Yay, ff.nets working again!!! I wanna thank certain people who know who they are for encouraging me to keep on with this story and to the people who have reviewed – it means a lot!!! Title change is currently under discussion (thank you everyone for the suggestions!!) but atm I think I'm leaning towards "The Switch" (very naff I know). If anyone has any idea please let me know!! And above all else – please r&r!!!!
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Groaning, Chris raised his head from the pillow, only for it to flop back when the effort of holding it up got too much. His head…. Maybe that second bottle of Jack Daniels hadn't been such a good idea. His had was just pounding, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang….
But then it abruptly stopped. Funny he thought, his hangovers never usually cleared that quickly… Suddenly cheered up, Chris sat up and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. OK, maybe that hangover hadn't gone after all. Still, it was weird about that banging, he'd been certain it was in his head….
Deciding there was nothing he could do on an empty stomach, he phoned through to room service and ordered a full English Breakfast in the hope that all the cholesterol would help him remember.
What *had* happened last night he asked himself. He remembered bumping into Matt and the "discussion" that had followed, but not much after that. Hadn't he gone back to Shane's room? Yeah that's right, he had, he remembered that now. And then Shane (minus Stephanie now, probably because she'd gone of in a huff) had taken him to the bar, meaning to have a meeting to discuss his role in the Alliance more fully but that ass Heyman had shown up and he'd disappeared, so he'd ended up drinking alone. But why was the memory of a mobile phone constantly popping up? Groaning it all suddenly came back to him, somewhere between the Vodka shots and the second round of beers he'd spotted Lita talking to Trish as they exited the hotel and had tried to phone her, only for her dumb-ass boyfriend to pick up and star giving him a mouthful. There was also something about Raw….
Suddenly there was a massive crash and in burst Rhyno, taking the door with him. Chris could only stare in amazement of the wreck that was once his hotel door before glancing at the now seemingly unconscious man lying on the floor a few metres in and then back to the broken door. "I thought I ordered bacon, not rhino" he remarked.
"JERICHO!!" He winced, that was *not* a tone he needed to hear on a morning like this. Suddenly a different type of throbbing to the earlier one took over in his head.
"What?? You and Shane are so tight up now Alliance members can't even order breakfast, even if the kitchen *did* get it wrong?"
"That is not the point and you know it!!! How DARE you not open up to me a few minutes ago!!! Couldn't you hear me knocking??"
It all began to make sense; it was *her* who had been knocking and when she hadn't got an answer she'd gotten Rhyno to gore his hotel door open. Funny. "Actually Princess if you'd wanted to get me to wake up and open the door quicker, you should have started singing, that would have got me going quicker!!"
Stephanie gasped and opened her mouth to say something, but nothing came out. She tried again, but once more, nothing. If his head hadn't been throbbing so much and his stomach turning, Chris would have found the whole thing highly amusing.
"Now *that* Princess is what the entire world wishes you would have done on Austin Appreciation night; sang without making a sound!"
"Shane!!" she screamed when she finally got her voice back. "SHANE!!" However instead of the former heir apparent, Sucka T appeared. He really had to make a mental note to himself to stop calling his new colleagues that.
"Stephanie?" he questioned as he walked straight up to her, a look of concern crossing his face "Is anything the matter? Can I help you in any way?"
"Where's my brother? I want him to deal with this obnoxious, loud-mouthed SOB and tell him he can't talk about me like this!!"
Turning to face him said "Have you upset Stephanie again, sucka?"
"Don't you mean *suck-up* sucka??" fired back Jericho. Here was another person whose voice went straight through him this morning.
"You did not just say that – Stephanie, tell me that he did not just say that!"
"He did Booker, now kick his ass!!"
"Stephanie…" suddenly all eyes were back on a groaning Rhyno, now conscious and centre of attention. "Shane… you said we had meeting… had to get Jericho… …gotta take Jericho there…"
A look of pure annoyance crossed her face. "Damn, I knew there must have been a reason I was outside *his* door and wanted to talk to him" he thought he heard her mutter. But he must have misheard her, it was the hangover talking. The very idea of her seeking him out was laughable at the very least, if not downright unbelievable
"Is something amusing you Jericho??"
"Nothing at all Princess, nothing at all" he smirked. Should he tell her what he thought he heard? Nahh, that would be pushing his luck just a bit *too* far.
"Then I'll see you in half an hour in the conference room. Oh and Jericho," she added as she looked him up and down, "make sure you put on some clothes. I'd hate for you to upset the Alliance divas with your grotesque body."
With that she exited the room, leaving him alone with Rhyno and Suc- he meant Booker. Smiling that scary, inhuman grin, Rhyno too exited after Stephanie with the line "By the way, good morning Jericho"
Booker though, wasn't quite finish with him.
"Now listen here sucka, you may have impressed Shane but if me and the other boys had had our way, you wouldn't even be standing here to have this chance. None of us like you and even fewer of us like what you are doing to Stephanie. So you just leave her and us alone, you got that sucka?"
Great, once again he was all alone with only his regrets as company. If he'd still been in the WWF he wouldn't be suffering all alone; either one of the Hardyz or Lita or someone else would be with him, nursing him through his hangover and helping him talk out his problems. But that was then and this was now. It wasn't his fault he'd been held down and had needed to move on; if anyone was to blame it was Vance or the Rock or Kurt, not him.
But now wasn't the time for it, he had to go and meet his new "team-mates" half of whom had spent the past month trying to kill him on the direct orders of a certain Ms McMahon-Helmsley. Despite Shane's assurances that the Alliance were a tightly-knit "family" who would be more then willing to welcome him into their numbers, he knew that Booker had spoken the truth when he said that he wouldn't be welcomed.
He had only enemies now in the WWF. He realised the same was true in the Alliance.
Suddenly, he felt lonelier then he had ever felt before in his life.
