Chapter 4: Mr. McMahon's Worst Idea Ever

Day One at the Haunted House

Vince McMahon had the brilliant idea of having a ring-less, stadium-less, low-budget-filmed haunted house sleepover with several cast members from Raw and Smackdown that would be aired as a three hour special in place of Monday night Raw the night before Halloween.

They were all going to be stuck out in the haunted house for seven days, regardless of what happened. They would have no way to leave. And the house was literally in the middle of nowhere.

Oh, and before they'd gotten on the bus, Mr. McMahon had made them hand over any and all communication devices.

Rey had started at that. "What? Why no cell phones?"

"Because your fear will be more realistic if you have no way to talk to the outside world."

Rey looked reluctantly at his cell phone in his hand.

Meanwhile, John Cena was cussing a blue streak as he tossed a cell, a sidekick, a blackberry, and two back-up phones into the basket that Mr. McMahon was holding.

Everyone else had no more than two devices and they handed them over with a few grumbles.

"Cena, why the hell do you have so many electronics on your person, anyway?" Mr. McMahon demanded.

Cena shrugged.

"He keeps breaking his phones," Randy explained.

Everyone sighed.

Mr. McMahon looked at Rey, who was the last one who hadn't given up his phone.

He narrowed his eyes at the luchador. "Mysterio, fork it over. I don't have all day."

Rey bit his lip and looked up. "Sir, are you sure this is necessary? We won't have any way to talk to our families, or you, or even contact 911 services out there if we don't have our cells."

Everyone thought about that. They hadn't considered that they might not be able to get help in an emergency until Rey had said that.

Cena shuffled over to Mr. McMahon and made a move to take at least one of his cell phones back.

Mr. McMahon jerked the basket out of Cena's reach.

Then he looked at Rey's big, shiny brown eyes imperiously. Everyone else was taken in by those big doe eyes, but not him.

"Don't you make those goo-goo eyes at me, Mysterio. Reality TV bosses pull this crap every day. I take better care of you louts than those people, so be grateful for that. Besides, like reality TV stars, it's in your contract that you will relinquish cell phones to me upon my request."

"But it doesn't say about emergencies, and-"

"Mysterio, are you challenging me about the technicalities of your contract?"

"No! No, Sir."

Rey didn't want to be in imminent danger of losing his job, or of being kicked off the trip to film the special. He turned off his cell.

Rey placed his phone carefully into the basket and stepped back, grabbing onto his arm awkwardly with dropped eyes.

He'd boarded the bus along with everyone else and sat down with an anxious look on his face.

**

"This is some gay-ass shit, I can tell you right now," Cena declared the minute they got off the bus.

For once, no one argued with him. The house/ mansion before them was an eerie gray color and ridiculously beat up. It had several stories and a crooked chimney and a leaky roof with graying wooden shingles. It looked like if the house could have had its pulse taken it would either be declared dead or in a serious coma.

Rey set foot off the bus and noticed goose bumps rise up on his arm almost immediately. He rubbed his arms and realized he wasn't cold. He didn't know quite what to make of that except that it was definite sign that he felt strange. He felt…like there were eyes on him. Something compelled him to look up at the house.

He froze.

There was a face in the attic window. It was shock white. A little girl. He blinked and it ─or she─ vanished.

"¿Qué es esto?" Rey said under his breath. "What is that?"

He shuddered and looked away from the house. He disliked it already.

"Rey, what's up?" Batista asked him, coming over. "You don't look so hot. Is something wrong?"

Rey shook his head. "I…I thought I saw something. It was probably nothing. I think I'm seeing what I want to see. I don't know, this place, it…"

"Creeps you out?"

"I have goose bumps for no reason, so yeah," Rey confirmed.

Batista frowned. He hated it when Rey felt uncomfortable and he especially hated it when Rey was uncomfortable for intangible reasons. Dave usually liked to be able to think he could solve Rey's problems by punching someone in the face. When it was nobody's fault that Rey felt apprehensive, but it was a haunted house's fault, Dave had nothing to do but just sit there and glare resentfully at the building.

