A/N: Thanks for the reviews! I love that you guys love this story because it has been definitely one of my favorites to write. Hope you enjoy this chapter and leave a review if you want, thanks. :)

“Stephanie, open up!”

Stephanie opened her eyes slowly as she heard her brother yelling. For a moment it felt like they were kids again and she was trying to get her up for school when she was a little girl. She rubbed her cheek against Chris’s chest for a moment, like a cat rubbing up against its owner. She glanced at the clock lazily and saw that it was already ten o’clock. She hadn’t expected it to be that late, but she and Chris had a late night last night.

“Stephanie!” Shane called out again.

Stephanie’s eyes widened as she looked to the man who was still asleep in her bed. For the most part, she and Chris had been able to hide the fact that they were roommates. They usually just met up with people downstairs or outside their room and never invited anyone in. It just wasn’t anyone’s business as to what they did in their free time. Who cared if what they did was have tons of sex?

“Chris,” Stephanie said, nudging him as she got up. “Chris, wake up.”

“What, is it time to go already?” he asked.

“No, but my brother is here so you have to be quiet and not come out of the bedroom, okay?” Stephanie told him. She put on some clothes hastily, grabbing her robe and tying it over her tank top. She went into the other room and grabbed anything that belonged to Chris and threw it into the room. She went back over to Chris and looked at him, “Don’t come out there, okay?”

“Sure,” he told her with a smile, though his eyes were still closed.

“Chris, are you listening to me?” she asked playfully, but she was being serious as well.

He opened his eyes to look up at her, boring his eyes into hers. “I heard you, and I will not come out there, now can you go see what your brother wants so that I can go back to bed?”

“You’re not going to go back to sleep,” Stephanie told him. “Once you’re up, you’re up, you’re weird like that.”

“Go!” he hissed at her, turning over so he wasn’t facing her any longer.

She stuck her tongue at his back and then went and closed the door to the bedroom. She was lucky that she usually got suites and this one had a short little hallway between the bedroom and the sitting area so it wouldn’t seem so unusual that the door to the bedroom was closed. She went up to the front door and could hear her brother’s knocking getting progressively louder.

She opened the door and folded her arms in front of her, an annoyed expression on her face. Shane had an equally annoying look on his face. “What took you so long?”

“Aside from the fact that I was asleep?” she wondered sarcastically.

“Asleep, do you know what time it is?”

“Yeah, I know what time it is, and it’s Wednesday I don’t have anything to do today except go home later and then I don’t have to get back to work until Saturday, so I was enjoying what is essentially my Friday,” Stephanie said.

Shane couldn’t much argue with that logic and he scowled at her, “Still, you shouldn’t have kept me waiting for so long.”

“Well, I had to get up and make myself presentable,” she told him. “What do you want, Shane?”

“I want to know why you didn’t tell me that you went out with Paul last week?” Shane told her. She rolled her eyes, “Don’t roll your eyes at me, Stephanie. I told you that it wasn’t a good idea to get involved with that guy.”

“First of all, I’m an adult, not your little baby sister anymore,” she started. “I’m of legal age, Shane, have been for a while now, so all this concern is just going to fall on deaf ears. Second of all, how the hell did you find out that I went out with him?”

“Well, last night, at the SmackDown tapings, I happened to overhear it from someone.”

“Oh,” Stephanie shrugged. “Okay, as long as Paul wasn’t going around inflating what actually happened, I don’t really care who knows I went out with him.”

“What! Why didn’t you tell me that you went out with him? I told you that I didn’t like the guy. He just…I don’t even know, I don’t trust him though, I’ll tell you that. I bet you he was spreading rumors about you and now everyone is going to think you have a bad reputation.”

“Shane, we’re not in high school!” Stephanie argued. “I just went out with him for a drink because he asked me to go out with him for a drink. I felt it was the polite thing to do. We work together. We work very closely together so it was an opportunity to get to know each other a little better. Did Paul maybe have intentions of it going further than that? Probably, but it wasn’t any more than that.”

“I trust you, Steph, I do,” Shane sighed. “I just worry that you’re going to get sucked into something here and some guy is going to use you. Paul seems like the type to do that. I’m not saying you’re stupid or naïve, I’m just saying it’s so easy for a guy to take advantage of who you are.”

“Shane, I know that, I knew that before you and Dad and Mom drilled it into my head. I know very well that guys are going to want me solely because of what they think that I can do for them,” Stephanie told him. “It comes with the territory, and I’m dealing with it, believe me.”

“I know, you’re smart,” he said. “I just worry, I don’t want you stuck in some relationship where you’re unhappy but you feel like you can’t leave.”

“Do you know me, Shane? Have you met me?”

“Okay, okay, okay, I get it,” he said, punching her in the shoulder lightly. “So you haven’t eaten breakfast yet?”

“No.”

“Do you want to go grab something downstairs in the coffee shop? I haven’t eaten either so I could join you,” Shane offered.

“I would, normally, but I think I’m going to go with room service this morning,” Stephanie said. “I feel like being a lazy bum before I have to go home, but maybe we can do lunch around…one before our flight later?”

