14 years - Axl Rose x OC

46

A/N: Sorry for such a late upload. I wrote this yesterday, but it was so awful that I knew it would not be able to compel would I had planned, as this is a key, important part of the story.

Everything might become a little bit slower as I write these last few chapters, since we are close to the end, and I want to portray everything correctly.

I hope this meets everyone's standard, hopefully the dialogue is correct enough for readers to understand what is being said, since I did re-write this at 1 am this morning.

thank you for your patience ❤️❤️❤️

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---December 2nd, 1991

As Della approached the white concrete home, with its modern windows and long trailing walkway, in the cool December weather, the coolest it would get in Los Angeles, she was overcome, stricken with emotional dysregulation. The wind picked up, blowing the California hyacinths that were drooping over, depleted, into the stone walkway.

This intense and prolonged period of emotion, deviating from her time alone, without a friend, on tour and the inability to respond to that change brought Della to where she now was. This disparity rattled her brain for months, and now Della had come to a long foreseen conclusion: she had to speak with Lita. Whatever bad blood existed between them recently was only about to get worse, she presumed, but it was what Della's aching heart told her was right.

This aching, this longing to mend the brokenness between the pair–uneasy to admit it, Della knew this complication was of her own doing, her unwillingness to listen and her hatred for something that did not go her particular way–reminded Della of why she now stood in front of Lita's Malibu home. It was an aching that, like fire, scorched her fingers with every caress, burning the tips and her insides, her senses, in a self-pitying pleasure.

Della could no longer believe this paradoxical farce and how she was able to maintain it–in fact, she couldn't, it having caused her such torment. But now the masquerading parasite, with its lies and withholding of the truth, was chewing on her brain, her prefrontal cortex, and it was telling and controlling Della and her movements, her decisions, saying that she must give in, must spill her guts. Even if the consequences of such would be unsatisfactory.

And the divulgence of information, confirming this reality, came to Della recently in a vision. On one specific late night. Della was standing on the wooden floors of a club, her head pounding and her hearing numb, drinks passed around and poured every which way. But she was not tipsy, not like the rest of them. The loud music penetrated Della's eardrums, hitting her harder than a hangover could've been if she was drinking; but Della was awake.

Something she noticed when completely sober, someone nobody mentions, probably not even perceiving it themselves, was how conscious one becomes when everyone around them isn't. Della wouldn't be able to forget the night; it would be etched into her memory, never to be erased. But everyone around her would forgive and forget: forgive themselves for the nasty, hangover puking that was self-inflicted; forget the night which Della all too well remembered.

She was sipping on her club soda, hips grinding into the bodies around her, mascara flowing down her cheeks in lines from the sweat, the blue, flickering lights casting a cool tone on her warm skin, when Della looked over at the booths. She wasn't looking for anything in particular: Della's eyes roamed the bodies washing together like sardines; the men with their unbuttoned shirts and tight pants, the women with their teased hair and mini skirts. All were likely to be on something.