Rey noticed the camera people had disembarked from the back of the bus. They'd kept to themselves on the ride over. They usually did. They were typically more artsy, sarcastic people and didn't get along with the wrestlers, who were generally far more literal and butch and…sugar high, evidently, because most of them were milling around at the speed of light.

Jeff was attempting to climb a tree already. One minute on solid ground and he was already bored and feeling the need to become elevated. Randy Orton was assisting Jeff in the climbing by boosting him up.

Shawn Michaels and Triple H were arguing about God knows what, but Shawn was usually arguing with somebody.

Cena and Edge and Jericho were all arguing too, and Rey really did not want to know what that fight was about or to get in the middle of it. (He was right to have the sneaking suspicion that the fight was about him, because it always was).

C.M. Punk looked like the caricature of the angry teenage son who hates his family and was sitting on the porch listening to punk rock music on his ipod, staring apathetically at everyone's chaos.

Rey sighed.

He realized the cameramen were sniggering and pointing in his direction because of the Spanish he'd muttered earlier.

He straightened up.

There was always some crazy culture-deprived white person hating on Spanish speakers.

Rey cleared his throat as he walked over.

"Yeah, the 'Spanish speaking one' is in charge," he told them, weaving his fingers together and bending his palms outward so that all of his knuckles cracked at the same time.

They all blinked at him, surprised that he'd heard them and more than a little embarrassed. Plus the knuckle-cracking made it suddenly evident that Rey may have been compact and Hispanic but he was also very well-built.

While the cameramen were all wondering why Rey would possibly claim to be in charge when several other guys looked more capable, Edge took that opportunity to run full-force into the tree because a bee was chasing him. This helped immensely to dispel any doubts they might have about Rey's qualifications compared to the other guys'.

Rey ignored the noise, seemingly used to it.

He smiled warmly, immediately disarming them. "Call me Rey."

He shook all of their hands.

"Uh, yeah, hi. I'm Donald," the first one said.

The second one introduced himself as Fred and the third one, the only black guy, introduced himself as Andre.

Rey nodded.

"Okay. Nice to meet you. I was just wondering, uh, how exactly are you guys planning on filming this?"

"With cameras," Donald said sarcastically.

Rey crossed his arms and chuckled dryly. "Yeah, uh, I figured. I mean, like, obviously this can't be too large-scale of a project with only three cameramen, no offense. So are you going guerilla style with hidden cameras planted in the house or are you all filming individually or all three cameras synchronized to film the same thing but at different angles?"

They all blinked at him again; shocked that Rey even knew that there was such a thing as guerilla-style filming.

He stared at them, calmly awaiting an answer.

"Ah, well, we were all planning on filming one or two people at a time."

"So do you want me to get everybody into groups for you?" Rey asked, already a step ahead of them.

"Sure, that would be great," Andre grinned, already won over by Rey.

"No problem. Catch you later," Rey said and wandered a few yards away before shouting at everybody at the top of his lungs.

"EVERYBODY GET YOUR ASSES OVER HERE PLEASE!"

Everyone promptly scrambled their asses over there.

Edge was rubbing his forehead.

"Did that bee ever leave you alone, man?" Triple H asked him.

"Yeah," Edge answered. "But now my head hurts."

"That's what happens when you don't watch where you're going," Punk reminded him.

Edge flipped him off.

"Oooh, a rated R gesture from the Rated R Superstar," Shawn noted, chuckling.

Rey sighed. "Anyway…the camera guys told me they're each going to film small groups, so we need to divide up."

Everyone started acting like they were in grade school and went and stood beside the person they wanted to be in group with. Altogether, ten of them had disembarked off of that bus, so they could divide into up to five groups.

Needless to say, Batista immediately set his hand onto Rey's shoulder, claiming him.

