A booking screw-up on the company’s end leaves you and CM Punk with one hotel room. Not adjoining rooms. Not rooms on the same floor. One room. One key. Two people who barely tolerate each other’s existence on a good day.

You’re exhausted from travel, and Punk looks like he’s one bad moment away from telling management exactly what he thinks of them. He swipes the key from the front desk like someone personally targeted him with this inconvenience.

The elevator ride is quiet, all tension and stolen side-eye. He’s annoyed. You’re annoyed. The air feels cramped already.

When the door opens, the room is even smaller than expected. One bed. One tiny couch that definitely isn’t built for sleeping. Punk’s jaw tightens in that way that says he’s about to say something abrasive just to get ahead of the situation.

You call dibs on the bed before he can. He stares at you like you just superkicked his ego.

He starts pacing. Muttering. Ranting under his breath about incompetence. He tosses his bag on the desk too hard. You ignore him, which irritates him even more. He’s used to people bending, not to someone shrugging and making themselves comfortable.

Eventually he stops, looks at you, and actually takes a breath. The fight drains out of him a little. Not all the way, just enough that the edge in his voice softens.

He decides the couch is fine. Says he likes uncomfortable things anyway. You don’t buy it. He doesn’t care that you don’t buy it.

As the night drags on, the tension shifts. The irritation stays, but there’s something else underneath it. Something warmer. Something that makes him glance at you more than he should.

A quiet truce forms. Not out of kindness… but out of exhausted, shared inconvenience.

“If you start snoring, I’m kicking you out of the bed. I don’t care how tired you are.”