Long note incoming. Feel free to skip if you want.
So this has been rolling around in my head for a while, in various fragments of ideas, so I decided to finally sit down and do something about it. Inspiration for this has come from a variety of sources - Ambrollins in general, a musician friend who let me view the music industry and his fandom from his eyes for a while (no I'm not telling you who it is, bye), the homophobia I witness where I live on a near-daily basis, and this one guitarist who I will not name unless you ask nicely who is really pretty and likes to wear makeup and looks really good in it. Among other things. But I'm going to use this fic to explore a lot of kinda deep themes, so if you're ONLY here for porn, leave now. Even though there will be lots of it.
Lots and lots of it. You'll be missing out.
I'm also experimenting with writing in first person, so we'll see how it goes.
Anyway, I hope you like the fic, and if not, oh well, this is really just self-indulgent anyway.
(P.S. please don't google the title, the results are weird and have nothing to do with why I named this fic what I did)
I never forgot the day I first met Seth Rollins.
I was so fucking sick and tired of everyone and everything: of my manager, who forced me to audition a bunch of basically-useless guys to play backing guitar for me; of my best friend, Sami, who took it upon himself to sit in on the auditions and hit on every guy that caught his eye (more than you'd expect); and especially of a fairly complex riff I had written myself to be used in one of my songs, but after hearing it done decently, mediocrely, and sometimes mauled and ripped to shreds by generic, talentless boys who wanted nothing more than fame and all the girls they could stick their dicks in, I was more than tired of it.
I'd lost count of how many guys I'd seen. They all looked the same – brown hair, or black hair, a few blonde ones, all of them somehow looking and sounding like Justin fucking Bieber, and I vomited in my mouth a little every time I had to listen to them kiss my ass when I asked them questions when all I wanted was a fucking honest answer.
You'd think honesty would be easy to find in this industry.
Not so much.
I had a sheet of paper with a list of questions I was (supposed) to ask, and some that I had added myself when my manager wasn't looking, and Sami had helped when he was bored by scribbling on that section so my manager wouldn't see the additional questions.
Of course, my manager would end up reprimanding me when I asked the additional questions, but whatever, I'm Dean Ambrose and I'll do what I fucking want and fuck everyone who says I can't.
That's kind of my life motto. It's worked pretty damn well so far.
Anyway, all of these boys, who looked like they'd be better-suited to a Disney Channel audition, would answer every single question with the highest amount of ass-kissing known to man.
"Why are you here today?" I would ask (a manager-approved question).
They'd say something along the lines of "I just adore your music, Mr. Ambrose (gag), and I would love to become part of your band. I think the experience would really benefit me and shape me into a better person."
"How long have you been playing?"
'Ten years' was the most common answer, but I seriously doubted it, because most of these guys were fumbling their way around their guitar, and there was one guy who couldn't even put his damn strap on his guitar (he got kicked out before he could even attempt to play, because fuck no). I've been playing for ten years and I can play my guitar with my eyes closed and ears plugged.
But that might be because I actually have talent, unlike 87 percent of the guys I was forced to put up with through those exhausting excuses for auditions.
After what Sami informed me was the 50th audition, I felt like I was going to die. I'd been sitting in a fucking uncomfortable plastic chair for four hours, listening to guys suck up to me in hopes of breaking into an industry where they didn't fucking belong in the first place and outright abusing guitars in hopes of impressing me. I felt like my own guitar, even where it was tucked away safely in its case in a corner of the room, was at risk of being damaged just from the godawful noises that ninety percent of those boys could rip out of their guitars.
Those poor instruments.
"I need a fucking break," I announced to the room after the 50th guy left after (unsuccessfully) trying to impress me.
"Your break is in thirty minutes," my manager informed me. Well, fuck that.
"I'm going to break someone's face if I don't get my break right fucking now. I can't stand any of these guys. You and I both know that Roman would've been a better choice, but Roman's got family to look after and I respect that. And you know how good Mox would've been, but you said 'no, he's too unstable' and forced me to do this, and I can't stand this and I think I'm gonna need therapy if I'm subjected to one more teenage Justin Bieber wannabe breaking his wrist trying to form a G chord."
My manager rolled his eyes at me, as usual. "This isn't going to kill you, Dean. But I'll allow you a break if you listen to one more person beforehand."
I pressed my face into the table and groaned, seriously contemplating faking sudden severe illness so I could get out of this. But one more person meant only five more minutes. And then I could finally have a break.
"Fine," I said, lifting my head and glaring at my manager. "Send him in so I can rip him to shreds."
And that was when Seth walked in.
I don't know if it was the way half of his shoulder-length hair was blonde and the other half was brown, like he wanted to dye his hair but couldn't choose a color so he just said what the hell, I'll do both, or if it was the black eyeliner and eyeshadow around his eyes that somehow made his irises look golden, or if it was the purple and blue glitter on the insides of his wrists, sparkling in the artificial light of the stuffy room, or if it was his nonchalant attitude that caught my attention, but I was fucking hooked.
I crossed my fingers under the table and prayed to a nonexistent god that he had the skills to back it up; otherwise, my already-dwindling faith in the universe would become nonexistent.
"So, what's your name?" I asked.
"Seth Rollins," he said. I could see it in a tour program book, and picturing it, I nodded.
"Why are you here today?" Don't let me down. Don't let me down.
Seth lifted a shoulder in a half-assed shrug. "I like your music," he said. "Heard you were having auditions. Decided to come check it out."
Decisively less ass-kissing than the rest. And probably 95% honest. I could work with that.
"How long have you been playing?"
"Twelve years," Seth answered easily. He better not be lying.
"Well, show me what you got."
Seth proceeded to pull a guitar out that made my guitar weep with envy, because his guitar looked like it cost twenty thousand dollars and sounded like it was made out of liquid gold. (I still don't know how much it actually cost.) He played the riff almost flawlessly. Not perfectly; there were a couple screw-ups, a couple hesitations, but still ten times better than everyone else I'd heard that day. We could work on it.
"Can you play bass?" I asked him, mostly out of curiosity.
"Yeah."
"Drums?"
"Learning."
"Willing to be available for any and all tour dates, recording sessions, rehearsals, and all that?"
Seth nodded. I pointed a finger at him, speaking before my manager could speak for me.
"Then you're fucking hired."
Beside me, Sami hummed his approval.
Seth smiled, and I knew we were off to a good start.