“Yeah, sounds good,” Shane said. “Eat light then so you’re not a freaking pig eating so close together.”

“Shut up,” she told him practically shoving him towards the door.

“Okay, I’m going, lazy ass,” he teased. She just pushed him even harder and he laughed at her as he opened the door and let himself out. She let the door lock behind him and stood by it for a few seconds to make sure that he didn’t come back immediately and need something else.

“Coast is clear!” she called out. The door to the bedroom opened and Chris came out. He was wearing a pair of pajama pants with no shirt. His hair, which was usually a mess, was pulled back into a ponytail, which meant he had gotten up to brush it and she smirked at him. “Oh, well, lookie here, someone got up and brushed their hair.”

“Shut up,” he said good-naturedly. “It’s late.”

“Uh huh,” she said as she went and grabbed the room service menu, “Are you hungry?”

“What kind of question is that?” he asked her as he looked over her shoulder. “Get me the eggs benedict, and coffee.”

“I was getting coffee anyways,” she told him.

“So what did your brother want?”

“Freaked about me seeing Paul, told me the usual spiel about how I have to be careful, how I shouldn’t date guys in the business and all that. I tell him time and time again I’m not interested in dating guys who are in the company. When I decide to settle down, I’ll settle down, you know,” she said and he nodded. “I figure by the time I want the marriage and the kids and all of that, I’ll be working out of Titan.”

“So you don’t plan to be on-screen forever?”

“No,” she said. “I think everyone has a shelf life, you know, and I don’t want to wear out my welcome, I’ll know when the time comes to take a step back. At least I hope I know, I don’t want to be really old and still popping out like I’m some twenty-year-old, right now it’s fun, but I don’t know where I’ll be down the line.”

“That’s smart of you, and it’ll give you the chance to find someone not in the business.”

“Exactly,” she said. “I figure that the guy I’m going to be with is out there, I just don’t think he’s in the company, nor do I want him to be in the company.”

“What if it’s a security guard?” he joked.

“Okay, well, if it’s a security guard…no, then he’d want to be made into an executive, so no,” she said. “Has to be completely out of the company, not even janitorial staff. He can be the janitor at some other building, just not Titan.”

“So strict,” he said, shaking his head as he chuckled.

“What about you though?” she asked as she picked up the phone. He didn’t know what she meant by that, but contemplated what she could mean as she went about ordering their room service for them. She ordered his eggs benedict and then a Belgian waffle and a fruit salad for herself before she hung up and turned to him, “What I mean is…how long do you see yourself wrestling?”

“Wow, you know,” he started, but then paused. He took a seat next to her on the couch and thought about the question. “When I was younger, I thought something like fifteen years would be great, you know, set a timeline. I said that I didn’t want to be doing this when I’m forty…”

“Fair enough,” she said with a nod, “though you’d probably still be good.”

“Thanks,” he said to her compliment, “but now that I think about it, I guess as long as wrestling stays fun for me.”

“Is it still fun for you?”

“Yeah, where else can you take out your aggression and get paid for it?” he joked. “I love wrestling, it’s opened up so many doors for me.”

“Plus you’ve worked your ass off to get here,” she pointed out.

He smiled at that. One night he had pretty much told her all of the shit that he went through to get here. She had never heard anyone’s story to the WWF before and she had been amazed by his. She didn’t have too many friends backstage, not ones she hung out with and shot the breeze with. The people she was friends with were divas, who usually took a much different path than any of the wrestlers. She had been fascinated by his story though and he thought it was really funny that she would be so interested in it.

“Yeah, I did.”

“You deserve to be where you’re at.”

“I think so too, maybe even higher than where I’m at,” he winked. “Oh wait, I can’t, Paul would never go for that.”

“If he knows that you know that he doesn’t like you, he’s going to know it was me that told you,” she said.

“I’m not going to do anything about it,” he said. “I just find it funny that he finds me so threatening. I mean, yeah, I’m the co-IC champion, woop-de-doo, does he really think that I’m going to come out of nowhere and take his title?”

“I don’t know,” she told him. “I guess so. He just knows you’re better I guess.”

“So he asked you out again, remember, and you said you’d get back to him with the answer. This time it’s a date though, like dinner date.”

“I know what it is, I was the one that told you,” she said. She sighed and pursed her lips, “I don’t know what to do to that though.”

“Uh, say that you’re busy, maybe washing your hair.”

“Would you care if I went out with him?”

“Why would I care?” he asked casually. “We’re not dating.”

“I know we’re not dating, but we’re roomies,” she responded. That’s what they referred to themselves as. They were roomies, they weren’t lovers, they weren’t dating, they certainly weren’t in love, those words didn’t even come up in casual conversation. They were just roomies, people who shared a room and inexplicably found themselves lusting after each other.

“If you want to, that’s fine,” he told her. “I mean, you can’t ask him back here unless you want me to start getting my own room again.”

“No, I don’t want that, where would you be when I need you?” she told him, licking her lips a little.

“You’re insatiable.”

