DISCLAIMER: I do not own Chris Jericho, Randy Orton, or other wrestlers that appear in the following story. They are the property of the actors and actresses that portray them, as well as the WWE.

SPOILERS: None, for once.

DEDICATION: This chapter is dedicated to Nina and Jodi, because I have a feeling that out of everyone who reads this, they will be the most excited about certain events. Enjoy, girls :D

Flowers Can't Keep Secrets

CHAPTER SEVEN

If there is such a thing as a drama queen, Chris Jericho's behavior last week was that befitting of a drama king.

Luckily, he had come to his senses all by himself. And it had nothing to do with the seven angry phone calls from Nidia (which had the central theme of 'what is your problem, stupid?').

Chris no longer had a problem; in its place, though, was his final plan at winning over Stephanie McMahon. Ironically, this plan borrowed a bit from one of its predecessors.

Arriving at his locker room, Randy Orton immediately became suspicious by the slightly ajar door. The probability that one or more of his former teammates were ready to ambush him inside was rather high, which left him with the options of turning tail or confronting the intruder(s).

Like Chris Jericho had noted time and time again, these rookies were just too cocky for their own good.

Balling his fists, Randy reached out with his long leg and kicked open the door, the corner of which catching Jericho in the nose and sending him flying from his crouched position. Skidding a few feet on his behind, the blond man immediately grabbed at the wounded appendage. "Wa da hell!" he yelled, pinching the nostrils shut and bemoaning yet another injury to his beautiful face.

Standing in the now fully open doorway, the heavyweight champion gave his wounded intruder a curious look. "Jericho?"

"Dumass wookie," Chris grumbled, leaning his head back. He winced as the coppery taste of blood slid down his throat. "Why dond you wadge where you goin."

Even Peter Cook would have laughed at the King of the World's nasally accent.

Shaking his head, Randy entered his locker room, stepping over the crouched man to place his things on the leather couch. "Well that's what you get for planning on jumping me."

Chris snorted; forgetting that his nose was pinched, however, he ended up choking on his own blood and saliva. "Spare me, Randalf," he coughed, letting go of his nose and checking the blood situation. "I've got better things to do than jump you like some hormone-crazy groupie."

Randy shrugged, unpacking his wrestling gear from his bag. "Hey, I can't help if you gave up the ladies for Stephanie."

The Canadian hmphed, and after ensuring that his nose was both blood-free and still gorgeous, returned to his position by the open door, praying that he hadn't miss her. He then suddenly wondered how Randy knew that little bit of information, and concluded that it had to have been during the great whiskey binge of two weeks' past. "Listen Randalf, about Stephanie..." he began, unsure of how much the young man knew of his feelings or the entire situation.

"Jericho," Randy interrupted coldly, ignoring the nickname. "If you're going to get all mushy, would you go hide somewhere else? I'm already feeling sick to my stomach."

"I've felt the same way since you won that title," Chris grumbled. To be honest, he was a bit taken aback at the young man's attitude. First the kid drank his booze and hung out with him, and now he was too superior to hear about Chris's problems. Ugh, rookies.

Randy did not to reply to Chris's barb, focusing instead on his plans for the evening. However, the intruder kneeling in his locker room was quite the potent distraction, and the young man had been missing casual conversations since his resignation (see: ass-kicking) from Evolution. So with an exaggerated sigh, the champion eased himself into a folding chair and pasted on an irritated glare. "So why are you hiding in here?"

Chris started at his companion's voice, having fully expected the brat to ignore him for the remainder of his tenure on the floor. "I thought I was making you sick to your widdle tummy?" he said snottily.

"You know what? Forget it." Thoroughly annoyed at the intrusive Canadian, Randy crossed his arms and wished to be left alone, for then he wouldn't be reminded of his current friendless state.

The young man's wish was answered when Stephanie McMahon entered her janitor closet/office just across the hall. With a whoop of excitement, Chris straightened up, ran a hand through his loose blond hair, and opened the locker room door. "Well Randalf, I'd like to say that this has been fun, but you've turned into a stiff. Later." With a casual wave, Chris darted into the hallway.

Randy sneered at the closing door. Oh sure, it was easy for Jericho to call him a stiff, considering that the blond man was spending the majority of his time chasing a woman and losing his matches against sub-par wrestlers (Edge, Tomko). He had better things to do than to worry about what people thought of him, like worry about Triple H.

Still though, his mind kept bringing up one word: Randalf?

Stephanie McMahon was in a foul mood. She had been for a week now, starting after the moment that Chris Jericho ordered her out of his locker room.

