Irrelevant fun fact: Today I decided to poke around all my fic archives and I discovered that all the porn-without-plot fics I have ever posted anywhere have garnered a collective 88 thousand views and I don't know whether to be happy or concerned that people are excessively getting off to them.
Oh well. Such is life.
I found an hour-long compilation of videos of the sort-of-but-not-quite couple who inspired Seth and Dean in this fic making out so I decided to write some more of this because I just want Seth and Dean to make out already dammit.
Enjoy :)
I took off some of the makeup before the show, after Roman had gawked at me and Sami had smiled at me like we shared some secret the rest of the world would never know.
It wasn't that I didn't like the makeup; Seth had done a damn good job. It was just that I didn't appreciate being stared at like I was some sort of freak.
Maybe makeup wasn't supposed to be my thing. Maybe it was just supposed to be Seth's, and I was trying to fit somewhere I didn't belong.
And I'd have to accept that.
And when we were waiting in the wings before the show was to start, trying to will away the last pre-show nerves, I saw Seth staring at me, and I watched as something unfamiliar settled across his face, something that curved the corners of his lips down in a frown, something that made his eyes divert from my face when I tried to meet them.
It was disappointment.
And fuck, I hated the taste.
Our first show was fucking amazing. Yeah, there might not have been more than two hundred people in the audience, but with the way they ate everything up, it might as well have been twenty thousand. And backstage, after the show, we were all fucking drunk off leftover adrenaline, and Seth pulled me into his side and I stayed like I belonged there.
That is, until the edge wore off and I realized Seth was clutching at me almost possessively, and Dean Ambrose belonged to no one. I pulled away, and that pity-inducing frown from before the show reappeared.
"God, what's your problem?" I asked him before it occurred to me that my choice of words was fucking horrible. But of course, I was apparently born without a filter between my mouth and brain.
"Nothing," Seth said, but there was a hard edge in his voice, and I didn't like it one bit. But instead of just letting the problem die out by itself, I had to challenge it.
"That's bullshit. Ever since we were backstage before the show you've been lookin' at me like I did something wrong and I know I didn't do a fucking thing wrong. You've obviously got a problem with me, so why don't you spit it out so we can talk about it instead of, I don't know, trying to deal with it through not talking?" I didn't realize I'd raised my voice until it was too late.
Seth smiled, but it was a wry smile that looked wrong on his face. "You wanna know what my problem is, huh? You really wanna know what my problem is?"
"Yeah, I do," I said, stepping forward until our chests were nearly touching and all I could see was the dark intensity of his eyes boring into mine.
"My problem is you," he said, before turning his back to me and walking away, leaving me confused and dumbfounded.
And all I thought was how dare you.
For a good two weeks after that, the closeness we'd built up over the past few months vanished entirely. Seth tried his hardest to stay away from me, and when we were forced to be in the same small space (also known as the tour van), you could feel the physical tension between us, thick with anger and things that needed to be said but that neither of us were willing to say.
We managed to get along during soundcheck and during shows, but just barely. It was good that the small fanbase we had didn't seem very observant, because my manager never said shit about how distant we'd become, so apparently no one had been posting about it all over social media (but if they were, I wouldn't have known, 'cause I didn't like that shit anyway, and still don't).
But of course, Sami noticed. Sami was always too damn observant.
I nearly choked on the gulp of water I'd just taken from my water bottle when Sami ambled up to me during a break inbetween songs during soundcheck and asked, "So, what's up with you and Seth?"
"I don't know what you're talking about," I said once I'd recovered, despite knowing that my acting skills were fucking nonexistent.
"You're not feelin' him up anymore and he's not feelin' you up anymore. What's going on?"
"I hate you," I muttered.
"I heard that."
"You were supposed to," I said dryly. "Anyway, we had a pointless argument and now he's trying to pretend like I don't exist."
"'S okay, Deano, it's not the end of the world. Married couples fight all the time," he said, elbowing me in the ribs pointedly.
"I really hate you," I emphasized. "To the point that I'm going to hide your favorite pair of drumsticks before the show tonight and you'll be shit outta luck tryin' to find them."
His eyes widened to near-comical proportions. "You wouldn't."
"I would," I said solemnly.
"If I see your fuckin' ass anywhere near them tonight I'm gonna beat your ass," he threatened.
"I'd like to see you try, Callihan," I challenged him, a smile breaking out onto my face.
"Oh, fuck you, Ambrose," he said, but he was smiling too.
I was so preoccupied with Sami that I never even saw Seth in the corner, guitar on his lap, watching us with a storm brewing in his eyes and his knuckles white around the neck of his guitar.
I couldn't have known what was to come.
