"Hunter, come on!"
"Come on what?" he asked, still walking quickly in front of her. She was lucky that he had let her in the car after what he had walked in on earlier, but now she was trying to keep up with him and he was quickly gaining space between them with his long strides.
"Will you stop?" she pleaded, as he kept walking. He wandered over to the bank of elevators and pushed the button a dozen times with hard, quick jabs. He tapped his foot impatiently, altering looks between the lights on the elevators and where Stephanie was. He grumbled to himself when she caught up; he had been hoping to get into the elevator and leave her behind.
"Hunter," she began again, her voice stern but sympathetic. "Will you just talk to me?"
"What's there to talk about?"
"Oh, I don't know, global warming, illegal immigration, you know, light topics like that," Stephanie said sarcastically. "It wasn't what you thought it was."
"Wait, so Chris wasn't kissing your neck, that wasn't what I saw, wow, I really should go to the eye doctor," Hunter said sarcastically as Stephanie stood there and folded her arms over her chest.
"Don't go the sanctimonious route with me, Hunter," Stephanie scolded him, giving him the evil eye. "I've told you what Chris and I were doing, whether or not you choose to believe that is your own choice, but if you think that I'm going to stand here and beg for your forgiveness, than you are sadly mistaken."
"Oh, and how the hell am I the bad guy in all of this? I walk in on my girlfriend making out with another guy, a married guy," Hunter pointed out. Stephanie rolled her eyes at this and scoffed a little bit as she shook her head.
"Excuse me for wanting authenticity, Hunter," she spat out. "We were practicing, we're actors, Hunter, we act for the cameras. Movie stars do it all the time. They practice loves scenes and kissing and stunts, that's what we were doing. I don't love Chris, he's a friend and nothing more, and if you choose to believe that it was any more than that, it's your problem, not mine."
"Thank God I'm not sharing a hotel room with you tonight," he muttered.
"Oh, and why not?" she wondered.
"I'm sleeping in Shawn's room," Hunter said, going into the elevator that had mercifully opened. He pushed the "close door" button before Stephanie could react, but she managed to slip through the door just as it was closing, almost getting her shoe caught in it. She tugged herself free and glared at Hunter, who was snickering.
"Oh, is this funny to you?" Stephanie asked him angrily. He nodded and she glared at him, sending daggers into his skull. "Look, I know that you don't like this storyline, but we're going ahead with it whether you like it or not. I have resigned myself to making this believable. I didn't go apeshit on you when Trish had her ass up against your crotch for your storyline, so don't get your fucking panties in a twist over this!"
"Don't yell at me because you got caught!"
"Doing nothing!" she yelled back at him. "God, we were doing nothing. It wasn't like we were having sex, God, we didn't even kiss or anything, you are blowing this way out of proportion!"
"Oh, so just because there was no sex, I'm supposed to be all gung-ho about this, did you see where his lips were, Stephanie? Oh wait, you were too busy with your eyes closed enjoying him and his lips being all over you."
"You know what, any way I put it, any way that I say what was going on, you're going to twist my words and make it ugly because you have a problem with this storyline. Let me lay out the next couple of months for us. Chris and I are going to do something, probably nothing huge, and you're going to fly off the handle. I'm going to talk to him, and you're going to fly off the handle. Anything I say and do is going to be misconstrued and you are going to fly off the handle!"
Stephanie reached her floor and she huffed off, leaving Hunter in her wake. She dragged her suitcase behind her as she stomped down the hallway and to her door. She didn't hear footsteps behind her so she figured that Hunter was indeed going to Shawn's room and she was glad because if she had to spend another minute with him, she was going to start choking him. She went into her room and the second thing she did after putting her suitcase away was pull off her shoes and throw them angrily at the wall, letting it hit with a loud thud and fall to the floor. She was so incredibly keyed right now and pissed off to a tee.
"Calm down Stephanie," she said to herself as she brushed her fingers through her long and unfortunately crimped hair. She hated wearing it like this, but for some reason it had been deemed that crimped hair equaled sympathetic, or something like that. She went into the bathroom with her toiletries bag and brought out a brush and a hair tie. She combed her hair out, a calming thing with her and then pulled it back neatly, staring at her face in the mirror.
