Disclaimer: The characters and real people portrayed in this story do not belong to me. The characters belong to Vince and WWE, and the real people belong to themselves.

A/N: Hope you enjoy the story. :)

Maybe it's akin to hypothermia. Not that he really knew about hypothermia in the first place. But it was numb. This feeling was numb, and the only thing he could think of was this was like hypothermia. It had to be, he had he to liken it to something or his mind would torture itself thinking that this was really as bad as it seemed, but it was exactly as bad as it seemed.

It started in his feet, just a little bit of a numb feeling, just a tingling that sharply went away. And then it moved up his body, slowly numbing him to anything and to everyone around him, slowly consuming him like a freezing water. His heart would be last to go, would slowly round down its beats until they were slow and almost non-existent.

It was such a sad feeling, this numbness that was slowly curving its way through Chris's body. He didn't know why it felt so slow, why it didn't take it quickly and envelope him in this numbness. But it was slow, and maybe that was part of it, maybe it was supposed to take you slowly. Lull you into a sense of normalcy, like you were just going to feel it for a second, but a second turned into a minute, into an hour, and so forth and so forth, and then it would just make your entire body numb. But it didn't. It just kept still for a moment, as if contemplating where to move next and then the cold, the numb would overtake you.

He could see her, Stephanie, looking at him. A memory for sure. Her eyes were beautiful, innocent, and pleading. She was pleading with him. He gave in, like so many times before, but this time, this time she took it all away. She took everything away from him until he was left with nothing. And there was no more pleading because she didn't need him anymore. She didn't need his permission, or his consent, because he had given it so many times before that she didn't feel the need to keep up a pretense of asking. She just took it away from him, took it all away.

He rolled over on his back, staring up at the ceiling, wondering just how long it would take for the numbness to take him over and put him into a sleep. In his sleep, his mind would be too muddled to think of the numb feeling, the cold air lying constantly over his body. He would forget about it, and then wake up to the morning sun, only letting that cold settle before he shook it off and got ready for another day.

"Chris," she would mumble, "Come on, please."

"Fine, if you want to, go ahead," he'd say, giving in all the time. He loved her, and he would do anything for her. Even the most mundane, miniscule, little things; he would do them for her gladly.

Then she would smile, and giggle and thank him profusely, and that was enough for him. That was always enough because Stephanie's smile was the most luminescent he had ever seen. It was like a star, though a star is just a flaming ball of gas that converts hydrogen to helium in the process of nuclear fusion, but the stars were too far away for them to tell, and so was her smile, bright and shining. She stilled smiled, he still saw her smile, and that could let him rest a little easier that she at least still smiled.

The ceiling was not comforting him. The stucco of it created a cave-like feel, and caves were hollow, empty, and worst of all cold. Now his mind was conjuring up images of being cold, being numb and huddled into a corner waiting for it to just come. Waiting for what? Death maybe, or the hypothermia to set in. Maybe that's what he was waiting for? The hypothermia to set in. Would it be easier for him to deal with if it did? Would he feel so numb that he wouldn't even realize it anymore? Would a false sense of warmth come if he was completely numb? Maybe he should embrace this cold then, maybe then he could feel something anything, because his toes were freezing, his hands were freezing, and his heart was freezing up as well.

So he laid there, unable to move, lying still as he could be. He was shivering now, all because of Stephanie. This could all be attributed to Stephanie. She had ruined this night for him, she was ruining him slowly, and she had no idea. She was probably comfortable and not feeling this numbness run through her veins. She was probably sleeping peacefully, her breath coming out in short sighs, like she was having a wonderful dream and didn't ever want to wake up from it.

Would she be dreaming about him? He didn't know, and didn't care to know if she wasn't. He wouldn't dream about her if he ever managed to fall asleep. His dreams would probably be dark, hard to remember, frigid even. Because of the situation he found himself in, the exact opposite of what Stephanie was feeling he was sure. Stephanie was probably happy as a lark right now, while he was feeling desolate, alone, tucked into a tight ball to try and preserve any feeling within his body.

But had she been worth it? Had it all been worth it? Of course, this was Stephanie he was talking about. Even this numb feeling was worth it for her. He would gladly go through it again, he thought, though rather slowly because of his body going numb. He would do anything for Stephanie, always had, always would, if she asked that is. Maybe she wouldn't ask him anything again. Maybe she wouldn't even bother with the asking. And he would deal with that too.

