Author's Notes: Y'all probably hate me by now. Things in RL came up and I was unable to finish "Only When I Sleep". And I'd really like to, because I hate it when WIPs don't finish and I don't want to do that to anyone who still remembers the story. I apologize for the delay. So I'm going to post a story I wrote a while ago, and hope that it kind of rejuvenates my urge to write OWIS again. This is another WIP, like my Love Potion and How to Be arcs.

Wish me luck with OWIS.

This is something of a WWE alternate universe...a different take on Stephanie and Hunter from a few years back.


Some Days Better For My Heart, Part One


Some days start out to be perfectly ordinary.

You get up, perform your little rituals and just kind of sleepwalk your way through life. It's all automatic. She'd been living this way for so long it just became…routine.

And then there are days that blow everything you ever *thought* you knew about the universe completely to hell…and she didn't realize it, but then again, if she had, perhaps she would have just thrown the alarm clock across the room, pulled the covers over her head and not gotten out of the bed until the next day.

But she didn't, and she hadn't and thus, she was about to have one of those mind-shattering revelations.

****

Stephanie McMahon absently wound a strand of her hair around her finger. She was lying on the floor on her stomach, her legs crossed in the air behind her. She idly flipped through the newest "Newsweek" and bored, she lay her head on her arms. The door opened behind her but she didn't bother to turn around. It was surely Andrew, her fiancée. "Hey, baby." She said, still staring at the floor. "Do you want to go out for dinner tonight? Or did you want to stay in? We could eat in bed." She felt quite proud of her self for suggesting this. It was more…bold, assertive than she usually was.

"I'd be careful in who you issue those kinds of invitations to, princess. You're inviting all kinds of things to happen."

Stephanie snapped her head around and….

Looking back now, she realized *this* was it, this was the moment.

She raised her head, her eyes following the naked flesh of tanned legs….an entirely indecent white towel, too small around a well-defined waist…up his chest and finally resting on amused brown eyes. She inhaled with a shudder and felt a red flush crawl over her face. "Mr. Helmsley." She breathed as she stared up at him, blue eyes wide. "I—I'm sorry. I thought you were—"

"Andy boy? Sorry to disappoint you." He smirked again, clearly at her awed look. She must look like an idiot, she realized but she just…couldn't stop. "I think you're in the wrong room." She managed to work out around her garbled, suddenly mute tongue.

"I think I'm very much in the right room, actually. Girl, already ready for me lying on the floor, me without the hassle of actual clothes." He grinned teasingly. She couldn't believe it, Mr. Helmsley had never, ever smiled at her like that.

God, he was gorgeous.

She had a kind of dazed smile on her face, and if anyone had actually been paying attention to her, they would wonder what was wrong with her.

But no one ever paid any attention to her, and even if they actually had been, they never would have guessed the reason she was smiling.

And also? There wasn't anything wrong with her.

It was actually the opposite. For the first time in her life, everything finally seemed to make sense. Everything fell into place.

She watched him cross the room, his face twisted up in his familiar sneer/scowl/Cheshire-cat grin.

One day, soon, she'd wipe that sneer right off of his face and replace it with something else entirely, she thought dazedly.


I want him.