The room was too quiet, she thought to herself as she stood staring in the mirror. It was too quiet because her big oaf of a boyfriend had decided to walk in at an inopportune moment. She could tell herself now, when she was just by herself, that perhaps, for a moment, she had gotten too carried away in Chris's lips on her skin. It wasn't that she was attracted to Chris, because she wasn't. She recognized that he was a good-looking man, but it was just the way his lips felt on her skin. In the heat of the moment, she wouldn't have cared if it was the Big Show kissing her neck, it just felt good.
She went back into the bedroom and went to grab her briefcase. If she was going to spend the night alone, she could get away with doing a little bit of work in the interim from now until she went to bed. But as she went to open her briefcase, she remembered that she hadn't only wanted Chris in her locker room for their "brainstorming" session, but also to give him tomorrow's script. She ran her hand across her forehead. She needed to give this to Chris so that he knew what he was going to be doing on the show tomorrow. She sighed and grabbed it before slipping her feet into some flip-flops and walking out of the room and down the lobby.
Because she didn't know what room Chris was staying in, she was forced to go down to the lobby and ask the reception desk. She brought her ID with her in case they decided to be annoying and not tell her where one of her employees was staying. She had had this encounter before in other hotels, so she was certainly prepared for the fight.
However, she wouldn't need a fight as she looked to a sports bar situated off the end of the lobby. Sitting there watching some sports highlight show was Chris. Beer in hand, she watched as he took a long swig of it and then pressed it against his forehead, like he was hot or something. She found that a curious move, but pushed it out of her mind as the relief that she wouldn't have to deal with hotel personnel pushed its way into her head. She walked over to him and sat down next to him, startling him out of whatever he was thinking about.
"God, you scared me," he said, putting his beer down.
"Yeah, I guess I have that effect on people," she snickered as she set the script down on the bar and gestured for the bartender. "Hi, yeah, can I get a lemon drop please?"
"Sure thing," the bartender told her as he went to make her drink.
"Lemon drop? What the hell are you trying to forget?"
"Nothing," she said. "I can't have a drink, is that not legal?"
"It's legal," he told her. "But shouldn't you be with your boyfriend right now. I thought you would have to talk him down off a ledge or something."
She rolled her eyes at the thought of Hunter right now. "No, he's rooming with Shawn tonight. Apparently my face disgusts him and he would rather not spend the night with me."
"I'm sorry, I feel like--"
Stephanie held her hand up and shook her head. "Don't apologize for doing nothing. If it bothers Hunter, it bothers Hunter. I didn't apologize for it, if he doesn't want to take what happened for face value, then he doesn't have a lot of trust in me, and I'm not sure if I like that."
Chris had to like her gumption, he just had to admire the way that she took things and handled them like they were nothing. "Okay, I won't apologize then, but…still. What happened, it was just, I think I got carried away."
"No you didn't," she said waving it off so they didn't get into some serious discussion that she didn't want to have. She wasn't prepared to fully think about what Chris had been doing against her skin. As she paid the bartender for her recently procured drink, she took a long sip of it, letting the vodka slip down her throat easily, washing away the bitterness she felt towards Hunter's mistrust of her. "It was practicing."
"Yeah…" He said that like he didn't believe it, and deep down, he wasn't sure that he did. In his entire relationship with Jessica, there had only been one other person he had kissed other than her, and that woman was sitting right in front of him. If Stephanie was the only variety he ever got in his life, would that make him somehow more attached because she was something different than he was used to? It worried him a little that it was. He didn't want to play right into Jessica and Hunter's hand and prove them right.
"So, before, you know, I meant to give you the script for tomorrow," she said, sliding it towards him a little. Chris reached for it and his hand brushed Stephanie's and she pulled back, a little trepid around him. He gave her an awkward smile and grabbed it, flipping through it aimlessly.
"You have an in-ring segment with Austin, you know, for your match coming up at No Way Out, you're going to bring out a fake Austin," she informed him, knowing that he would find that interesting. He nodded and smiled at her. "It should be fun, right?"
"Yeah, it should be. I like being able to do a little bit of humor and a little bit of seriousness."
