Little circles and rhombuses of reflected sunlight waltz around the walls, patterned with such intricacy that never failed to mesmerize Izzy. He traced his gaze back to the source, the broad window on the left side of the room shielded by a thin, royal cerulean curtain. He could see the aubade through the glass, attempting to project its golden light upon his body, and he couldn't help but think of Axl, his angel, the man of every higher power who was tirelessly attempting to help Izzy reach that light, too.
He looked back at the door that was cracked just enough to where he could see his sleeping cherub on the bench, awaiting visiting hours to be enforced. Izzy had this unexplainable urge to reach him, to embrace him and tell him that things would be okay, but frankly, he felt as though the simple act of standing would be enough to obliterate his weak body. The guitarist suffered quite the beating after being wiped off the street by a quickly approaching truck, and Slash was there to go against his redundant emittance of the statement "We can't afford health insurance", and drag him to the hospital in the very truck he was nearly killed by.
Izzy could no longer feel his Sweet Lady's entrancing effects, though there was a sense of desire lingering within him, prompting him to scour for lucid memories of how wonderful she felt intoxicating his system. He leaned forward slightly, looking over his body with a certain estrangement, as though it just didn't belong to him. He wasn't as badly damaged as he had anticipated, no broken bones, but instead, a variety of bruises scattered all over his hips, legs, torso— everywhere. He could see the scrapes along his arms where he had skidded across the hot asphalt, and he could even see the reminiscent punctures where he had injected Lady H into his veins.
Izzy no longer knew what he was to himself, but there was no doubt that everyone around him thought him to be a drug addict, someone who couldn't just give it all up. He had no future; he was stuck.
His attention wavered back to the doorway as three light knocks pulled him from his thoughts. Axl was propped against the door, his eyes bagged and his lips still glistening with his own drool. Izzy wants to laugh, he wants to smile— but instead, his face remains still with an odd expression of entrancement.
"How are you—"
"Feeling? Like shit," Izzy murmurs.
Axl gives a remorseful frown, and the words are spelled on his lips, the distinct expression of 'I'm sorry', though he knows better than to say it. Because there was no 'It's okay' to follow; things just weren't okay, and he was aware. How could Izzy lie and declare that he was feeling like he was on top of the world, when he was only sinking; sinking so far beneath it?
He scrutinizes the look on his cherub's face as he draws closer, guiding his fingers along Izzy's arms with the same dexterity he'd used many nights prior.
"Were you high? Was that what caused this?"
"You know the answer."
"I want to hear you say it."
Izzy sucks in a harsh breath as Axl's words resonate through his head. The singer's jawbone prodded through his skin, visibly clenched; visibly threatening. Izzy anticipated such an obstinate answer from Axl, though, now as he was coerced into telling the blatant truth, he felt himself cowering into that dark corner within his head, the place where things couldn't harm him as much as they did in reality.
He didn't want to say it, because saying it makes it real.
And once it was all officialized and exposed to the world, Izzy would lose control of it. But he never really did have control, did he?
"I was high, Axl," he tells, eyes glossed with tears that made it near-impossible to see the hurt on his angel's face, and that was all he needed. "I wasn't in the right state of mind to leave the house. I was a fool."
