My Piece of the Action

Alan Niven

Raven stared blankly at the television, bored out of her mind. Guns N' Roses were still on the search for a productions manager, and Renan was just beginning to learn to push himself up on furniture. Raven's mind kept wandering. She was thinking of the band and what she knew of its future; they'd release an album once they found a manager, get big, go on tour, release another couple of albums, losing Steven and Izzy on the way and the two of them would be replaced by Matt Sorum and Gilby Clarke. Then it would all turn bad. Raven thought that where they were in time at the moment seemed like a pretty good place to be. She was idly thinking about how attractive Gilby was in all the photos she'd browsed before she fell through her own story when there came a knock at the door. She snapped out of her reverie and made her way to the front door to answer it, and swung it open to reveal the one and only Izzy Stradlin. Izzy was the heart of Guns, really. He wrote much of the lyrics, had an astounding sense of rythm and created a bridge between the band members if ever they were bickering. Izzy might be reserved and keep to himself, but ultimately he was Guns N' Roses' glue.

"Hey Iz. What made ya come 'round?" Raven asked casually as she opened the door a little wider and stepped out of the way.

"Just lookin' for a chat. That's all." Izzy replied, slipping his sunglasses off his face, into the collar of his shirt as he stepped over the threshold.

"Well it's good to see ya, how have you been?" Raven began with the niceties. Izzy turned his piercing grey-blue eyes on her, freezing her for a moment. The corner of his mouth twitched and he said nonchalantly,

"We've got a productions manager."

"Oh wow. Congratulations!" Raven smiled, grabbing an exploring Renan from the second shelf of the bookcase just as he was reaching for the third shelf.

"Gah!" He babbled crankily.

"Yeah. His name's Alan Niven." Izzy smiled gently.

"Well knowing you lot, he's gotta be a cool dude." She smiled back,

"Mmmh. He's getting us to release an EP. We decided to call it 'live like a suicide.'" Izzy seemed indifferent to the progress, but Izzy always was hard to read. "Slash has been antsy." He added, off topic.

"Oh yeah? Why?" Raven questioned, wincing as Renan grabbed at her dark hair and pulled it,

"Well you know how he went to county?"

"Mmm." She responded

"He's been just a bit cranky because he thinks nobody noticed he was gone except Ax, who bailed him." Izzy took a seat on Raven's couch.

"Oh, well I think you guys are the ones who should be antsy. He disappeared for days, meaning you guys couldn't practise properly." Raven said to Izzy. Izzy fixated her with those piercing eyes again.

"Yes. Well- that's just Slash I suppose," the corner of his mouth twitched again. Raven was beginning to think it was a little weird, especially with the way he was staring.

"Anyhow- what's happened around here lately?" Izzy shifted his gaze to move around the room slowly, eyes flitting from one object to another within the space.

"Oh just the usual... Renan's making good use of his walker- pulling himself up on the furniture." She told him, the ghost of a smile playing over her face as she gazed down at Renan. She was proud of her little boy. When she looked back up at Izzy he was staring again and his mouth twitched- again.

"Uh Iz?" She said "are you okay?"

"Yeah! I'm fine!" He replied, a fake, sort of creepy looking grin pulling at his features.

"Right..." she frowned, and Izzy began to giggle. He didn't do it for long, but he was giggling, which wasn't something Izzy did regularly. She gazed at him for a moment, then walked toward him. Stopping in front of him, she bent slightly to look into his eyes. His pupils were tiny and the lighting in the room was fairly dim. Izzy was high.

"Iz. You're high." Raven stated, Izzy frowned and exclaimed,

"Move out of the way, I wanna see the dancing leprechauns!" 'Great Izzy. Leprechauns.' Raven thought to herself, walking away. Renan needed a feed and there was no point arguing with a high as a kite Izzy Stradlin.

It was just about a week later that Raven was walking past a record store, and being a music fan, slowed to peek through the window. One record caught her eye. A black sleeve with a photo of a guy with flaming red hair on the front. She doubled back and turned the pram inside the store, walked up to the record and picked it up. 'Guns N' Roses Live?! Like a suicide.' The back of the cover had a logo on it with the words 'uzi suicide'. A crease appeared on her brow. She thought they were signed to Geffen. What was GN'R doing with this uzi suicide? She'd never heard of them before and if she didn't know better she'd think it was self released. In any case, she bought the EP. She walked out of the store and continued off down the street, making a mental note to ask one of the guys about it later.

It was about a month after this that Axl called her;

"Hello?" Raven picked up the phone out of its cradle on the wall.

"Hi. Raven." Axl's voice came through,

"What's up man?" She asked, bouncing on the spot for the entertainment of her young son, whom she was nursing in the crook of her free arm.
"We're traveling!" Axl cheered,
"What? What do you mean?" She questioned.
"We're taking a field trip to England." Axl told her,
"Oh my god really?" She was excited suddenly.
"Yeah Rae!" "Just a week over there and we'll be back, but we have a bunch of gig dates over there." She could hear his smile.
Raven congratulated him and then bid her goodbye and hung up.
A few months passed and all of a sudden the American media was exploding about GN'R's new album. England loved them and they were talked about alot around the sunset strip. The records they released had to have paper bags over them because of the cover art being so explicit and they had a content warning sticker on the front.
Guns N' Roses was really becoming the booming hard rock band Raven knew they could be, and she was more then aware of the appetite tour just around the corner. Raven knew it was something she just could not miss.

What did you all think? Tell me in the comments!
The dreaded school goes back soon but I will try to update as much as possible. Please know this is far from over and I definitely am not giving up on it...
Sorry if i've listed it all off a bit i just really want to get on with the story and not bore you guys. Thanks for reading!!!