"You're also going to be in a handicap match with Kurt against Hunter," she told him, not making him flip through the script. "There's going to be a little something with me involved, um, with us actually."
"Oh," he said, looking at her critically as she took another large gulp of her Lemon Drop. "Is this storyline starting to bother you?" He would drop it if he was really the only one who thought it was a good idea.
"No, that's not it at all, I'm just thinking that we never really got to finish what we started earlier, and it's going to bug me that we aren't really at the point where we feel comfortable enough together that we can kiss in public."
"Well," Chris said, looking around. "No time like the present, right?"
"Excuse me?" she asked, eyes wide as she leaned back in her chair, surprised by his proposition. The bar was by no means crowded, but, still, there was a number of people there. What if it somehow got back to Hunter, he would blow a gasket, although at this moment, she actually wouldn't mind seeing him blow a gasket.
While Stephanie was picturing steam coming out of Hunter's ears and mentally giggling at the visual, Chris was leaning in. If Stephanie wanted to make this look spontaneous when they did it on-screen, he could make it spontaneous off the screen. He wasn't drunk by any means, this was his first beer, but he was compelled to finish what they started, to see this through to the finish. He just wished that Stephanie would kind of look his way. He was a couple inches away and he licked his lips, almost looking predatory, but he took a soft breath before leaning in a little bit more to get to her lips.
Stephanie didn't know what broke her out of her reverie, but it was something. The last thing she remembered before she felt Chris's lips descend on hers was the look on his face. His eyes were closed and for some reason, it made him look almost angelic and that thought shocked her in that brief moment, the moment between the ticking of a second when time seemed to freeze in mid-air. And then suddenly, Chris's lips were pressed against hers, which were pursed as her eyes opened wide.
It only took her another second before she was kissing him back, relaxing her lips against his and letting him have access to her mouth if he wanted. It wasn't a passionate, all-consuming kiss, but it wasn't a little peck on the lips either. They both got more comfortable as the seconds ticked by and Chris had the guts to put his hand on the side of her neck, rubbing the spot he had found earlier where she seemed to be sensitive. She moaned softly against his mouth as she felt his hand hitting right where she liked it.
Then, as quickly as it had started, it ended and Chris pulled away and took a deep breath, "Well, I think that we've got the whole kiss thing covered."
"I'd say that we do," she said, a little out of breath. "At least we know that it's not going to be awkward between us out there now. We can look like a couple of people who have actually had an affair, we'll get nominated for an Oscar, I'm sure."
He laughed, loving that she could put him so at ease. This wasn't attraction, it was business, and it was friendship, but attraction it was not. Of course, one could say that they were just fooling themselves as Stephanie's chest heaved with every breath and Chris kept licking his lips as if savoring Stephanie's taste, but then, a kiss was a kiss and passionate or not, it had to have some sort of chemistry, and Chris and Stephanie had never wonted for chemistry.
"Well, I'll be sure to mention you in my acceptance speech then."
"Good, I deserve it," she told him, winking as she downed the last of her drink. "Okay, and with that, I'm going to bed. I'll see you tomorrow though, work and all that fun stuff."
"Yeah, I'll be seeing you," he said, his voice trailing off as he watched her retreating form going towards the elevators. He licked his lips one more time before going back to his beer, pressing it against his forehead again.
The days of the show had a certain giddiness to them that Stephanie couldn't quite explain. It was definitely a different buzz than at a house show and she loved how the entire arena seemed to vibrate with this buzz. She was just happy that she got to be on-screen tonight and play the sweet mother-to-be. The fans had no clue what was in store for them in the coming weeks, but she was sure that they would love what was going to be put out there.
She walked right by Hunter's locker room, not even giving it a second glance. He hadn't spoken to her or tried to contact her since last night when they had parted in the elevator, and right now, she didn't care at all. She was going to ignore him if he was going to ignore her and that was that. She wasn't going to go begging for his forgiveness because Stephanie McMahon did not beg for anyone's forgiveness.
She went into her office and set her things down on the desk that was awaiting her. She sighed and sat down, thinking about what she had to do that evening and mentally preparing herself for it. She had to get into the mood because she knew that she was going to have to deal with Hunter and act quite lovey-dovey with him, and the last thing that she was feeling was loving towards him. He blew things out of proportion; she and Chris had just been practicing for when they had to act in front of the screen, in front of the world. She didn't want to be humiliated, looking completely awkward with Chris, and if practice made perfect, she was going to practice.
