitting at her desk, and she was awaiting the arrival of her
father's lawyers. They were here to go over the contract with
Stephanie before it was presented to Shawn Michaels later. Her
father had no idea that she wanted to screw him over so he had
allowed her to meet with them beforehand. If she was going to even
attempt to curb her father's new attitude, she was going to have to
start at the ground floor.
In another part of the
arena, Edge was sitting around with Lita, concocting some sort of
plan for later on. Lita stared at him a little bit as he was
talking. She had nothing really to say to him and just listened to
him outline the things that he wanted to happen later. Right this
second he was discussing Mick Foley and his influence on their match
later on.
"So I was thinking
that we go talk to him and make sure that he calls the match fairly.
I know that we're not exactly friends anymore, but we should make
sure that he's going to be fair tonight."
"Uh huh," Lita
mumbled, then she stared at him with her eyes narrowed.
"What? Do I have
something on my face?"
"Why are you still
with me?" she asked him softly.
"What?" he
asked, confused as to where this was coming from. They didn't
discuss these kinds of things. They weren't in a real
relationship, it was sex and companionship and not much else.
"I mean, you wanted
to get Stephanie away from Chris, that's what this was originally
about, remember!" she said, her voice raising a little bit and Edge
was glad they were in his locker room and not somewhere public. "You
ripped me away from Kane to use me!"
"Lita, this is
neither the time nor the place to have this discussion."
"I should go to
Stephanie and Chris right this second and tell them what you were
going to do to them," she told him. "I should tell them the
truth."
"You can't do
that!" Edge said quickly and angrily. Lita turned to him with a
harsh look on her face.
"And why shouldn't
I?" she inquired sarcastically. "Because you're friends with
them again. Is that it? Why the hell are you still using me!"
"Lita, calm the hell
down," Edge said, grabbing her by the shoulders. "How did you
find out I was friends with them again?"
"You aren't subtle
Edge, I've seen you talking to them at shows for the past two
weeks," she informed him. "You were so out to get them, don't
you remember? You wanted Stephanie for yourself and you were going
to break them up and I was supposed to seduce Chris away from her and
make her believe that he cheated on her. Don't you remember?"
"I remember okay?"
he said with a deep breath. "I was wrong, that entire thing was
wrong. I shouldn't have done that because Chris and Stephanie are
good people."
"Not like us huh?"
Lita said, disgust in her voice. Self-realization is a really crappy
thing sometimes because it exposed who you were to your harshest
critic…yourself. "We aren't good people anymore, are we Edge?"
"No, we're not good
people anymore," he conceded.
"I was falling for
Kane," she admitted with a wry laugh. "How pathetic is that? I
don't know why I did that…and then there's…Matt. And what I
did to Matt, and it disgusts the hell out of me what I did to him.
I'm disgusted with myself. I didn't used to be this way."
"Neither did I Li,"
Edge confessed, looking away, finding the wall more interesting than
ever before. "But we've both changed."
"So why have you
stuck around? You have your friends back," she pointed out.
"I don't know, ok
Lita, I really don't know," Edge told her. "I can't explain
it. I don't want to explain it right now. It is what it is, we
are who we are."
"Do you ever wish
that you could go back, that you could be that person that you know
you're capable of being?" she asked him in earnest. She honestly
wanted to know his answer.
"Yeah, every single
day I wake up, I wish it," Edge told her. "Every goddamn day."
"Me too," she
professed quietly.
"I've gotta go,"
Edge told her quickly. "I'll be back in a little bit. Be ready
so we can go see Mick alright?"
"Yeah, alright,"
she said, wanting to be by herself as well. She and Edge didn't
usually talk about their feelings, and it was awkward for the both of
them. She watched him as he practically flew out the door and she
rubbed her hands against her legs, feeling very alone at the moment.
