Sweet Agony (Slaxl)

VII

A/n: Happy 30th anniversary to Use Your Illusion 

Axl's POV:

I don't remember when the show ended, I don't even know if it ever began. All I know is that I'm standing here with a concoction in my hand: tequila and too many sleeping pills. It's over, this is it. I looked around, half hoping and expecting to see Slash running towards me. Poor guy's probably so fucked up he doesn't even remember me. Ah, what a way to go out. I put the glass to my lips, and that's when it was smacked out of my hand.

I looked up, seeing a mess of curly hair above me. "It's about time," I mumbled. He held out his hand to pull me to my feet.

"You missed the show," He told me. "We stumbled through four songs before they kicked us off the stage."

"No one even missed me," I sighed, shaking my head.

"No," Slash corrected me. "They missed you so much they didn't wanna see us without you. Axl, they love you. You're the heart of this band whether you like it or not."

"They don't love me." I shook my head again, looking down at the ground. "They don't even know me."

"They love your art, Ax." His tone was affectionate, caring. He was trying to talk me into something and I could feel it. I didn't want it, though. I didn't want his pity or his affection. All I wanted was to be done with all of this. "I love your art. I don't want to ever play another note again if you're not gonna be right there with me singing and dancing along."

"You're a hopeless romantic," I muttered. "A hopelessly hopeless romantic."

"You're too stubborn for your own good. Now, please come back home." I looked back up at him, seeing something that I'd never seen before. Come back home, he'd said. But where was home? Apparently for him it was anywhere that I also was.

Maybe the reason why I'm so done with life is the fact that I don't have anywhere to call home.

Slash kept a heavy monitor over how much I was drinking for the rest of the night. I got yelled at for skipping the show, but it filled me with a sick kind of joy to know that people hated me.

One more reason to jump off of a cliff.

Slash was not, however, keeping tabs of how much alcohol he was knocking back under his stress level. The pressure must've finally been getting to the poor man. So he was drunk off of his ass again, stumbling around to put his arm around me. "Let me go," I said.

"BISMILLAH!!" A very intoxicated Duff shouted on response.

"I don't wanna. When I let you go you try to leave me." I pulled his arm back over my head, fighting against his insistence on intimacy. "Stop it!" He whined. We continued to pull his arm back and forth more and more aggressively. "Will you let me love you?!"

"We're not together!" I snapped at him. "We never have been and we never will be. And will you please release your death grip on me? Maybe I wouldn't wanna leave so badly if you would stop treating me like I'm made of fucking glass!" He retreated at my words. "God, you're such a girl sometimes."

"If I was a girl would you love me then? Would you throw yourself at me and trip over your feet trying to impress me?"

"Slash-" I started. He kissed me. Oh, it was so wrong. His lips fit too well, they felt too soft, it was like kissing a pillow made especially for me and I hated it. I wanted him to be rough and violent. I don't do sweet and sensitive. I pushed him off of me again. "You're so drunk you can't even think straight. Go to bed." I pointed towards his bunk.

"You're cute when you care about me," he teased me. He moved away from me though, staring out into space distantly. Was he finally listening to me? He still kept a close eye on me though, careful to glance over every few minutes or so.

What an odd night.

I woke up in the middle of the night to the curtain of my bunk begin opened. "Slash?!" I whisper-shouted. "What do you want? What do you want now?!" But he wasn't awake, he was checking on me in his sleep. "Oh, Slash," I sighed sympathetically. "Sweetie, go back to bed." I got out of my bunk, starting to lead the poor guitarist back to his bunk. 

"No," He mumbled. "Haveta protect you." I opened the curtain to his bunk. He started to climb back into it before stopping again. "Are you safe?"

I hesitated for a while before answering. "Yes, I'm safe. Now go back to sleep before you hurt yourself." He climbed into his bunk, closing his eyes while I put the covers back over him. 

"I can't sleep." He turned onto his other side, facing away from me. It was a sad sight to see, and not in the pathetic sort of way either. It made me physically sick to see him so beat up like this. He was stressing himself way out. I knew full well that it was all my fault but that didn't mean I was going to stop. Not even a cliché epiphany could change the way my fucked-up brain was wired.