She went about her business when she heard the door open and she looked up to see Chris's head peeking in, "Hey, I just wanted to drop by and see how you were doing."
"How I was doing?" Stephanie asked. "Am I sick?"
"No, I meant after everything that happened with Hunter last night. I know that you didn't go into details or anything, but I wanted to make sure that everything was cool between us, between us and him. I don't want him getting the wrong impression with what last night was."
"Truthfully, I haven't spoken to him today," Stephanie said and noted that Chris looked a little distressed by this development. "He'll cool off though and we'll all be fine."
"You know," Chris started, shifting his feet a little as he stood there uncomfortably. "I really didn't want to cause a rift in your relationship with him. If this storyline is going to rip you apart, we can totally put an end to it."
"He'll get over it," Stephanie reassured him. "Besides, we're in too far now, we're about to start everything, and we can't back out now. It won't cause a rift between me and Hunter. He's stubborn, that's it, but I can handle him."
He gave her an easy smile, "Well, if you're sure, I just didn't want to be a bother to you. I don't want you to feel put out by doing this with me."
"I'm not," she told him sincerely as she sent him a smile. "Now go, you've got the main-event on the card tonight, and you've got an in-ring promo in the middle of the show, you're a busy man, you don't need to come see if I'm okay."
"Thanks, Stephanie," Chris told her and sent her one of those dazzling smiles before leaving. She licked her lips a little thinking about the kiss from last night. It had been unexpected, and if she had more of those on the way, she couldn't help but think that she and Chris were going to knock this out of the park and create a storyline to remember, maybe like Macho Man and Miss Elizabeth or something, a story that spanned time. She liked the thought of that.
But first she would have to think about her scenes with Hunter. They were supposed to be meeting with the fake doctor and get an "ultrasound" photo of their "baby." She wasn't looking forward to being in the vicinity of Hunter, but she was a professional and she would trudge through it like a professional, even if she was fighting with her boyfriend. She got up from her seat and mentally prepared herself for the night to come.
Later that evening, she was walking out of the room where she had just filmed her segment with Hunter and the fake doctor. She was still mad at him but managed to curb her anger for a few minutes so she could come off like the glowing pregnant woman. But now that it was over, she was back to the brooding, angry woman, and that suited her just fine. She walked back towards her office to collect herself for her next segment when she heard footsteps behind her and saw a single red rose in front of her face. She turned on her heel and glared at Hunter.
"What's this?" she asked.
"It's for you," Hunter said, giving her the flower. She took it gingerly, as if it were going to prick her any second. But it didn't so she turned to the prick in front of her.
"What's it for?"
"It's for you," he repeated. "I'm sorry about last night. You just have to understand where I'm coming from. I walk in and see my girlfriend getting kissed by another guy. It's not something you want to see."
"We were practicing for our storyline," she said testily, still not really seeing his side of things. "You know I want this to look good."
"I know that, but Stephanie, I just…I can't stand him," Hunter said, frustrated by the image that kept playing over and over again in his mind. "Seeing him with his hands all over you, it was disgusting. He thinks that he can just touch you wherever he wants, suck on your neck like you're his, it disgusts me!"
"Okay, I get it!" she said to him. "Hunter, don't you trust me? Don't you trust in me and what we have? I trust you…"
"I trust you," he said, placing his hands on her shoulders and then leaning down so he could look her in the eyes, "I trust you, Stephanie. I'm just not sure I trust him. Who's to say that he won't try and take you and use you?"
She rolled her eyes at that, "He's married, Hunter, the man is married. He knows this is only business. Do we want it to look good, of course, we want to entertain the fans, but when all is said and done, I go home with you and he goes home to his wife and that's what we both want. You just have to trust the both of us."
"I can't trust him," Hunter said, but then smiled at her. "But I can trust you."
"Okay, I guess that'll do," she told him, a hint of a smile creeping onto her face. She stepped forward and hugged him tightly, still clinging to the rose that he had given her. In hugging him though, she missed the angry look on his face when he thought of him trusting Chris. That would never happen, not in a million years.