Edge looked both ways,
not knowing where to go, but he was getting confused. After what
Chris had asked last week, the whole thing about what Lita and him
were, and then this, he was just confused about that relationship.
She wasn't his girlfriend, and yet they were sleeping together. He
wasn't the type of guy who had girlfriends, that just wasn't him
and it never had been.
"Edge, wait up!" he
heard behind him and he turned to see Trish jogging to catch up with
him. "Hey, what's going on?"
"Nothing," he said
rather quickly.
"Oh," Trish said
with a laugh. "So you busy?"
"No, did you want to
talk about Christian?"
"Christian,
Shmistain," she giggled. "I have another date tonight with Jack.
We kinda, sorta hit it off last week and since he's been doing a
bit of traveling for Vince, he's here tonight and we might get
together for Valentine's Day tomorrow and Christian can kiss my
ass."
"Wow, that's quite
the turnabout."
"Well all is fair in
love and war. And if Christian wants to leave me, then fine, let him
leave me, it's his loss, because, I mean, look at me," she said,
gesturing towards herself.
"I can't look at
you like that Trish, you're my brother's ex-girlfriend, even I
have to draw the line somewhere."
"But still, tell me
you wouldn't hit this," she said, winking at him playfully.
"Well, yeah, I'd
hit that, but still, I'm not gonna," he told her.
"Well neither is
Christian, I think I'm finally starting to get over him," Trish
said, and she felt a certain amount of confidence in her voice. She
had had a good time with Jack last week. Did it compare to any of
her time with Christian? Well, no, but she didn't know Jack that
well. Things had been fun though and their conversation had been
stellar throughout the evening and she found herself at ease.
It just proved to her
that she could move on. Maybe it would take a while, but she would
still be able to move on at some point and time and she just had to
take it slowly. Going out twice with Jack was a good place to start.
He wasn't as attractive as Christian, but Jack was a lot smarter
than Christian was, not to say that Christian wasn't smart, but
Jack just had a certain intelligence about him.
"That's great,"
Edge told her honestly. "Hey, quick question, how do you know when
someone is your girlfriend?"
"She's your
girlfriend Edge," Trish said, patting him on the arm. "Face it,
everyone knows you two are boyfriend and girlfriend."
"Really?"
"Yup," she said.
That was something Edge
was going to have to mull over. Speaking of mulling over, Stephanie
had the lawyers who had drawn up the retirement papers for Shawn
Michaels. She was looking it over and she then looked at the lawyers
themselves. She wondered if this was going to work, but she was
Stephanie McMahon, anything and everything would work for her.
"If he wanted to get
out of this retirement, were he to sign the papers, would he be able
to?" Stephanie asked them.
"No, they're
tight," one of them told her.
"Yeah, then we're
going to have a problem," she said, sliding the papers across the
desk to them.
"Excuse me?" the
other said. "Your father said that he wanted a fool-proof
contract."
"My father is not in
his right mind right now," Stephanie informed them politely.
"Therefore, what I say overrules anything he says. I want my
father to believe that this is fool-proof, that Shawn Michaels has no
way out, but I want it to have loopholes."
"You want us to
deliberately give him a way out of this contract should he choose to
sign it?"
"Yes, I do, and I
want this between us, no telling my father."
"He could have us
fired."
"My mother is the CEO
and if need be, my father can be ousted from his position by the
board of trustees if deemed incompetent. In the event that you come
under attack, the ball will have already started rolling towards the
upheaval of his position, you need not worry."
"Are you sure he
won't notice?"
"My father trusts
me," she told them. "So he would trust what I had to say, so I
suggest you draw up new papers quickly."
"Ok Mrs.
McMahon-Jericho," one said, taking the paper.
"Good, when you're
done with that, just go directly to my father. I won't need to see
what the contracts say, I trust you to make the contract."