"As if I didn't know that would happen," Rey reacted coolly and watched everyone else congregate.

Batista shrugged. "Well then, it can't hurt to state the obvious. I'm with you."

"Gotcha," Rey noted.

Jeff Hardy bolted over to C.M. Punk's side and locked arms with him.

Cena grabbed Edge and Chris Jericho wandered over to them.

Triple H ruffled HBK's hair and said, "Looks like it's you and me, brother."

Randy shuffled over to the two and said, "Can I tag along?"

Triple H sighed exasperatedly. "Okay, fine."

Randy smiled happily. "Thanks! I'll be good!"

So altogether there were four groups, half with pairs, and half with three people.

THE FOUR GROUPS

Jeff Hardy and C.M. Punk

Rey and Batista

Chris Jericho, Edge and John Cena

Randy Orton, Triple H and HBK

The cameramen sniggered at the sight of a bunch of heavyweights taking orders from Rey, who was obviously not as tall or bulky as the others.

Cena narrowed his eyes in their direction.

"Rey-Rey, do you want me to go take those camera bitches out for you? 'Cause they're laughing at you over there."

Rey shrugged. "No, its fine, Cena, I'm used to people getting an attitude with me. Sticks and stones."

"I'm gonna throw some sticks and stones if they don't shut the fuck up in a sec," Cena muttered. "Talkin' 'bout my Rey-Rey like he ain't nothin'….I'll cut them bitches, I swear to God."

Rey sighed. "Chill."

They all wandered back over to the cameramen.

Once again, Rey spoke on everyone's behalf.

"We're gonna go check out the house and set our stuff down in there. Feel free to do the same."

Rey turned around and headed for the front door.

Everyone set their bags in the living room. Punk volunteered himself and Jeff to go upstairs and check some things out, and the camera crew followed, thinking that they might start filming already.

Everyone else besides Batista ran back outside. Rey looked at Batista solemnly as he stretched and plopped himself down onto a couch, trying to portray himself as aloof, but Rey could tell he was bursting with unspent energy.

Batista looked like a puma in a zoo that was trying to remain calm. His huge muscular body kept fidgeting at the extremities, reminding Rey of a big cat twitching the tip of its tail. He had his elbows bent and his palms resting behind his head at one end of the couch and his big, booted feet up on the other end. His tall body took up every single inch of the couch and somehow managed not to collapse under his bulk.

Rey almost wanted to tell Batista to get his feet off of the throw pillow and take off his shoes when he was sitting on the sofa, but Rey remembered that this wasn't his house, so it wasn't his business what people did to the furniture.

Besides, the living room couches and chairs were obviously new. They'd been brought in and all of the old furniture in the house had been taken away so that the wrestlers didn't break the artifacts. Mr. McMahon probably expected them to destroy the new furniture. He had probably factored that into the budget for the special.

So Batista looked like a big, bored panther.

Rey, on the other hand, looked like an anxious mother not knowing how to busy herself while her children were all off on their own.

He frowned anxiously and messed with the mask that he always kept in his pocket.

He turned and walked into the kitchen. He realized that they had taken all of the luggage and all of the coolers off of the bus, but that none of the food or drinks had been brought inside yet. That was something to do.

Minutes later there was an earsplitting crash and the sound of camera equipment flying through the air and then not landing well.

"Did I just hear a noise that involved physical harm to somebody?" Rey demanded, running in from the kitchen.

"Rey, didn't you say that the ghosts here supposedly throw people down the stairs?" Batista asked him.

"Yeah, why?"

Batista shrugged. "Well, that didn't take long."

"What didn't take long?"

"For people to be thrown down the stairs."

Rey blinked at him in disbelief. "Who was?! Are they okay? Are they hurt?"

"The camera guys," Batista explained lazily and crossed his legs.

"All three of them?! What, at like the same time?"

Batista nodded. "Yep. Afraid so."