He stared out the window and imagined that it was colder out there than it was in the room. It warmed him up slightly, to know that someone out there might be as cold as he was feeling right now. It was a sad thought for sure, but someone, somewhere had to have been going through what he was going through right now. There had to be or else this feeling was even more lonely than he thought.

There was a wall between him and Stephanie now. An invisible wall that he couldn't scale because he couldn't see it clearly, and that pretty much sucked. He didn't want to disturb her side of the wall because she might not want him to. She hadn't disturbed his side of the wall, hadn't looked at him, hadn't asked about him, hadn't done anything to try and break that wall down, to see him. He shivered again. He didn't want a wall between them. But there it was, and if he could just reach out and grab her, but he couldn't. He couldn't find her anymore. She was out of his sight, for tonight, for tomorrow morning...

He tossed and turned, but it did no good. He got out of bed and went to sit on the couch, flipping mindlessly through the channels, but there's nothing very good on hotel television at three in the morning, unless he wanted to watch for the hundredth time how many restaurants were in the hotel. He contemplated going downstairs to get a cup of coffee in the "affordable, large, and beautifully decorated all-night coffee shop, located on the second floor," but he didn't want to look pathetic, being one of those people who stayed up, hunched over a warm cup of coffee, shutting themselves off to the world.

He thought he heard Stephanie whispering, "Chris."

He listened again, but it must have been his imagination. He had to be his imagination as the room had been pretty much silent save for the low talking on the television. He turned it off, just in case, but there was no sound. He shouldn't have expected a sound. He got up again, opening the mini-bar, thinking that maybe a few of those little bottles of vodka would warm him up, maybe even let him fall into a deep sleep where the feeling would not reach him and take him over. But he couldn't drink, that wouldn't really solve anything, and he'd wake up tomorrow feeling worse than he did today, and he didn't want to feel worse than right now.

In an attempt to warm himself up, he threw on some socks, covering his cold toes. It didn't really stop the numbness he was feeling, wiggling them around, trying to get them toasty, but the cold had seeped into him sometime in the cold, dark hours of night, and it was embedded into his skin, and there was only one way to cure it. Stephanie could cure it, she could cure this feeling that was seeping into him. He laid back in the cold, almost hard bed and fell against the pillow, the bed unyielding as he tried to find a good position with which to sleep in.

He found one, thankfully, that was comfortable, if not still the freezing cold that he had been engulfed in earlier. He stared out the window again, being able to see the balcony through the moonlight shining through it. He liked looking at the moonlight, the way it made things angelic. It made Stephanie look angelic when she slept, he knew that without looking, had memorized her face as it slept, the soft moonlight making her look like she glowed. Like there was this light surrounding her at all times. It was magical.

It was getting to be too much though. This was getting to be too much and he didn't know if he could take it anymore. If he couldn't take it anymore, what could he do? He just had to bear it, or do something about it. He could do something about it. There were no tiles to count over his head, or sheep to float into his mind so he could count them and fall asleep. Why was sleep so hard to get? Shouldn't the numbness have taken over his brain by now? Maybe this was all part of it, his mind would go on thinking even after it did.

He was sick of this, so sick of it and he was going to do something about it. He was going to do something about this situation with Stephanie, right now, he was going to do it. He turned over on his other side and thought about what he could do. Well, there was the obvious thing to do and that seemed the best thing to do.

He snatched the covers and pulled...hard.

Stephanie squealed as she hit the floor with a loud thump. She opened her eyes groggily and peeked over the top of the bed where Chris was now ensconced in the thick comforter and sheets from the bed, a lazy smile on his face. She kneeled up and looked at him.

"You woke me up," she mumbled.

"I was cold, and you were hogging all of the blankets," he said.

"You said I could have the blankets."

"Yeah, well now you have to share," he said, and then lifted the covers. She scrambled into the bed and cuddled up to him. She was so warm against him and she warmed him up.

"God, you're freezing," she said, grabbing his hands and rubbing them between hers. "You could've just woken me up and asked for some."

"Yeah, but I was too numb."

THE END