They left and she sat
back in her chair. If her father found out what she was doing behind
his back, he would probably fire her all over again. But she
wouldn't allow that to happen. She also wouldn't allow her
father to get his way this time. She was going to give as good as
she got, and if her father wanted to act the way he was acting, she
had to protect not only her son, but she had to protect her father
from himself.
She didn't know what
was wrong with him. She just let him be this way because she didn't
know how to stop him. If she told him that his behavior was
bothering her, he wouldn't care. Vince never cared. He pretended
that he cared, or he cared just the bare minimum, just enough to make
it seem like he cared a lot, but he never truly did because he never
saw what he was doing to his family.
"Rich, what the
hell!" Chris yelled when he walked into Stephanie's office. "I
told you to cancel that! No, I can't talk right now…look, I will
call you tomorrow, fine, bye!"
Chris hung up his cell
phone angrily and turned his eyes towards a curious Stephanie. "What
was that all about Chris?"
"I'm going to kill
Rich," Chris said, sitting down heavily in the chair across from
her desk.
"Why? What did he
do?"
"He forgot to cancel
the damn shows we were supposed to do starting this Friday in
Australia and New Zealand."
"Excuse me?"
Stephanie asked in dismay. "Another tour? Chris, you promised
that the one you did in December was the last one before Sawyer was
born."
"I know baby, but
Rich forgot to cancel it and so we're obligated to do these shows,"
Chris told her, running his hands over his face. "It really is the
last thing I want to do. I told him to cancel, I told him you were
pregnant and I didn't want to be away from you. He told me he
forgot but that the other guys want to do it. Yeah, I'm so damn
sure they'd want to do it if they had pregnant wives at home."
"You're leaving me
again?" Stephanie asked, tears pricking her eyes. "But you
promised…"
"Stephy, baby, I'm
so sorry," Chris said, getting up and going to kneel by her chair.
"I know that I promised you and I'm so sorry that my bandmates
are idiots. It's only for a couple of weeks."
Her bottom lip
quivered. "But…I don't want to be without you."
"I know you don't,
I'm so sorry."
"It's not your
fault," she said. "I think I need some fresh air, is that okay?"
"Sure, whatever you
want," he told her, helping her out of her chair. "Do you want
me to go with you?"
"No, I'll be fine,"
she said, walking out of the room. She leaned against the wall for a
moment before opening them again and walking down one way. She
didn't know where she was going, but she had to think. She didn't
want Chris to go away again; she wanted him to stay with her. Didn't
his band understand that she was pregnant and every passing week
brought a little more fear to her heart at being a parent? After a
little walking, her feet started to ache so she found a folding chair
and sat down morosely on it, covering her face with her hands and
hoping that nobody noticed her.
Chris sat in
Stephanie's chair and sighed. He didn't want to go on this tour,
but he had to, they had an obligation and he couldn't just back out
now. Or could he? He knew that he was the lead singer of Fozzy, but
his wife was almost thirty weeks pregnant and she needed him more.
He thought once he got away from wrestling his life would be less
complicated, but it seemed that wasn't true at all.
Edge, on the other
hand, was finding himself surrounded by Lita. They went to go see
Mick Foley and when he saw Lita flirting with him, something inside
of him was starting to snap, he could feel it. He didn't like
seeing this. He didn't like it at all and he snapped at Mick that
nobody had read his book. He didn't like this feeling at all and
when he and Lita left Mick's locker room, he pulled her aside.
"Why did you have to
go and change everything?" he hissed at her.
"What are you
talking about Edge?"
"Why did you have to
ask me why I was still with you?"
"I was wondering,
that's all," she said, pulling her arm from his grasp. "I just
want to know why."
"You messed
everything up, this was just about the sex and what you could do for
me in the ring."
"Isn't that still
what it is?" she asked him.
"No, I…I care
about you okay!" Edge told her and Lita was taken aback by his
confession. She searched his eyes, wondering if it was true. She
didn't dare let herself hope that Edge felt anything other than
lust with her.
"You…do?"