The nerve of that man! She thought to herself yet again as she wandered through the hallways of the arena, looking for her office set-up. He didn't realize the trouble she went through in order to keep up the admirer façade: sending out Stuart to get the flowers every week and swearing him to secrecy, writing those poignant notes (although she had to admit that the task got easier as time went on), and of course, using all of her resources to find the identity of the real admirer. And what did she get in return? Did she get the thanks that she rightfully deserved?

He didn't even bother to hear her full side of the story. No, he was going to blindly hate her for her supposed 'betrayal' and she couldn't do a thing about it. And her submission to that fact made her blood boil.

Therefore, it was safe to say that she wasn't prepared to find what she did in her office.

Two dozen roses sat in the middle of her desk. Her breath caught in her chest as she reached out to stroke the petals. They were the most beautiful white roses she had ever seen, the white fading into red at the tips of the bloom. Perusing the bouquet for a note, she then caught sight of her broken clipboard sitting next to the vase. Stephanie picked up the repaired item, reading the card attached to the clasp.

Turn around.

Her head whipped around, and her eyes met Chris's. It was about then that her heart stopped beating.

"Hi," he greeted quietly.

Steph's brow furrowed at the not-so romantic greeting. She wanted to ask what this all meant, but her question came out as "What's this all about?"

Chris ignored her question. "Did you know that flowers have secret meanings?" he casually asked, crossing his arms and leaning back against the door.

She felt her face getting hot. "Of course I did," she answered, fixing him with a steely gaze.

"I didn't figure it out until this weekend," he admitted. It was the truth, too; when he was searching for the perfect flowers to give her in the flower dictionary, he had stumbled across the section on Victorian meanings and more pieces of the puzzle fell into place. Reaching into the waistband of his tights, he pulled out a sheet of paper and began to read from it. "So, you think my eyes are beautiful?"

Stephanie's face was now as red as a tomato as she recalled the meaning of the variegated tulips. "Maybe I do and maybe I don't," she stated defiantly.

Chris chuckled, enjoying her embarrassment. "The tiger lilies dared me to love you. The jonquils wanted me to return your affection. The pink roses stood for a secret love, and the orange roses stood for desire," he read aloud. "Very interesting, wouldn't you say?"

Unable to continue facing him, she turned to place her clipboard back on the desk. She had hoped he would figure out the secret messages… but this was humiliating. "Quite," she managed to say as her eyes caught sight of the roses again. Do these mean something? She suddenly wondered, excited by the prospect. From what she could remember, all roses (excluding yellow) had some sort of romantic meaning.

"Of course, you could have been picking these for Nidia's benefit," Chris commented, his smirk widening as her head whipped around. "But then again, there were those chrysanthemums…" he trailed off, liking the way her eyes widened in shock. "I never really got why you had the two bundles of rosemary in that bouquet until now."

She opened and closed her mouth a few times, beyond surprised that he had figured out the obscure clue with that bouquet. But rather than admitting her admiration for the feat, she gathered her remaining resolve and rolled her eyes. "Took you long enough," she snorted in derision.

"White chrysanthemums stand for truth. Rosemary stands for remembrance, and only someone who cared would remember your middle name is Marie. Rosemary. Marie. Very clever, if I do say so myself."

"You're damn right it's clever," she stated with a smirk. "But you haven't said a word about the pink carnations. Don't tell me they stumped you?"

Chris's smile faded. Out of all the flowers he had received from her, the carnations made the least amount of sense. Their meaning (quite literally 'I'll never forget you') just did not fit into the timeline. His mind struggled to find a logical reason to tell her, but he kept drawing a blank.

Stephanie laughed at his frown, and decided to give him a break. "Those weren't supposed to have a specific meaning, Chris. When it became obvious that you weren't getting a bouquet from your admirer, I yanked them from catering and put them in your locker room.

"Looks like the shit you see in cafeterias," Chris said, repeating Shelton's exact words when he saw the bouquet. More puzzle pieces.

Steph frowned. "They weren't that bad," she retorted, her exact words to Shelton when he had called her later that evening and called the flowers 'janky'.

Deciding he was growing bored of the conversation, Chris tossed the paper aside and pushed himself away from the door. "So now what?" he crooned, walking slowly towards her.

His darkened look awakened the butterflies in her stomach. "Well, I have work to do," she stated, sticking up her chin defiantly. If he just expected her to fall into his arms, he had another thing coming.

"Screw work." Leaning close to her, he reached behind her to turn off her headset before sliding the headphones down to circle her neck.

She suppressed a shiver, and fixed him with the coldest gaze possible. Did he know that his touch was driving her crazy? "What do you think you're doing?"

"Do you have cold sores?" he asked.

Her blood boiled. "Just what are you insinuating!" she bellowed, trying to move and realizing that he had her pinned against the desk.

Chris smirked at her reddened face and angry eyes. Perfect, he thought to himself as he brought her face closer and kissed her angry, slightly agape mouth.

