Disclaimer: I don't own anything.
Summary: "It's party time, all the time!" Oh, no, it wouldn't be party time for long, especially if this Adam Rose character kept trying to recruit Emma to his band of debaucherous morons. AmbroseEmma, oneshot
Demma! Here's my second attempt at these two. There has been so many awesome fics written about them, so I just had to contribute more. I just love this pairing and think there are so many different directions one can go when writing them. In this case, I'm taking the silly route. Because I love me some silly things. And Adam Rose. Anyway! Please enjoy!
When Life Gives You Lemons
It started kind of innocuously, Dean Ambrose supposed.
Really.
Okay, maybe it was as blatant as a kick to the balls, but he really didn't want to think that he had been so ignorant of the goings on of his girlfriend that he completely ignored that she was being...scouted.
A shudder rippled over him as he thought about it.
As he leaned against the wall, watching Emma flit to and fro, the smile on her face as bright as ever, he could actually understand Adam Rose's constant attempts to get her to join them. She was a constantly bright individual, always with a smile on her face and hardly ever frowning or taking offense to anything. She liked to have a good time and she liked others to partake as well.
But still, thinking of her on that bus with Adam Rose and his...Rosebuds...well, that didn't sit well with him.
No, not at all.
The first time Emma approached him about Adam Rose, Dean wasn't sure what to make of it.
Dean leaned against the wall, arms crossed over his chest, glowering. It probably would have been comical, had anyone seen him. But if they had told him it looked comical, he would have rammed his fist so far down their throat -
"Dean!"
Dean's head snapped up, eyes locking with those of the blonde in front of him. "Yeah?"
"Adam wants us to go have drinks with him and the Rosebuds later," she said, smiling. "Want to go?"
"I'd rather eat broken glass."
"Well, that's not healthy at all."
"That's the point, darling."
Emma just smiled at him in that way she had - that innocent, sweet way that he could not believe anyone else could be able to replicate. "Are you sure?" she questioned, slightly unsure in her words, but her lips were still curved in that ever-present grin. "I...guess it just seemed like fun."
Dean ran a hand over his hair before giving it a frustrated shake, groaning in the process, and muttering a single word. The one word that damned him.
"Fine," he said, feeling like the biggest pussy in the world. "Fine."
Emma beamed at him - literally, the blonde lit up like a fucking Christmas light display - and pressed a kiss to his forehead, on top of the matted hair that resided there. "Thank you! I'm so excited!"
The Lunatic Fringe watched her bounce away from him, cursing himself for not being able to utter the word no in her presence.
Adam Rose just had the look of someone who just wanted to be punched.
If it wasn't the way he talked, it was the way he walked, or the way his Rosebuds pranced around him like he was the cult leader that was going to deliver them all to their alien overlords. At the present, he was moving to the music, knocking back a drink and spinning the Bunny around, bopping it affectionately on the nose before moving over to Emma.
"Emma, dearie," he said, grasping her face with both hands and kissing both her cheeks. Dean had an aneurysm. "So glad you could make it!" The leader of the Exotic Express turned to Dean himself then, a grin on his face; he was wearing ridiculous sunglasses - at night - and a brightly colored vest that looked as if it would be more at home on Tyler Breeze.
"Deanie," he said in a tone that was too friendly for Dean's liking. Adam gave a smile and - out of no where - grabbed Dean's shoulders and spun him around. "Don't look like such a lemon, Deanie! You have the word rose in your name, after all!"
"I'm going to murder you."
Adam laughed as if that was the funniest damn thing he'd ever heard in his life. Dean shoved Adam's hands from his shoulders and grabbed his beer, chugging the whole thing down so quickly he should be in the every world record book created. Even the ones before he was born.
"You should take a page after your girlfriend, Deanie," Adam said, slapping Dean playfully on the cheek. "She's practically got Rosebud written all over her."
"I'm not scared of prison, Rose."
"Only lemons go to prison, Ambrose."
Adam skipped off before Dean could get a hold on him, and it was then that Emma walked up, smiling, clearly enjoying herself. "What's wrong?" she asked as soon as she set eyes on him.
"I'm changing my name."
Dean had been looking for Emma the entire night, trying to find her before her match with Alicia Fox that evening. He had been unsuccessful so far, only running into Renee and Summer, their blonde hair the only similarity between the three of them. The Superstar was just starting to get antsy about her not being there when he found them...
