A/N: Alright, this is just a random one-shot idea that I got from watching last night's Raw. I'm not a big shipper of these two, but this story just wouldn't leave me alone. It needed to happen. This is going AU entirely in terms of the match results. I don't care for what happened there at all, so I'm going to ignore it , and I realize that the title is bad and barely suits the story. I'm terrible with titles.

"Kane, Daniel Bryan, put your differences aside for one night. You two will team up against the team of CM Punk….and AJ." Dread and fury fought for dominance in my mind as I heard Clown Shoe's words. He has got to be shitting me.

I contained myself as we walked back up the ramp. Letting Johnny Ace see the emotions he'd just inspired in me was the surest way to make sure that he'd do more things like this in the future. So instead of flipping a shit in the middle of the ring, I waited until I was safely in my dressing room, my tiny partner pacing a hole in the floor in front of me as I sat down on the bench, my head between my taped up hands.

"Why does this always happen to me Punk?" she asked almost desperately. "Why do men enjoy pushing me around? First…Daniel…now this. What did I ever do to deserve this?"

Her words did nothing for the rage that was building inside of me. I'd seen the bruises that Daniel left night after night as his losses accumulated and he blamed every failure of his on AJ, who was too desperately in love with him to see through his growing psychosis. I'd confronted him about it one night, resulting in us both getting the shit pounded out of us, and getting a week off of in-ring action while our bodies recovered. Nothing changed until Wrestlemania when Daniel Bryan decided he didn't want his human punching bag anymore, and that he was better off publicly humiliating her since.

Then AJ had slowly turned her interests to me. At first I'd kept my distance, thinking she needed some time to heal where she could be away from relationships entirely. When she persisted, however, I began to open my mind. I'd had feelings for her to some degree or another for a while, but kept my distance because I knew Daniel was pursuing her.

Then one night after another night of her ex-boyfriend dragging her name through the mud I found her crying in a closet, which I mistook for my dressing room, a razor blade in her hand. I won't call it a happy mistake, but it was a lucky one. Since that night, when I learned about her unhealthy coping mechanisms and even less healthy relationship history, I vowed to protect her from shit like this.

But in my attempts to help her I'd forgotten one thing: I had a target on my back, and Johnny Ace wanted nothing more than to destroy me, and considered anyone who associated with me who he could take out as well a bonus. Which is how we'd gotten into this position.

"Sit down" I instructed, pulling the deceptively strong young woman next to me in close. "Look at me." She did, her beautiful brown eyes wide with fear. Despite her obvious attempts to hide it, I could see her trembling. "AJ, I'm not going to let you fight okay? This is Johnny's latest desperate attempt to take me out. I won't let him take you with me."

"I don't want you getting hurt either though" she protested. "I couldn't live with myself."

I scoffed, putting on an air of bravado. "I'm the best wrestler in the world. They can't touch me."

Her head tilted in concern. "Punk…"

I shook my head. "I refuse to let someone else get hurt because this asshole has a vendetta. Especially you. You've taken more than enough shit from more than enough people."

She exhaled heavily. "Are you sure?"

"Yes." I said without hesitation. "Consider it a glorified handicap match. Ace can make you stand on the apron, but he can't make you fight. Besides, Vince can be an asshole sometimes, but he'll have a fucking cow if Kane or Bryan hit a woman on live tv. It's" I put on my best Vince McMahon accent "bad for business."

She nodded. "Won't Daniel try something though?"

How did I forget about THAT fucking wild card? I berated myself for letting my attention slip from the second competitor in the match. "Try yes, succeed no. He won't get anywhere near you. I won't let him. And Kane…well, he's batshit crazy, but I think he has principles hidden somewhere under all the sociopathy. I doubt he'd willingly lay a finger on you. I don't think he would sink THAT low."

"Okay." I could tell she wasn't fully confident, but her trembling had gone down a bit.

I took her hand in mine. We weren't dating, yet, but we'd gotten a lot closer since that fateful night in the closet, and the lines drawn by physical boundaries had gotten blurred a bit. "I will keep you safe" I said emphatically. "I keep my promises AJ."

She squeezed my hand. "Thank you" she murmured, and suddenly a lone tear streaked down her face.

"What's wrong?" I asked, wondering if her fears were getting the best of her.

She shook her head. "I don't deserve you Phil."