"Yeah, I do, okay, I
care about you, I care a lot about you, that's why you're still
with me. So if you want to go confess what I wanted to do to Chris
and Steph, go right ahead, that doesn't change the fact that I care
about you!"
Lita threw herself at
Edge and hugged him tightly. "I care about you too."
"Yeah?"
She nodded against his
shoulder and he could do nothing but hug her back. Trish was near
the gorilla, catching up with Kurt and Ashley who were waiting for
Ashley's cue to go out into the arena. She had a match with Torrie
coming up and Kurt gave her a kiss for luck before she went out
there. Trish smiled at their interaction.
"So when are the
wedding bells?" Trish teased.
"Shut up Trish,"
Kurt said, grabbing her and putting her in a headlock. "I know
where you live and I've seen where you sleep."
"That's because
you sleep two doors down from me," Trish said, elbowing him in the
stomach with a grunt as she broke free from Kurt's grasp.
"Shouldn't you be watching to make sure that your girlfriend is
okay?"
"She's tough, kind
of like you and Stephanie…why is it I surround myself with really
tough girls?"
"Because you're a
big fan of S&M?" Trish asked and Kurt folded his arms at her.
"What? Hit a nerve?"
"Shut up," Kurt
told her, shaking his head. "I don't know what you do in your
spare time, but I'm definitely not into that."
Trish laughed as she
wrapped her arms around his waist. "You know I adore you Kurt
Angle."
"I'm well aware
Trish Stratus. So where's this Jack guy of yours that I haven't
met?"
"He's coming in a
while, be patient, I'll introduce you."
Stephanie looked up
momentarily from her pouting and saw Trish's date walking around.
She would've said something, but he looked like he was walking
pretty fast. She put her head back down and felt a presence hover
over her and then sit down next to her. She glanced over and saw
Hunter.
"What are you
doing here?" she asked.
"When you see a
pregnant woman sitting alone with her face all covered, you kind of
want to know what's up."
"Nothing's up,"
she answered shortly, then shook her head. "Sorry, mood swings."
"You sure they're
mood swings and not you acting like the Stephanie I know you can be."
"Ok, a little bit of
both," she gave in. "I'm just a little bit upset right now."
"What's got you
upset? Aren't you supposed to not be upset?"
"I'm just upset
about something with Chris."
Hunter's ears perked
up at this, "Really?"
"Yes really. See,
his band was supposed to cancel this upcoming tour they're doing in
Australia and then Chris found out that Rich, that's a guy in his
band, one of Chris's friends, had not cancelled the tour and Chris
is going to be gone for two weeks, and I'm just upset because after
his last tour he promised me that he wouldn't leave me again while
I was pregnant, and now he has like no choice," she explained.
"If you were still my
wife, I wouldn't leave you while you were pregnant."
"Ok," she said,
looking down and sticking out her tongue at the thought. Gross, she
thought to herself. "That's very nice to say."
"If Chris is smart,
he wouldn't leave you," Hunter told her. "I don't think that
it's a good idea leaving your seven month pregnant wife alone."
"I'm not alone,
Kurt and Trish live with us," Stephanie said. "It's not like
I'm all alone, they live there with us so it's like a big
sleepover, I just don't want Chris to go away."
Hunter wrapped his arm
around her cautiously. "It'll all work out. I mean, maybe he
just doesn't have his priorities straight or something. Maybe he
just needs to come to his senses. I would NEVER want to leave you."
Stephanie rolled her
eyes. Someone else was rolling their eyes too as Chris heard the
entire conversation from around the corner. He couldn't believe
the gall of Hunter to tell him that he didn't have his priorities
straight. This was the man who put Stephanie, the most wonderful and
spectacular woman he had ever met in his life, behind a title belt.
Chris had never put Stephanie behind anything in his life, except for
maybe his son, but that was understandable.