Rey dashed over to the stairs.

Before he could ask them if they were all right, they bolted out the front door. Rey blinked, surprised.

"Why did they leave their equipment behind?" he asked Batista.

Dave just shrugged from the couch and scratched his chest.

Rey stepped carefully over the pieces of a broken camera and picked up a more solid one.

"If they're all like this one, then they're fried."

"What do you mean, 'fried'?" Batista asked, standing up and coming over to supervise. He didn't like the look of Rey picking through sharp, broken pieces of electronics with his bare hands.

He was right not to.
"Ow," Rey flinched as he pricked his finger unscrewing a piece of the camera to look at the energy cell in the back.

"Rey!" Dave yelped. "Let me see that," he held out his hand.

"Don't be such an abuela, Dave," Rey complained in Spanglish, sucking on his injured finger. He only tasted blood for a second before the pressure of his tongue stopped it.

Batista tried not to blush at the sight of Rey doing something so adorable.

"The battery's drained. And this is a heavy-duty thing, it can't drain within minutes like this," Rey noted.

Batista went and dug through their first aid kit in the living room and came back with some disinfectant spray and a band aid.

"What the hell is an 'abuela'?" Batista asked, raising an eyebrow as he took Rey's wrist and pulled his hand away from his mouth. Rey sighed and set the camera down on the floor, relinquishing his injured hand to Batista.

"A grandmother," Rey said impatiently.

Batista snorted as he examined the cut briefly and sprayed the wound, gingerly wrapping the band aid around Rey's fingertip before reluctantly giving Rey his hand back.

"They thought it all fried," C.M. Punk called from the top of the stairs.

He and Jeff were going to be the first group to be filmed, and now they were going to be the first to be thoroughly disappointed about not being filmed.

Jeff was right behind him in a second, biting on his thumbnail as usual.

"Yeah, they thought it did, but I'm not entirely sure it did," he agreed in his thick southern accent.

Neither Batista nor Rey knew quite what those two were talking about.

Rey exhaled. "Well, that was fast, Dave, you said it."

"What was fast?" Batista asked densely.

Rey started counting off three fingers one by one. "Our cameras are gone, which means the special is not gonna be filmed. Our camera crew is gone which means our only link of communication to the outside world is nonexistent. And if I'm right, then in about five seconds our transport is gonna be gone, too."

They heard tires screeching. Their transport was so gone.

"I told all you people and you never, ever listen," Rey said, rolling his eyes and walking back into the kitchen.

"I said we'll be stuck out here for a whole week if something goes wrong, and it has. NO ONE listens. Never ever ever," he rambled as he strode out of the living room.

"EVER!" he shouted from the kitchen finally.

Batista shook his head. "Oh, well. I can think of worse things than being trapped in a house in the middle of nowhere with Rey for a week."

Jeff clapped his hands giddily. "Oooh! This is gonna be so much fun!"

John Cena barreled through the front door, followed by the rest of the guys.

"OH MY GOD," he said.

"What?" Batista asked him, perplexed and slightly creeped out.

"My Rey-Rey senses are tingling. Did Rey-Rey just say something important again?" Cena said with a frighteningly straight face.

"You have 'Rey-Rey senses'?!" Batista rasped incredulously. "What? Are you high?!"

"Rey said that its official that we're stuck out here for a week. The camera guys are gone, along with our bus and any way to contact Mr. McMahon. And the cameras' batteries are drained so the special's not happening, Cena," Punk explained succinctly.

"The ghosts pushed the camera guys down the stairs," Jeff added. "It was sweet. I heard 'bump bump bump' and then 'crash'." He grinned. That was adorable despite the fact that his little scrambled adrenaline-addicted brain was thinking of human beings in agony.

"Everyone in this whole house is fucking insane," Batista muttered and rubbed his eyelids.

"Hey, Dave! I just remembered something!" Rey shouted.

"What?"

