how soon is now? || w. a rose [i/v]

AXL II [E]

I actually do remember the night Axl met her [Andy]. He came back to the hotel at around 11, and I thought 'Fuck, he doesn't have any of the guys with him. He better not have got in a fight because I don't want to deal with that tonight. And I'd had a few drinks, so I really wasn't in the head space to do anything' And then I saw a girl with him, I instantly recognized her and just got ready for the absolute media frenzy that would descend upon us, if my thoughts were true. They sat at the bar and ordered drinks. The first time I looked over they were talking, the second they were a lot closer, next time she was sitting on his lap and then at around 1 they were gone. My thoughts were correct, the media frenzy did happen, and I don't think I knew it would become what it did, I don't think anybody did.

// Guns N Roses manager Alan Niven discussing the meeting of Axl and Andy in the Westgate bar, 1990

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w. nsfw (chapters marked E will have explicit sexual content), reference to drug/alcohol use

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"So you were the one to pick 'I want your Sex'?" Axl asked, his thoughts were beginning to blur together, a fog pushing down on his head and his movements slightly slower, the consequence of the third whiskey glass joining the table. The orange liquid leaves a stain at the bottom of the glass.

The table was starting to gather bottles, his three with another of Andy's tequilas. The wood was full of stained rings, leaking into the grain. The studio back in LA had a wooden table, it was pretty fucking expensive, some kind of fancy oak and was also covered in the rings. They'd used to have glass one, what a fucking bad idea from the start, he couldn't remember the event that started it, or what shattered the sheet into millions of shards, all he remembered that he was involved. He probably fucking started it.

Andy's teeth flashed and her eyes crinkled, "Yeah," Her breath started hitching as she started laughing, "I just fucking realized, they wanted that song that was on in the house, the Girls one!" Something about the shining of her eyes, like night skies the way the bar lights bounced off them, and her cheeks now washed with pink, made Axl start smiling with her. "I thought it was a bad version of Girls on Film by Duran Duran!"

Axl fully snorted at that, oh he wanted her to meet Vince Neil, so so bad. Oh to see that smug bitch's face fall, only in his dreams.

"So they started talking about using Girls on film, right, but then the director starts saying that the song is old. So we start throwing out different songs and I said 'I want your Sex',"

She shook her head, trying to knock her curls out of face, and tapped her half empty glass, "They didn't even know the song had been banned off the radio!"

"So you nearly tanked the ad campaign, fucking Levi's Jeans!" He knew he was getting louder, the shout to his voice, and the way the man with the red tie looked up from his bourbon. Stuck up fuck, they should be fucking happy they were seeing this side of him. They'd have already run out of the bar if they saw not just loud, but loud and angry. That was all people ever really saw anyway, it wasn't his fault he was surrounded by assholes who pissed him off. He dared anyone in this whole hotel to spend a day with the devil's company he kept and not lose their mind. They called him insane, which they probably weren't wrong, but music didn't make him that way, he was born like it, according to his step-father anyway.

Speaking of loud, angry assholes that pissed him off, Axl spotted Alan Niven at the bar drinking a beer. The man's shoulders were hunched, his shirt ruffled and tie undone, while his head hung low, his nose nearly hitting the glass. He looked tired as fuck, and Axl didn't blame him, so was he. The man had one more performance before he had an aneurysm. Not that Axl felt to bad for him, the fucker was normally busy yelling at them to get in shape, not for their health, but because he wanted a fucking paycheck. He yelled at the others to stop the smack, he yelled at Axl to stop existing. Maybe not in spoken tongue, but the message was always felt.