Yet here Hunter was,
being a complete hypocrite about this entire thing. This was the man
whose wife had lied about a pregnancy to get away from him.
Stephanie had never lied to him about being pregnant unless she was
spectacular with special effects and her entire pregnancy was done
with smoke and mirrors. This was what he was afraid of with this
whole truce with Hunter. The fact still remained, Hunter was an
asshole who only looked after himself and what he wanted. But if
this man was trying to steal his wife and child, he had another thing
coming to him.
He turned away and
headed back to Stephanie's office, tiring of Hunter's lame
attempts at stealing his family. Stephanie looked up at Hunter. "I
think I'm going to go find Chris, I'll talk to you later Hunter."
"Ok," he told her.
"And if you ever need to talk, you know where I am."
"Oh yeah," she
said, forcing a smile on her face. She walked away from him and made
a face full of grossness at him. She walked slowly back to her
office. She walked in and saw Chris was sitting at her desk and
watching the show on the closed-circuit television. "Hey."
"Hey," he said,
wondering if he looked like he had been in here a while and hadn't
just gotten there a couple minutes before her.
"Sorry I like ran out
of here," she told him. "If you have to go on tour, then you
have to go on tour."
"I'm not going,"
he told her.
"What?"
"I made a promise to
you, and I don't go back on my promises to you," Chris said.
"When Rich's wife was pregnant, he didn't go on all these tours
and I've gone on one and I'm not doing another, I want to be with
you and I want to be with Sawyer, and that's where I'm going to
be."
"Are you sure?
Because I can really last a couple of weeks Chris, I've done it
before."
Chris patted his lap
and she came over slowly and sat down gently on his lap so as not to
crush him since she had gained close to 27 pounds during her
pregnancy. Chris didn't care though and wrapped his arms around
her. She snuggled against him as best she could since she had a huge
stomach to deal with. A little more than ten weeks and she'd have
her son with her.
"So where do I put my
hand?" Chris asked.
Stephanie took his hand
and put it on a particular spot on her stomach where the baby had
been kicking for the past fifteen minutes. Chris laughed as he felt
the nudge against his hand. It was a lot stronger now. Stephanie
leaned her head on the side of Chris's head and watched the
television in front of her. Chris just kept his hand on her stomach,
feeling the baby kick against his hand.
She watched in rapt
fascination as her father called out Shawn to sign the retirement
papers. She listened to him and his words, and she heard him telling
Shawn to sign the papers, ordering him to sign the papers. Shawn
didn't want to and Vince started talking about why he was out to
get Shawn so bad. He talked about how his life was a nightmare and
how he didn't have the "inner peace" that Shawn had. She heard
Vince talking about hating his life and everything in it.
She didn't know when
the tears started falling down, but she tasted them on her lips,
falling silently down her cheeks. Chris must've noticed because
she felt his calloused thumb running over her cheek. "Stephy,
baby, what's the matter?"
"I don't know,"
she answered honestly as she stared at the images on the screen in
front of her. "What he said?"
"Who? Your dad?"
"Yeah," she said
softly. "His life is a nightmare, he said he hated his life, that
it was not a good life. He might as well have said that his family
means nothing to him. I'm his family!"
Chris didn't want to
tell her to calm down so he just held her. Then he reached up and
took her face in his hands and brought her down for a kiss. Her lips
tasted salty and wet from her tears and some of them caught on his
face as he realized she was still crying. When was Vince going to
learn that his words hurt people? If this had been four years ago,
he wouldn't have cared what Vince said about anything, but now, now
Stephanie was his world, the reason he got up in the morning, his
raison d'être.
"Shh, shh," he
shushed her, just kissing her into silence, doing the only thing he
knew how to do, which was to be there for her.
"I just wanted him to
be proud of me, that's all," she whispered brokenly. "I've
tried so hard."
"I know," he told
her, leaning his forehead against hers. "I know."