"Do you have any way to contact Dr. Jimenez?"

Batista twiddled his thumbs, luxuriating in the sound of Rey pronouncing "Jimenez" with his Californian Spanish accent.

"Dave?" Rey called again.

"Uh…no…?" Batista admitted and grimaced, knowing he might just get his ass handed to him over this one.

Rey came back into the living room.

"Are you serious?" he said.

Batista smiled sheepishly and nodded. "Uh…yeah."

Rey surveyed his friend suspiciously. "You realize that means that you're not allowed to get angry this entire week, right?"

Batista gulped. "Uh…"

Rey shook his head. "Ay, Dios mio…" he muttered and wandered back into the kitchen.

Batista followed him this time. "Rey, what the hell are you doing in here, anyway?"

"We have like ten coolers of food for the week and some other bags of stuff that doesn't need to be kept cool that I brought in," Rey answered him.

"You could have asked me for some help. Jeez, you're acting like you're our Den Mother or something."

"I am not. I'm just nervous. I try to stay busy with random tasks when I'm nervous. So don't help, you'll just make me stress out more," Rey explained.

Batista sighed and held up his hands in surrender. "Fine, fine."

Rey scurried out and came in with an enormous box that was roughly the same size as his entire torso.
"Rey, that's like half your weight and like an eighth of mine," Batista said, exaggerating just a tad and feeling horribly guilt-tripped to just stand there and watch Rey move everything in.

"Either you are horrible at math or you are way fatter than you look," Rey responded dryly.

Batista snorted. "Just let me carry it."

"No," Rey said and scurried around Dave, triumphantly setting it down.

"That's the last one anyway."

Batista sighed. "You're still stubborn."

Rey crossed his arms. "Dave, I'm seriously worried about you not being able to contact Dr. Jimenez."

Dave suppressed a shiver at Rey pronouncing "Jimenez" in that sexy Spanish accent again. It was like audio-porn for him.

Batista gulped. "Uh, I don't think you should be worried. Really, I've been doing fine."

"You have been talking to her, haven't you? Like, you've explained your whole situation? With your life? With dealing with the other guys? With…with me?"
Batista nodded. "Yeah, I told her everything."

Rey nodded and covered his mouth in thought for a second. "You're sure you'll be okay?"

"Okay in what way, Rey? You're not being very explicit with me," Batista said, meanwhile trying to think of ways to trick Rey into speaking some more Spanish for his listening pleasure.

"I mean, like, I hope you won't start massacring people. Maybe you should limit yourself. Maybe I should put limits on you. Maybe you shouldn't be allowed to swear for this week, maybe that gets you going overboard and could lead to bad things, and-"

"Hey! No fair! You could be swearing in Spanish all week long and we'd never notice!"

Rey shrugged. "Learn to cuss in another language than English then, pendejo."

Ba-zing.

Punk came into the kitchen. "So what are we going to do now?"

Jeff bounced in, hopping like a rabbit for no good reason in his little converse shoes and all-black outfit.

Rey sighed. "I don't know. Check all the cameras and see if they're all like the first one. If I'm right, then they're all broken and their batteries are drained. Then we'll clean them up."

"Why didn't you check them all when you were over there a second ago?" Punk asked him.

Rey gestured to all their food. "I was in the middle of bringing this all in."

Punk raised an eyebrow. "You did that all by yourself? In like what, just ten minutes? God, Rey…remind me to call you if I ever move anywhere."

Rey shrugged. "I have a lot of energy when I'm nervous."

They all went back over to the cameras at the foot of the stairs.

"You are not touching these again without gloves," Batista told the luchador.

Rey rolled his eyes and went and took out his wrestling gloves from his duffel bag and took his mask and the pamphlets out of his jacket pockets and set them securely in the bag.

He tucked his fingers inside the gloves and stretched his hands out as he walked back to stand beside Dave again. Dave sighed.

"You can't complain now," Rey told him.