Stephanie was much happier later when she was waiting for her cue to go out there after Hunter's match against Kurt and Chris. Now that she and Hunter had patched things up, everything was going swimmingly. She knew that Hunter wasn't going to be completely nice to Chris or anything, but she had hope that civility would break out between the pair, at least for the duration of this storyline.
She saw her cue to go out there and put on her worried look as she walked quickly down the aisle, making sure to look at Chris and Kurt with trepidation. She made brief eye contact with Chris as she climbed into the ring and he fought the smirk off of his face as he looked at her. He couldn't help it, he had fun with Stephanie and she made him laugh sometimes with her boldness towards Hunter. She bent over her boyfriend and checked up on him, knowing that he was essentially okay. While she ran her hand down his cheek, she caught the ghost of a smile on his lips and wondered what he was thinking about right then.
But before she could truly contemplate what was going on, she could hear the cheers of the crowd, and she knew what was coming next. She could see Chris's feet getting closer and closer, walking cockily over to her. She leaned back and looked up at him from her knees, and momentarily thought of how funny this must look, and how much people were thinking that she was exactly like she was now, constantly on her knees in front of men. The fact that it was Chris of all people made it funnier, for reasons that people would less than a week from now.
She pretended to be frightened of him, but she couldn't really muster it up to look terrified. She looked nervous at best as she stood up slowly in front of him. She put her hand over her abdomen and shook her head as Chris looked at her like she was his prey. He kept stalking closer to her as she kept telling him not to hurt her baby. He smirked at her, a nice smirk and she knew that if people could read between the lines, they would see that Chris had no intention of hurting her, but was in fact, storyline-wise, this fake baby's father, since she was having a fake affair with him. She felt her back against the ring-post and looked up at him as he was muttering nonsensical words at her.
It was funny in that one moment she found herself staring into his eyes. They were so blue right now, and she was reminded in a way of how he had looked last night, in that brief second when she had realized he was going to kiss her. Funny how that was the thought running through her mind when she hadn't even seen his eyes before she felt his lips. But that was what was coming to her now, and she was starting to find that shade of blue so mesmerizing and entrancing.
At least it was until Chris turned and got whacked in the head with the chair, which was not in script at all. Chris hardly had time to prepare for it as the chair landed smack on his head. Stephanie's eyes widened and her first instinct was to check on him, but Hunter was coming over to her. She wanted to question him, but she knew that she had to do a spot where Kurt knocked Hunter into her, so she waited for it to happen, but as she waited, her anger started to build. So much so that when she got backstage, the first thing she did was turn to Hunter and start to yell.
"What the hell was that! That wasn't in the script!" Stephanie screamed at him.
"What?" he asked innocently.
"You were supposed to grab Chris and punch him a couple times and throw him out of the ring," she told him, like he was suddenly stupid or something. "You were not supposed to hit him with a chair!"
"Well, I got caught up in the moment," he shrugged. "Jericho'll live."
"That's not the point, you…" she stopped herself short as she glared at him. "You did that on purpose didn't you? You didn't get caught in the moment. You did that on purpose because you're still mad about yesterday."
"Oh get over yourself, Stephanie, that's not why I did it."
"Oh yeah, I'm so positively sure about that," Stephanie said. "Look, the reason we write a script is so that it's followed. You are not above the script, you are not above anyone here, Hunter, get that through your head. I make the rules."
"I didn't do it on purpose," he said slowly. "I thought it would go over better."
She took a deep breath to calm herself down and looked at him, weighing her words carefully. "Well, next time you think it'll go over better, it won't, trust me. So stick to the script next time."
She turned to go and he called out after her, "Where are you going?"
"Where do you think I'm going?" she asked sarcastically. "I'm going to go see if Chris is alright."
"What the hell?" Hunter said, catching up to her and grabbing her arm and making her face him. "Why the sudden concern about Chris, huh Stephanie? Is there something that you want to tell me?"
"Other than let go of my arm, nope, not a thing to tell you," Stephanie told him, pulling her arm out of his grasp roughly. "Chris is one of my employees and not to mention one of my friends, so I'm going to go see how he is, whether you like it or not."