"No, Em, you'd be perfect! You should come down the ramp with the Rosebuds and myself later on in the show," Adam was telling her. He was standing far too close for Dean's liking.
"I-I...I dunno, Adam," she said.
That's my girl, Dean thought proudly as he stomped toward them.
"Hey!" he shouted, trying so very hard to not sound like a psycho, but he felt the walls of what little sanity he had crumbling around him, felt his fingers start to clench and unclench. He was itching to break some of Adam's pretty teeth. Then he'd see what kind of party Dean Ambrose was all about.
"Dean!" Emma shouted, excited. Then, her face dropped as she took a good look at his face. He didn't want to know what he looked like, but judging by her reaction, it wasn't pretty.
"Deanie boy!" Adam crowed, completely oblivious.
To Emma's credit, she recognized the situation and rushed to meet Dean before he even got close to Adam. She pressed her fingers to his arm, and it was in that moment that the tension seemed to leave his body. His breaths were still coming out in desperate heaves, but he did stop shaking - for the moment.
"Hey, hey, Renee said you were looking for me?"
Dean swallowed, watching as Adam walked away, oblivious. "Yeah..." he muttered.
"Why?" she prodded.
Oh. Right. There was a reason to all this madness, after all.
"Good luck tonight," he said, ruffling her hair, "you dork."
"What - " Twitch.
Emma blinked. "What?"
"What...are...you wearing?" Twitch, twitch, twitch.
The blonde's eyes drifted upward to the brim of her outlandish top hat - made completely out of purple felt with a pink silk ribbon wrapped around it - and adjusted it with her fingers. "Oh, this? Adam - "
"Adam?" Dean choked out.
Emma cocked her head to the side, looking remarkably like a golden retriever. "Yeah," she said, innocently. She then reached in her pocket and produced a pair of sunglasses that were a lime green in color. A grin came across her face. "These too!" she exclaimed, slipping them on her face. The resulting color explosion suited her, of course, but it was all because of Adam.
"Take me to the hospital," Dean gasped, seemingly unable to catch is breath no matter how hard he tried. "I think I'm having a stroke."
"You can't seriously think Emma's going to leave you for Adam Rose?" The amusement in Roman Reigns' voice was palpable. Clearly, he thought Dean was losing his mind. And with good reason, Dean supposed, seeing as he was always on the brink of doing just that.
"It's not..." Dean said, trailing off, running his hands through his mess of hair. "I don't think she's going to leave me..." He had been convincing himself of that, and he honestly didn't think she would. It was Adam Rose, for fuck's sake. "It's just..."
Roman's lazy smile turned into an outright grin. "Then what's the problem?"
"He irks me," Dean said, glaring at his friend. "He's irksome."
The rich chuckle Roman gave was enough to rankle Dean's already precarious mood.
"Yeah, well, what if he was all up in Paige's business?" he asked, pointedly, prodding The Powerhouse's chest with a finger. "Huh?"
"Paige would kick his ass," Roman announced proudly, crossing his large arms over his chest, as if that was the answer to every question ever posed.
"What if she didn't?"
"I'd kick his ass."
"See?"
"Shut up, Dean."
"Emma...what are you humming?"
"Hm?"
"You...were humming something..."
"Oh! I'm sorry! I was just around Adam and the Rosebuds this afternoon and I guess their song got stuck in my head - Dean, please stop hitting your head against the wall, oh my goodness!"
"I think you'd have a lot of fun with the Rosebuds, Emma," Adam said, smiling at her as if she were the brightest thing in the room. Emma flushed - flushed - and looked down at her toes.
"Oh, no, I think I'm quite alright, actually," she said.
Dean, trying his hardest to keep to himself, stood against the walls, eyes closed and arms crossed, trying to think of the various breathing techniques that Roman taught him. In through your nose, out through your mouth, in through your nose, out through -
"I just think it would be a much prettier place with you around - "
Punch his teeth down his throat!
Suddenly, he felt the reassuring press of fingertips on his wrist. Dean tried to unclench his teeth - he was surprised he hadn't broken a few of them in his rage - and opened his eyes, expecting to see Emma looking at him expectedly -
"Deanie boy, why do you look so down?"
"I'm going to kill you!"
In the end, it took the combined team of Emma, Roman, and Titus O'Neil to keep him from keeping his word.