Dave nodded.

No one else had gloves, or as much nervous energy as Rey, so that worked out to where he could do all the examinations of the equipment.

Punk thought to go get a trash bag to put all the debris in. In no time, Rey had sorted through all of the cameras. He had been right. All of the cameras were broken and all of the batteries were used up.

"What were you saying about all these not being fried earlier?" Rey asked Punk. "That doesn't make any sense to me. The batteries are drained. Isn't that the same thing as them frying?"

Punk shook his head. "No. If they fried, Rey, the batteries might still be full, but the cameras would be defective. Not necessarily broken, but defective. But all of these cameras… if they weren't broken into pieces, they'd be perfectly usable. It's just that all their charge is gone."

Rey nodded. "I see what you're saying. It is odd that all of the cameras lost their charge. What could do that?"

"Ghosts," Punk said.

Rey frowned at him. "Seriously?"

"Ever watched 'Ghost Hunters', Rey?" Punk asked.

Jeff raised his hand. "I have. I love that show. That black-haired guy Grant is cute. He kinda looks like you, Punk."

"Uh…thanks," Punks acknowledged awkwardly. "But yeah, Ghost Hunters is about this American organization called TAPS, The Atlantic Paranormal Society. They're legit. They carry around heavy duty equipment like infrared, heat vision, night vision, you name it."

"So they're serious, they don't just go around calling everything a ghost?" Dave asked.

Punk shook his head. "Oh, no, they hardly ever find good enough proof to declare that a building is haunted. Something like 80-90% of all their cases they debunk. They prove that the places aren't haunted."

"They're really that tough?" Rey asked skeptically.

"They filmed a chair scooting itself across the floor in the middle of the night with no one in the room and the only door shut and in direct view of the camera."

Rey blinked, surprised. "Did they say that that place was haunted?"

"They were reluctant to call it haunted because they never filmed any apparitions. Any ghosts. But they did have to admit that there was some paranormal activity."

"Wow. They do sound legitimate," Rey admitted. "I would have called that place with the chair haunted."

Punk shrugged. "Yeah. They're hardcore professional. But that's where I get a lot of my information on ghosts from, is the guys on that show."

Rey nodded. "Go on. What would they say about these cameras?"

"They have this theory that ghosts draw energy out of things in order to manifest. A lot of times they go in with their heavy duty equipment and it works fine, and it's fully charged and then suddenly the battery dies within a few minutes. When they review the tapes they usually get ghost activity like right after the batteries got sucked dry."

"So their stuff didn't fry, either? It just gets the energy sucked out of it?" Rey asked.

"Yep."

"Ghosts can suck out energy from objects?" Rey shuddered at the thought.

"Isn't there some other way that this could have happened?"

Punk shrugged. "There could be another explanation. But I have no idea what it could be. Do you have any ideas, Rey?"

Rey shook his head and frowned worriedly. "I don't like the sound of this. Do you think the ghosts are going to show soon?"

Punk shrugged. "Maybe they're waiting until nightfall."

Rey bit his lip and kind of went inside himself. Batista looked concerned and set his hand on his friend's shoulder, but Rey seemed too worried to notice.

Nothing happened all afternoon but Rey was still on pins and needles regardless. He didn't tell anyone that he thought he'd already seen a ghost even before they became supercharged with a week's worth of battery life.

He went to bed early.

They'd all picked bedrooms in the house and were rooming with their groups, which meant Rey was rooming with Batista.

There was a creepy old black iron bed frame in their room and Batista suggested that Rey sleep on it. He was trying to be a gentleman by offering Rey the bed. And besides, the frame was too small for Batista.

Rey shook his head vehemently at the thought. He cited that he thought that he'd probably fall through the springs, but Dave could tell the real reason why he didn't want the bed was because it gave him the heebie jeebies.

"Rey, I think all that stuff from the brochures Mr. McMahon handed us when we got on the bus is going to your head. I saw you reading yours with like this intensely worried look on your face."