"I don't want to be
like him Chris," she told him. "I don't want to be a bad
parent to Sawyer. I don't want to end up like my dad."
"You aren't going
to," he reassured her. "Stephy, you are going to be an
incredible mom, I can already tell. You're going to approach it
like it was business, but other than that, you are going to be
awesome, I can sense it."
"I'm going to screw
him up, I know it."
"No, you don't know
it. Stephanie, he may be your father, but your mother is an
incredible woman too, and you could just as easily end up like her."
"But everyone says
I'm my father's daughter."
"Well I say damn the
man," Chris told her. "You're going to be a great mother, I'd
even put money down on it if you wanted."
"So you're really
not leaving me?"
"Nope, I'm really
not leaving you."
Trish walked happily
down the hallway as she went to her locker room. She didn't have
anything planned tonight, but she thought that she might want to get
more dressed up for her date with Jack later. She was still just so
surprised that she had hit it off with him. She walked into her
locker room and saw Mickie crying and a security officer with her.
Trish couldn't
believe what Mickie had told her, but the security officer had
corroborated her story. Trish just hugged Mickie tightly, feeling
horrible that she had had to go through something like that. She had
thought Jack was a good guy, but he was a horrible person for doing
this to someone, even if it was Mickie. Even Mickie James didn't
deserve to be attacked.
Mickie just smiled over
Trish's shoulder. Things had gone exactly the way she wanted it.
She wanted Trish all to herself. They were supposed to be best
friends, they were supposed to team up. She knew that Trish was
weary of her, she wasn't stupid. She just had to make Trish see
that they could be the best of friends, that they had so much in
common. This Jack guy would've ruined all of that. Just like
people in her past had ruined all of that, but that was no worry
anymore. She had taken care of that situation, and that was over and
done with. Trish was going to be all hers soon.
All hers.
If Chris and Stephanie
hadn't been so engrossed in their conversation about parenthood,
and if Kurt and Ashley hadn't been furiously making out, and if
Edge hadn't been warming up for his match, maybe they would've
seen what Mickie had done and told Trish, but they had all been busy.
Unfortunately for Trish, her problems were bigger than she had ever
realized. They were going to become bigger soon, there was an aura
in the air that just suggested it.
Stephanie rubbed her
eyes as she composed herself. "God, I swore I wouldn't get weepy
while I was pregnant."
"If my dad was acting
the way yours is, I'd be weepy too," Chris relented. Stephanie
giggled and hugged him tightly.
"I love you so much."
"Oh, look Kurt,
someone's celebrating Valentine's Day early," Ashley gushed as
they walked into Stephanie's office and saw Chris and Stephanie in
a loving embrace. "What are you guys doing for V-Day? I mean, you
have to be doing something special since you're expecting a baby
right?"
"Actually, we don't
celebrate it," Chris explained.
"No, I hate it,"
Stephanie told her. "Stupid ass holiday."
"Oh wow," Ashley
said, "That's surprising."
"Nah, not really, I
just don't like it," Stephanie said, then heard her phone
ringing. "I bet that's Shane."
"Why would Shane
call?" Kurt asked.
"He's been calling
me everyday trying to apologize. I bet he's thinking about what
Dad said. I'll let the little bastard stew for a while. Serves
him right. Then I'll let Rissa bitch him out for acting like a
jerk."
But it wasn't Shane.
Someone had been watching Raw, and although he had been so pissed off
he couldn't speak at seeing Jack, seeing what Trish was being put
through was killing him. But seems people never picked up their
phones anymore. He thought for sure that Stephanie would answer the
phone, she was always doing business. He wanted to warn Trish, or at
least tell her that Mickie had lied and Jack hadn't attacked her.
He wanted to tell her to watch out for Mickie, that she was plotting
something. Jack had barely even touched Mickie and she was screaming
bloody murder.
Mickie was dangerous,
Christian could feel it.
The author would like to thank you for your continued support. Your review has been posted.