“I can’t help it!” she exclaimed. “You just make me horny, that’s all.”

“Of course I do,” he said as there was a knock at the door. “That should be our room service. I’ll get the tip.”

“Sign it off on the room,” she told him. “You’re paying anyways.”

“Fine,” he said as he went to the door and looked through the peephole to make sure it was the room service guy. It was the room service guy and Chris let him in and the guy went to push their food to the center of the room. He signed off on the meal and then left. “You can go out with Paul if you want, it’s not like I’m going to stop you. If you want to go out with him that is.”

“I don’t have the slightest idea,” Stephanie said. “He’s a nice guy…well, to me.”

“He did say that he wanted to make out with you though,” Chris remembered, “and you said that he wasn’t breaking-the-rules material.”

“Thank you Mr. Journal of Obscure Moments,” Stephanie told him. “You’re right though. He’s persistent though, and well, when we’re working together, sometimes I do feel something for him. I mean, I don’t know, maybe it’s just like, we’re forced to work together so I’m forced to feel something.”

“Could be,” he said as he placed their plates down on the table and poured her a cup of coffee. Unconsciously, he put a couple of lumps of sugar into her cup.

“Yeah, it could be,” she said, then shook her head, “Come on, let’s just eat and head out.”

They ate their breakfast, chatting occasionally about the show the night before and how they thought it went. They had done a scene together earlier this month, but that was the only contact they had ever had on-screen so they had much to discuss when they were talking about their respective jobs. After breakfast, they had the usual routine of getting their things together and getting ready to start the day.

“So I’ll see you on Saturday?” Stephanie said as they were at the door about to leave.

“No, I don’t have house shows this weekend.”

“Why?”

“Got the weekend off, so I’ll see you on Monday then? You’re paying for the room, right?”

“Yeah, I’ve got Monday,” she said, leaning up to kiss him on the cheek, “See you Monday then?”

“Yeah, see you,” he said, letting her go out first. They walked down the hallway to the elevator and then down to the lobby where they parted ways amicably. Stephanie was walking towards the coffee shop to eat with her brother when Paul jogged up to her. Oh, if Shane saw this, he was going to throw a hissy fit.

“Hey, Steph, wait,” he said as he caught his breath. “Hey.”

“Hey,” she said. “Why were you running?”

“I thought you might be leaving, you have your luggage,” he said.

“Oh,” she responded, “yeah, I’m going to lunch with my brother first, then we’re going to head to the airport and fly home.”

“Yeah, I’m flying home later too.”

“You live in New Hampshire, right?”

“Yeah, you remembered.”

“I’m usually good at that,” she said.

“So did you think about what I was saying? About the dinner?”

“Oh, that,” she said slowly. She really didn’t want to think about it right now. She still hadn’t come to a decision about that, and she didn’t want to be forced into one right now when she was in the middle of a hotel lobby and waiting to go meet up with her brother. “I remembered it.”

“Good, so…uh…yes?” he asked hopefully.

She wondered why he had such an interest towards her. There were much prettier girls in the company, not even in front of the camera, but behind the camera as well. She understood that they were working very closely together so it was bound to be easier just to fall into a relationship with him since they were pretending to have one anyways, but she had to think about whether this was something she wanted in her real life.

She wasn’t seeing anyone except Chris, and that was barely anything. So they slept together every once in a while…or every night they were working. It wasn’t like she followed him to Florida or he followed her to Connecticut or he took her out on dates or something. They shared a room, they had sex, lather, rinse, repeat, lather, rinse, repeat. She could very easily break it off with Chris, and that was one of the stipulations to what they had. If one of them was in a relationship, then it was off, they couldn’t have sex with one another because they’d be hurting someone in the process.

So it wasn’t like she wasn’t available. She was very much available to be with Paul if she so desired. That was the key word though, desire. Did she desire to be with Paul? She wasn’t attracted to him physically, but that part of her life had been so consumed with Chris. She desired Chris and lusted after Chris more than she had lusted after anyone before so maybe that was overriding her attraction towards anyone else.

Maybe being with Chris was the entire problem! Maybe sleeping with him was clouding her judgment towards other people. That could be it, she thought to herself. She could very well be attracted to Paul, but there was no urgency for physical contact because she was getting tons of physical contact with Chris. When they were alone they could barely keep their hands off each other and they pretty much had sex whenever they had the time and the room to do so. She recalled once when they had done it in the parking lot after work. They had been two of the last people left and she had rented her own car so there was no limo waiting. They had just gone at it like two teenagers. So maybe she did want Paul and didn’t know it.

“Paul, I like you,” she said, and his eyes lit up, “but we’re just coworkers, I’m sorry.”

“Oh, well, yeah.”

“Yeah, I’m sorry, it’s just…I like you as a friend,” she told him.

“That’s fine, thanks for clearing that up,” he said. She nodded as he walked off, looking a bit dejected. She felt bad for a moment, but knew it was the right choice. She just wasn’t attracted to the guy and she wasn’t willing to sacrifice the best sex of her life for that.

Maybe some other day she might feel differently, but today was not that day.