Rey looked at his friend and shook his head. "Whatever, Dave, you can't tell me that you didn't think that was spooky earlier with the cameras. And the stairs. It was almost on cue, with the stairs, Dave."

Rey frowned and exhaled nervously. "I'm going to bed before I…" he rubbed his eyelids tiredly. "I don't know. Before I psych myself out."

"Did the brochures tell you anything?"

Rey shrugged. "I think Michelle gave me hers because she was afraid that Mr. McMahon would give the guys a different, more sugarcoated one than the girls got."

"Did we get an edited version?" Batista asked, interested now.

"No, it was the same exact one."

"Was there anything scary in there?" Batista pressed.

"No, it's just that…well, one thing."

"What?" Batista asked, coming closer to Rey.

The poor guy looked so tense, and it was only the first day.

Damn it Michelle, you scared the hell out of him for no reason. Batista thought angrily.

"Nobody knows what happened to the family here. Not a lot of facts are left about this place at all. They were an upper middle class family and the father was an executive at like a logging company, so that's how they could afford this big house. But his wife disappeared a couple of years before his daughter was found killed in here. And they never found the father after the girl's murder, Dave. Two people vanish and their child was murdered mysteriously and no one could ever find out what happened to them."

Batista watched Rey carefully.

"And that scares you because you're thinking of your own family. Of Angie and your kids. You think that could happen to you, too, don't you?"

Rey crossed himself nervously. "I'm an idiot for thinking that, but…yeah, the thought crossed my mind."

Batista hugged Rey. "Listen, buddy, that's not gonna happen to you or your family. They're nowhere near here, they're safe. And you're with me. Plus they have forensics, now, Rey. If –God forbid– anything ever happened to you it would be much easier to solve the crime now. There was probably DNA evidence all over that poor girl when they found her body; it's just that there was no way to use it."

Rey nodded. "Yeah."

He paused in a moment of deep thought.

"What if I get killed by the ghost, though? What DNA evidence will there be then?"

Batista started; shocked that Rey could think such dark thoughts.

Rey dropped his eyes, ashamed.

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't- I shouldn't think things like that. Forget I said anything," Rey apologized and went to the other side of the room to change.

"Rey…" Batista said too late for Rey to hear him.

Rey undressed down to his boxers, lost in his own head, and stepped into some pajama pants.

Batista sighed and did the same, although he thought he didn't look nearly as handsome as Rey did with his shirt off and those flattering gray pants hugging him in all the right places and then lying loosely against his legs. His tattoos always looked breathtaking against the landscape of his chest and back regardless of how many times Batista had already seen them. For God's sake, every guy in their profession went to work with their shirt off. Batista shouldn't have felt so turned on by seeing Rey's torso bare. It was hardly an event.

Rey folded his clothes and tucked them into a separate corner of his luggage than his clean clothes. Another reason why a lot of the Divas liked him was because he was so neat.

Batista didn't fold his clothes and just tossed them into his suitcase.

Rey saw this and rolled his eyes.

"How old are you now and other people still have to clean up after your mess?" he asked, putting his hand on his hip, probably resembling his own mother yelling at him when he was a teenager.

Batista sighed. "I do clean up after myself. I just wait until the last day to re-fold everything."

Rey groaned. "You're impossible, Dave."

Batista shrugged. "Whatever, just don't look at my stuff if it bothers you that much."

Rey sighed. It was an incredibly long sigh that only stopped when he laid down in his sleeping bag, pulling a blanket up over it.

He rolled over onto his pillow. "Good night, Dave."

"Buenos noches, Rey," Batista returned and laid down about a foot away in his own sleeping bag.

Dave heard his friend praying quietly for a minute before crossing himself and exhaling, a little more relaxed.

Rey surprised himself by falling asleep not long after that.

Batista smiled and nodded off, glad that Rey was at peace.