The clock indicated he had been in Jon's suite for over an hour and a half, and Axl sighed. He was still flat on his back-- a position from which he had not moved since Jon had had his way with him-- but he was stretched out now, taking up far more than half of the oversized bed. Jon stood by the window, still fully naked, smoking a cigarette and staring at the closed curtain as though he was taking in the scenery below.
After they had fucked, they'd laid side by side and actually talked. About the loss of bandmates, both potential and already happened; about management they couldn't abide any longer; about shitty childhood experiences. They had talked about music, and the craving for it, and what it was like to choose the love of it over eating in the early days. How, later, suddenly being able to eat anything-- and any time-- you wanted could fuck with a person's head. And there had been a minute there when Axl had thought that maybe Jon deserved what he had, that maybe he had worked for it. After all, he and his bandmates had crawled through the same shit and mud toward success, except they'd done it without succumbing to the shadow passages of crime and addiction. And Axl wasn't sure whether that made him respect Jon Bon Jovi, or hate his fucking guts all the more.
Either way, he'd spent enough time in the guy's suite, so he rolled himself up and off the bed, and pulled his pants on.
Jon glanced up. "You leaving?"
"Yeah."
Turning back to the curtain, Jon said, "Okay," and put the cigarette between his lips again.
After dragging his boots and shirt back on, Axl stood at the end of the bed, wondering if he should say something to officially announce his departure, or just leave. He had already said more in the last ninety minutes than he had ever imagined he would say to this person, and he wasn't sure there was anything he could add to it. Or wanted to add to it. His mouth did get him in trouble, quite a bit.
He was almost to the front door of the suite when Jon called after him.
"Hey, wait."
Axl stopped and turned, waited with his back to the wall roughly where he had been nearly strangled by the same man who was now strolling toward him, exposed and unashamed.
"I wanna give you something," Jon said.
"A crushed larynx?" Axl said. "You didn't quite get it the first time."
Jon snorted softly. "Nah. And your larynx is fine, you fucking baby." He drew up close to Axl and laid a hand at his hip, his fingers playing along the edge of his waistband. "It made a whole lotta noise back there in the bed."
"Fuck you," Axl said, but he was smiling already. "Just give me whatever it is so I can go."
He forced himself to meet Jon's gaze, something that had become progressively harder for him to do as their time together had gone on. The other man's lips were parted like he was readying to say something else, but didn't have it in him to say it. Or maybe he just didn't know what he wanted to say.
He dropped to his knees instead.
Axl closed his eyes and listened to the sound of his own heart pumping agonized arousal behind his ribs as Jon unfastened his pants again. Laying his head against the wall, he attempted to steady his knees. The feel of Jon's hands on him caused him to startle a little, and he looked down.
Jon was looking up. "You win," he said.
"What?"
"Your guys are still together and mine aren't. You win."
With that, he sank his mouth over Axl's cock.
Instantaneous horror bloomed like black ink in water inside Axl's mind. For years, he had wished vague forms of ill upon Jon Bon Jovi and his bandmates, and there had been outright glee for him when he found out the band had gone on indefinite hiatus. But in less than two hours, Jon had become a person to him, flesh and bone and blood, and if "winning" meant the other man being broken, it wasn't worth it.
But the thought was tempered by coarse desire-- Jon may have been a person now, worthy of some measure of respect, but he was fucking incredible with his mouth, Jesus Christ...
Axl let the guy suck him, but he pushed him away before he came, and Jon finished him with his hand. It was a good compromise, Axl figured, one he could live with later, when his mind would return to it, and he knew it would. A thousand times over, evaluating his actions to determine if he'd done the right thing. Or, more accurately, the rightest thing he could endure in that moment.
Jon stood up and pierced Axl with that stare again, and this time, Axl met the intensity of it. There was something there, the thing Jon had wanted to say earlier, and couldn't, and Axl was gonna hold his eyes and wait for it like a man.
For all the intensity of the gaze, the voice that came out of Jon was small and hoarse. "Don't lose him," he said. "You won't know how important he is 'til he's gone."
It felt like a physical blow, somewhere in the solar plexus, and Axl nodded, silent. Jon turned and strolled back to the bedroom, and this time he closed the door. Axl fastened up his pants and left the suite with as much insouciance as his whirling insides would allow.
Back down in the bar, he was both surprised and not surprised to find that Duff hadn't moved from his spot. He'd hoped everyone would have found something (or someone) better to do by now, but he figured his "altercation" with Jon Bon Jovi would catch their attention more so than the millionth faceless groupie of the tour. Slash was with Duff now. Izzy, of course, was nowhere in sight.
Axl took a breath and pulled his shoulders back, feigned the cockiness that made his strut possible as he approached his bandmates.
"What the fuck, man?" Slash said. "What happened?"
The laughter had already begun, so Axl forced a smile.
"He fucking sucked my dick, man, what do you think happened?"
"Fine, be an asshole."
More drunken laughter. Axl ordered a drink, slipped into a spot amongst them, and wondered if Izzy was still awake.
----------------------------------------
Jon stood in front of the full-length mirror and stared at himself. He'd been told hundreds, maybe thousands, of times in his life that he was beautiful, in one way or another. When he was younger, he kind of liked the attention, was kind of proud of it, even if he never quite believed it. These days, it was getting to be a yoke on his neck, the label. Pretty, handsome, cute, sexy. It all meant the same thing to him-- we see your outside, and that is enough for us.
Maybe it was true. Maybe the band had skated by on that. At least to an extent. Maybe, if he and the other guys had been born ugly, people wouldn't think something like "Livin' On A Prayer" was so damn catchy. Maybe the hook was their faces.
He raked his fingers through the hair that cascaded around his shoulders and wondered if he had the balls to cut it off. It had been long for more than half his life. It was part of his identity now.
He sighed.
Then he returned to the bed, sat down on the edge of it, and picked up the telephone receiver.
END