"Who cares about him?" Hunter told her. "Look, he's fine, we both know it, the man is tough, he can stand to be by himself right now. Let's just go, we'll calm down, have some dinner and then we can go back to our hotel room and go to bed."
"If you think I'm…no…no, I'm not going to get into it with you again," she said, shaking her head as she ran a hand through her straight hair, glad they hadn't put it in some awful style tonight. "Look, I'm not going to argue over this with you again. You are being completely unreasonable about this entire thing, and it's starting to make me curious as to why you're so against Chris."
"What? This isn't about me."
"Oh don't bullshit me, of course it's about you," Stephanie said, glaring at him. "You have some vendetta against Chris and you hate the fact you have to deal with him, that I have to deal with him. So spit it out Hunter, I've been wanting the answer to the million dollar question for a while now, what is it that makes you so hateful towards Chris?"
"Look, if you want to go see him, go see him for all I care," Hunter said before stalking off. Stephanie watched him go, wondering why he was so angry towards Chris. From all accounts, Chris had done nothing to him and he just couldn't figure that man out. If she didn't love him, she would've thrown herself through a glass window already. She sighed to herself, smoothing out her hair unconsciously as she made her way towards Chris's locker room.
When she arrived, she knocked tentatively on the door and then opened it a crack to say, "Chris, are you decent? Can I come in?" She didn't hear anything, and knocked again. "Chris, can you hear me? Are you okay? I'm going to come inside, okay?"
"You can go inside, but I won't be in there," a voice said from behind her.
She jumped and squeaked a little as Chris startled her. She turned around a placed her hand on her stomach. "Oh God, I thought you were in your locker room, you scared me."
"Sorry about that," he apologized, rubbing his forehead a little.
"Oh God, are you okay?" Stephanie said, stepping up to him and taking his hand away from his forehead, studying it as if there was writing on it. "Did Hunter hit you really hard? I don't know what came over him, it wasn't planned and he's been so--"
"I'm fine, Steph," he told her, taking her hand away from his forehead, although he had been enjoying the coolness of her hand against his warm forehead. It had soothed his throbbing muscles that were starting to give him a headache. "Nothing a little aspirin and some sleep won't cure."
"I'm really sorry about that," Stephanie said, sounding sad. "I didn't know he was going to do that, I would've given you warning, but I just didn't see it in time, I'm so sorry."
"It's not your fault," Chris told her, "You can go, I'll be fine. I promise."
"I don't…"
"You don't what?" he wondered.
"I just want to make sure that you're really okay. I feel like some of this is my fault. Hunter has this thing against you, I don't know why, it's been brewing, he's been a jerk and…"
"Are you really sure that you want to go through with this, Steph? I really only seem to be causing a problem between you and your boyfriend and I never wanted that for you. Here you are apologizing for something that he did. That's not right."
"No, it's not right, but Hunter is stubborn, you know what that's like," Stephanie said softly and Chris had to chuckle at that. She smiled and continued. "See, you know what its like. I mean, picture Jessica in something like this, not too pretty a picture huh?"
"You've got a point," Chris said. "So we just trudge on?"
"Yeah, we just trudge on," she nodded. "And you're sure that you're okay?" She stepped up to him again and ran her hand down his cheek, as if checking something. She gently cupped his chin and studied the top of his head, looking for any bumps or bruising. While she was doing that, Chris was looking at her face, the way her lips were pursed to one side as she scrutinized his face and how alert her eyes were, blue and gray with each move, the light deciding which color they would be. He shook his thoughts away, wondering if that hit had caused him to be in a daze or what. He had to be to get lost in her face like that.
"I'm fine, Steph," he whispered.
"You looked a little out of it just now, are you sure a hospital--"
He took her hand from his chin and held it loosely in his own, letting it drop from his face. "Yeah, I'm fine. I'm going to be fine. As long as Hunter won't always be gunning for me, I think I'll survive this storyline with you."
"Oh," she said, flexing her superiority playfully, "You think you can survive me?" Chris gave her a once-over, going from her smirk to her feet and back up, pleasantly surprised to find the smirk replaced by a wide grin that reached her entire face.
"Ms. McMahon, if I'm going to survive anything, it's definitely going to be you."