I took her face in my hands, bringing us closer. "Don't think like that" I instructed. "That's just what all the assholes you've dealt with in your life want you to believe. You're a strong, beautiful, amazing woman, and anyone who doesn't believe that doesn't deserve you."

She closed the gap between us slightly, her eyes asking the question rather than her mouth. I pulled her into a kiss in response. It was soft, gentle, and over far too quickly, but I didn't want to push anything. The only way to show her that not all relationships were bad would be to take everything slowly.

"So, do you want to get some dinner sometime?" I asked, my tone light.

She grinned. "Sure. What are you doing after the show?"

I looked at my nonexistent watch. "Well, let's see, I don't sleep so… I suppose I could be available." I winked at her.

She laughed. "Alright then."

At that moment we were interrupted by a stage tech, telling us that we needed to get ready for our match. I squeezed her hand and gave her a quick kiss on the forehead. "We're gonna be fine" I promised.

"Okay…. Okay."

We entered to my music, AJ hanging back while I did my normal entrance. I had to gesture her along. The hesitation was clear as day in her eyes. "You can do it" I whispered in her ear as I climbed into the ring. "Trust me."

Kane started off the match. We went back and forth for a while neither of us really gaining much in the way of momentum until he pulled a choke slam out of nowhere, forcing me to kick out at two and a half on sheer willpower alone. He then picked me up and threw me into the turnbuckle, almost causing me to crash into AJ, which would have constituted a tag. The narrow miss brought me back to reality, and I gave him a few sharp chops to the chest, forcing him back.

He tagged out almost immediately, not wanting a fight. Clearly the opposing team's plan (if they'd had enough brain cells firing at the same time to come up with one) was to beat the shit out me, while sustaining minimum damage to themselves. Logical, if simplistic. However, when Bryan got in the ring, things took a turn for the entirely unexpected.

We started out with some back and forth, just like we always did. It was our inevitable baseline. Despite the fact that he had changed massively as a person, we were still pretty much the same in the ring as we'd always been. Thus, inside the squared circle we knew each other way too well.

The blows were traded, and he somehow or another got the upper hand, as he tended to about half the time. He used this to drive me into the corner…and AJ tagged herself in.

I looked at her in shock as the referee forced me to climb onto the apron. "Tag me back in" I instructed.

"I…I have to do this" she replied, throwing a right hook to Daniel Bryan with enough intensity that I wouldn't have been entirely surprised if his head fell off and started rolling up the ramp.

His head didn't fall off, but he did fall flat to the ground, and straight into AJ's submission hold. "Holy shit" I muttered under my breath, my eyes on Kane, making sure he didn't interfere.

"How does it feel DANIEL?" she screamed, her voice combining a threatening hiss and a shrill shriek. "How does it feel to feel helpless? To feel like no one will save you?" I cringed, feeling as though I was looking in on an incredibly personal moment, although I wasn't the only one. Anyone watching at home on TV was getting the same view I was. "TAP OUT" she shouted. "TAP THE FUCK OUT!" Vince is not gonna be pleased at that one I groaned internally, trying to figure out if it would be better to break it up or let her do what she obviously needed to do. I finally decided to just let it go, knowing they could bleep her out or cut to commercial if they really had to. AJ didn't make a career out of breaking the pg-only rule. She'd probably get a stiff lecture, but I doubted she'd even be fined as long as this was a one-time occurrence.

A few seconds later he raised his hand in the air, and after a pathetic attempt to get to the ropes and a few sounds that were reminiscent of a dying goat, he tapped out. I climbed into the ring to raise AJ's hand, but she apparently had other ideas. She let me raise her hand up in the air, but a second later she pulled me in for a kiss, in front of the entire world. I smiled sheepishly as we broke away and threw my hands up in the air yelling "YES! YES! YES! YES! YES!"

"Are you alright?" I asked my partner once we made it backstage.

She grinned. "I'm fantastic."

I smiled back. "That was impressive as fuck by the way."

"Oh," she shot me a sultry look, "you ain't seen nothing yet."

A/N: Yeah, I don't love the ending either. But it's the best I could do given that I absolutely cannot start another chapter story. My main story (Are You Ready) is taking up all of my time, and I'm already barely providing reliable updates there. There's no way I could throw another story into the mix. So there we have it. Let me know what you think!