14 years - Axl Rose x OC

20

Story of my life ❤️

--July 12th, 1979, Lafayette, Indiana 

The sound of jingling keys hitting against the metal bars of the cell alerted Bill of the police officer's presence. "You made bail, kid," the man spoke up over the rowdy crowd of arrestees in the next cell over. Getting up, Bill walked to the metal door as the officer opened it, letting him through.

Bulked up in his black uniform, the officer did not stand as tall as Bill. At a mear 5'6, the man's head reached Bill's nose–but he wasn't scared, like most shorter men were. They weren't intimidated by a 17 yr old kid getting his 4th arrest since the beginning of summer. The officer looked him up and down, scoffed, and led him to the police station waiting room.

He passed the counter, the fat man sitting there eating his chocolate creme-filled doughnut. His stomach protruded over the stiff belt that held his pants up. Obviously was on desk duty for a while, Bill laughed inwardly. Nex to him stood another officer, leaner than his companion, who held a pack of ice to his right eye. Pulling it back, Bill smirked to the man he punched in the afternoon. A nasty red-purple bruise was starting to form below his lower lashes. His sclera was bloodied and the burst vessels leaked closer to his iris.

Waiting for him outside Lafayette's police station, Izzy leaned against his car, a cigarette burning in his mouth. Bill walked over to him and Izzy offered up another cigarette from his pack of Marlboro reds. Taking it, Izzy lit up the stick. Blowing out smoke from his pulled-back tobacco, an anxious Bill Bailey sat with Izzy inside his freshly-washed car.

"I paid your bail," Izzy said, his voice breaking the silence. May 31st, June 9th, June 27th, July 12th: every time Izzy had to drive out of his way, every time Izzy had to pay the $500 dollar bail for Bill assaulting another police officer. It was a good thing the money came easy to him, but he didn't like having to take the risk and sell his drugs in the daylight, in the open.

"I assumed you had. Thanks for that."

"Next time the police catch you doin' stupid shit, I'm gonna' let you rot in that cell for a few days. Maybe it'll teach you a lesson or two," Izzy joked. He started the car. "I can't keep bailing you out, man. You keep up this pattern and I'll be outta' my college tuition."

Bill's foot tapped the car's floor as they neared closer to his house. It was a friday night, eleven pm, and his step-father would be home, waiting. Pulling up the house, Bill could see the lights on in the window next door, the house Lita's family once occupied, the same window where Lita's records played, where he could see her strumming her acoustic, where they spoke through the screened-in windows in the precipitated spring air, the scent of her mother's flowers wafting up into their noses.

"I understand that," he said, getting out of his friend's car. Izzy turned up the volume dial when Bill shut the door, speeding off into the dark night.

His anger heightened as he got closer to the house. Looking to his left again, seeing Lita's old house in front of him every day, sorrow grew in his heart. He sighed a great sigh and carried on up the stone steps, Stuart's toys no longer there as he grew older. Looking one more time to the house next door, his anger and sorrow dissipated on seeing the lights turn out. The window across from his bedroom was off, dark, and the window was shut off from all communication.

He entered his house. The blood on Bill's gray shirt had turned brown in the hours he sat in the cell. The officer's blood–for that's whose it was– had seeped and run down his midsection. Drips of red stained Bill's converse. A letter from Lita sat on the kitchen table, he noticed when entering. Bill opened the refrigerator door, looking for a midnight snack, and he grabbed a paper towel. Wetting it, he cleaned the dried blood under his jaw–the paper towel ripped at his beard forming.

Inside the fridge, a plate of steak, potatoes, and vegetables sat next to a tall glass of milk. He'd missed dinner, and now his plate sat her, rotting, in the fridge, just as he had been rotting in the cell an hour ago. Footsteps behind her alerted Bill. Turning, he could see Amy in her old 'Sabrina the Teenage Witch' pajamas, rubbing her eyes, a yawn fresh in her face.

Yawning again, she said, "You're lucky dad's asleep."

She shimmied past him and grabbed the carton of strawberries from the fridge. With that, she left the kitchen with her fruit and went back down the hall to the stairs. She hadn't even acknowledged the blood on his shirt, for she was used to it already perhaps.

Forgetting his snack, he followed after his sister. Instead of taking a left at the top of the stairs, he turned right toward his own room. Passing his parents' room, Bill stood stark in the open doorway, the light of the alarm clock near the bed brightening his mother's face. He was quiet in passing, pushing his bedroom door closed slowly.

He looked back toward the window, the light in Lita's old room still out. He wasn't sure who lived there now, he hadn't paid attention to the people in the moving van that day. But the lack of light in the bedroom next door was, to him, the equivalent of Lita's disappearance in his life. He wished she was here.

In a way, he also didn't want her to be here to witness his delinquency. She would be afraid of him and his violence, and Bill didn't want someone as pure and innocent in his mind as Lita to know him in this state. But this was also her doing: if Lita Monroe hadn't left, then Bill Bailey wouldn't have divulged into this bad influence and depravity.

That was how he knew that he couldn't go after her in the next few months. Last year–1978–Bill had been booked almost ten times, less this year because of his step-father's looming authority. He could not go to Washington, no matter how much he wanted to, because he didn't want his misconduct to leech onto her angelic form. If he did, yes, they'd run off to California, but it would not be beneficial.

She'd be mad, she'd hate him, but that was better than her becoming like him: a delinquent.

Going to sleep that night, Bill spoke aloud to Lita. He said his prayers and promises to her, knowing that he was unable to keep them, despite knowing how let down she would be. Following this revelation, Bill didn't send another letter to Lita until the new year, where he informed her of his love and sorrows: he was sorry he couldn't write, but he'd been busy, but she also hadn't let her mind. There was no mention of the racking up of arrests.

It was the last letter he sent, but she hadn't received it, for unbeknownst to him, Lita had left her Olympia home that August. The mail was slow and the letter didn't reach Washington until September. Her father found it in the mailbox on September 10th, and it was tossed in the trash can, not even ripped open like he usually would.

By March of 1980, his senior-year arrests hit six, and Bill could no longer take the abuse at the hand of his step-father every time he returned from the station. So he left for California. Izzy had finished High School that last semester and was already out there. So Bill hitched a ride to St. Louis and from there he made it to Los Angeles.

Similarly, Lita sat on the couch of Jack Griffin's UW dorm. In her hand was the letter she meant to send out to him. It was the correct address, she hadn't forgotten. It contained her new address, but Bill would never read it. He was in Los Angeles, and Amy was the one who found the letter burnt in the pellet stove of the Bailey basement.

From there on, they'd never speak. Their ties had been cut by the people wishing to keep them apart and the destructive lifestyles of each other. Hate and love festered all over. Both of them moved on, never forgetting the other until they'd see each other again at the MTV award in 1989.

Life moved on in sadness.

1492 Words

A/N: short and sweet. there will be 1 or 2 more chapters before I go straight to *current* timeline. <3