The Lunatic Fringe thought that things could not possibly get any crazier with this whole Rosebud situation, but Dean had been wrong about a lot of things in his lifetime, and he had been doubly wrong when this situation came to a head one night before Smackdown.
Dean had been talking to Emma, the two of them sitting rather peacefully at one of the lunch tables that had been set up for the Superstars and Divas backstage. Emma picked at her salad, while Dean devoured a hamburger as if it were the last bit of nourishment he could hope to get for the next ten years.
"Emma!" Adam's voice came, bright and cheery and oh-so-irritating, from behind the two of them. "Hello, love!"
Adam grasped Emma's cheeks and kissed them both - even though Dean was used to this little way of greeting people, it still irked him beyond all reason - but then, he took it a step further when he placed a kiss on her lips.
Dean shoved away from the lunch table, his chair falling violently to the floor behind him. He was twitching so hard it felt as if he were having an out-and-out seizure, but he didn't care. Words were beyond him. At this point, all he could do was try to decipher what was going on through the red that clouded his vision. That, and plan the demise of the leader of the Rosebuds.
Oh, and it would be such a brutal, amazing demise...
"Dean..." Emma ventured, her voice small, as she outstretched her hands, almost as if trying to stall him.
"Are you familiar with Seth Rollins, Adam?" His voice was dark, ominous, but Adam was unperturbed.
"Yes, I am. I actually help him out with his hair sometimes - "
"Then you'll know what I do to people who cross me, right?" That twitching was back from before.
"Cross you?" Adam had the nerve to be confused. "How did I - "
"You just made out with my girlfriend."
"Made out?" Adam laughed. "It was just a peck on the lips, my friend. A friendly gesture. You see - "
"Oh, I saw, and if you call me your friend again, I will - "
"Adam?"
And this was a new voice altogether, one that Dean had not heard for the longest time. It was jarring enough that it snapped him - momentarily - out of his rage-induced stupor.
Brad Maddox was looking at the three of them as if he were equal parts curious and terrified - like he was watching an unspeakably disturbing horror movie and could not look away for the life of him. "Is...everything okay?"
Adam smiled as if he wasn't just having his life threatened. It was a strange smile, a soft one, one that lit up his entire face. "Brad, hello!" he greeted, walking over to the other man with a confident stride. "I was wondering when you would be here."
"Looks like I came just in time..." Brad muttered, as Adam casually slipped his hand into Brad's back pockeet, the two starting to walk away. But before they disappeared completely, Adam planted a kiss on Brad's lips, one that had Dean gaping and Emma sighing.
"Bye, Emma! Bye, Dean! I will see the two of you later!" Adam shouted, still friendly despite everything, turning slightly and waving, before they turned a corner and left the two aforementioned people alone with a load of questions between them.
"He just...that...well, didn't look like a friendly gesture at all..." Dean barely got out.
"Well, I wouldn't think so," Emma said, giving him a smug grin. Her arms were crossed over her chest, and she looked at him through amused eyes. "They've been dating for two years."
Dean gaped. Suddenly, he was speechless, only managing to repeat, "Two...years?"
The blonde snickered. "I had no idea you were so dense about that kind of thing, Dean."
"So...all this time...you knew...and I was over here..."
"Acting like a blithering idiot," she said, not unkindly.
Dean ran a hand over his hair. "Shit."
"You're not mad at me, are you?" Emma asked, suddenly shy. "I just thought it was kind of...cute, I guess."
Dean wrinkled his nose at being called cute, but he really felt as if he should be the one apologizing - and that was saying something, because he rarely felt that way.
Emma, seeming to realize where Dean's train of thought was going, said, "I'm not mad, and I don't think Adam has a mean bone in his body - unless when you attack the Rosebuds. Which you didn't do."
Dean didn't want to admit that her words made him feel better, but he was still feeling amped up from shouting at Adam earlier. He laughed to himself, rubbing his hand over the back of his neck, before looking at Emma, who was gazing at him as if expecting something.
"I'm not mad," Dean said, a wicked grin suddenly curving his mouth. "But I do expect some...compensation for the emotional turmoil you put me through these past few weeks."
Emma quirked an eyebrow. "And what kind of compensation are you talking about?"
Dean grabbed her arm and pulled her close to him, thanking every deity that existed that they were alone in this room.
"Oh," he growled in her ear. Emma's responding giggle was music. "I have a few ideas."
End.