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

AXL IV

"Things just got difficult after we stopped touring. We were only getting together to record and we were always arguing about what we wanted. Axl wanted more dramatic ballads, Slash still firmly still all Hard Rock and I wanted more stripped back acoustics.

We just wanted different things, not to mention the drugs. I was still on heroin, but I wanted off it. Again, we just wanted different things, '89 was just proof of that to me."

// Izzy Stradlin on Guns N Roses in 1989

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w. very brief reference to self-harm, reference to nsfw, discussion of drug use, reference to death/overdose

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It was Saturday. Saturday's had always been Axl's favorite day of the week, ever since he found out that it was the only non church day. No sermons, no stuffy clothes and no choir. He had never been left in peace, no that was a dream far away from Indiana, but he hadn't been choked by a tie and forced to wear slacks far too short for him. He had always needed more clothes but his mother's feeble budget had never stretched, it was always three quarter pants and slightly stained shirts. Blood never did wash out.

He'd never been able to do much, but he had been able to sit on old train tracks and reminisce on what it would be like to run away, to see the rest of the world. What would it be like? Would the grass feel different, more plush and less dry and dead? Would he be able to say as he pleased without risk of black eyes and broken bones? Would his words be accepted, listened to like a poet, hearing what he had to say?

When he had arrived in Los Angeles, he had received the answer, no, no and an absolute fucking no. The grass was somehow drier and deader than in Indiana, he had received too many black eyes and sometimes it felt like every bone had been broken and nobody listened. They hadn't wanted to then, they especially didn't now.

But it didn't stop him loving the sixth day of the week, the last in God's plan, maybe with more melancholy than fondness, but Axl had always preferred windy drizzle than boiling sun. He always seemed to burn under it.

The heat was already piercing through the gap in the curtains, he'd been in Sin City for over ten days yet he had never bothered to fully close them. By the time he reached his bed he was already too tired or recently too distracted.

The wonderful, gorgeous, heavenly distraction had been in his life for seven days, yet somehow it felt like seven months. He couldn't name any of her family members or her home town but he could pinpoint the way she scrunched her nose when something bothered her, the way she flicked a pen when writing, the way she blew her hair out of her eyes and how she spontaneously sang whatever melody came to mind.

Axl smiled, the sound of her singing Wham's 'Club Tropicana' bounced around from his bathroom. Her voice was so smooth, every note seemed to hang for the perfect amount of time and echoed perfectly in tune. She was an impressive singer, no wonder they had reached such popularity in England, though they still were climbing in the States, Levi's truly was the publicity stunt she could have pulled.

Her accent always seemed to pull through her words, the dips and drags of her vowel and missing consonants contrasted heavily against his mid-western drawl.

It was on one of those lonely Saturdays in that devil town, with too much corn and certainly too much church, that he had once dreamed of going to England. It seemed stupid now and it was probably stupid then, but going to the home of Elton John, Queen and the Sex Pistols had dragged at his dreams. To go to the home of where his one joy stemmed from and see it up close, raw and personal.