Stephanie's arms flailed for only a second before she grabbed his head and returned the kiss, a kiss would be the second best one they had shared to date (the first being the kiss at Summerslam, where Stephanie's tongue participated way too much for a supposedly startled woman).

Two hallways over, Shelton Benjamin and Nidia were chilling out in Jericho's locker room, talking about how they would reunite their other friends (who, ironically, were already united at the mouth).

"What about if you start hitting on Steph? It'll make Chris jealous," Nidia suggested.

Shelton rolled his eyes. "Send him off the deep end, you mean. I don't need to be back on the injured list."

"We could get them drunk together and lock them in a closet or something."

"Because that's a great way to start a relationship: random gropes in a dark enclosed area."

Nidia stomped her foot. "Shooting me down isn't going to help the situation Chico, so why don't you try and be helpful."

The young man groaned, wondering when it became necessary for friends to interfere in love lives. Was he so old-fashioned in believing that fate would take its course; that overdramatic plans, horrible lies, and silly schemes would only delay the inevitable?

Obviously, Shelton Benjamin had never paid much attention to the drama that envelops the WWE. Or perused the fan fiction sites on the Internet, for that matter.

Chewing on her thumb nail, his companion started pacing the room. "I just can't sit idly by and have them miss their chance to be together, Shel. Is that so wrong?"

Unbeknownst to Nidia, her words hit Shelton in a different way. He desperately wanted to say something to her that would key her in to his attraction, but he was too chicken-shit. He had never taken failure well, and her rejection could very well provoke him to smash his newly-healed hand back into a wall. With a guttural sigh, he pushed himself up out of his chair. "I guess not, but let's not mess with Chris, okay? He's gone through enough with that other bitch."

Nidia paused, considering his words. "I suppose you got a point; but Stephanie can smell a scheme a mile away." Suddenly a thought occurred to her, and she snapped her fingers joyfully. "I bet Randy will have an idea!"

"Randy Orton?" Shelton repeated, confusion etching his features.

She snapped her gum as she rushed over to the mirror on the wall. "That would be him," she replied, running her fingers through her hair and checking her makeup for any problems.

Shelton frowned at her answer and her obvious primping. "And why would that chump be of any help?"

Nidia glared at his reflection in the mirror before returning to her appraisal. "Duh, when we were drinkin' Chris told him all about his thing for Stephanie. And a hottie like Randy will probably have some ideas on how to hook people up," she explained, giggling a bit when she paid the champion a complement. "Goodness knows he gives ME ideas when I look at him!"

Shelton slowly sat back down in his chair, keeping quiet as Nidia finished fixing her hair and breezed out of the room. He could nearly taste the irony of the situation; she had spoken of missed chances, and now it was fairly obvious that he had, indeed, missed his with her. Letting his head fall into his hands, he idly wondered if this was his karma-like punishment for messing with Chris and the admirer business in the first place.

"You know, I'm still going to call you a trash-bag ho."

"And you'll always be an asshole."

"As long as we have that settled…" Chris trailed off, placing a few light kisses on the corners of her mouth. Already he was addicted to her taste of her. "So what now?"

"Dinner after the show?" Steph suggested, running her fingers through his shiny hair and wondering how she ever dealt with Edge's greasy locks.

"That's a given." He rewarded her with a peck. "But then what?"

She slapped his arm lightly. "Don't be getting any ideas," she warned, even though said ideas were already taking root in her own imagination. "How about we both fly out to Portland a day or two early, spend some time together then."

Chris pouted. "I don't want to wait that long to kiss you."

"Too bad," she smirked, but her face softened at his persistent pout. "We can talk on the phone until then, as long as you don't start singing again," she teased, kissing his lower lip.

He poked her side, causing her to shriek and try to wriggle away. "You love my singing."

"Whatever Mongoose."

Losing all interest in the banter, Chris pulled her closer, rubbing the tip of his nose against hers. "You never asked me what the flowers meant."

Her eyes flicked over to the bouquet before returning to his. "Who the hell cares? We're already kissing."

Silently conceding her point, he closed the distance between their lips.

END CHAPTER SEVEN

Author's notes: My brother had two comments about this chapter, which I will share with you now: "I knew that you'd put Orton in as a major character" and "Nobody is going to get the Peter Cook joke". Perhaps the Monty Python stuff is a bit dated... but if you've seen the Princess Bride, Peter Cook plays the role of the Priest at the wedding. And as for Orton... I've got plans for him, so get used to his presence :)

Sorry again about the lateness of the chapter, I'll do my best to get the next one out sooner. I do hope you enjoyed the coming together of Chris and Steph – I was specifically avoiding a dramatic scene and frilly words. This isn't the movies after all :) Please review and let me know what you think! Thanks again for reading, and until the next time I post, take care.