FicWad

"The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away!" screamed the Reverend Stephen Bailey from his pulpit. His congregation, amassed below, roared in approval.

In the front pew, Bill Bailey rolled his eyes. The seventeen-year-old singer had recently discovered that his real father was a man named William Rose, Sr., and that he had been adopted by Stephen Bailey at the age of three. He wasn't planning on staying at home much longer; in fact, he wanted to be out of Indiana by Friday.

Stephen saw his stepson roll his eyes and, in a fit of rage brought on partially by the alcohol and partially by natural hatred for Bill, lunged from the pulpit, grabbed Bill's shirt collar, and dragged him to the front of the church. Several members of the congregation gasped, noticing Bill's long hair and slouched shoulders.

"Do you see this young man?! This is the spawn of Satan, my flock, the Devil's child!" Stephen shook Bill by the collar, and he reached over and shoved angrily at the Reverend.

"Take your fuckin' hands off me," Bill hissed viciously. "I'm not your son anymore."

"We must cleanse him!" screamed Stephen, now totally insane with blind hatred and the frenetic furor of the church. He began to drag Bill down to the Baptismal font, but Bill shook himself free and came face-to-face with his stepfather.

"Fuck you!" yelled Bill. "Fuck you, and fuck your religion, because this is the most hypocritical church in the world!"

Stephen just stared for a moment in shock at his stepson. Then his fist swung out and made contact with Bill's nose. The bone cracked and blood poured from his nostrils. As the red-haired teenager let out a cry of pain and reached up to fix his nose, Stephen's foot shot out and he kicked Bill in the stomach. He doubled over, gasping, as punches and kicks rained on him from all sides.

Suddenly it was all over; Stephen was being hauled off Bill and Bill was being dragged to his feet. The member of the congregation who had separated them was a big man, broad-shouldered, with a handlebar mustache and gleaming eyes. He said:

"Stephen, go back and finish your sermon. And you--" he pointed a long finger at Bill-- "you get out of here. No one wants to see your face around Lafayette anymore. Got it, punk?"

Bill rose to his feet, pinching his nose. Standing straight up, he was just as tall as the man, but not nearly as big. He glared at him, straight in the eyes, and he said, keeping his voice low and biting:

"One day, you faggit, I'm going to be the most famous rock singer on this planet, and you're gonna wish you had been nicer to me, because I'm not gonna give two shits about how this state is doing, and when I tour here, I'm not gonna bother stopping by Lafayette."

The man laughed sarcastically. "Yeah right."

"You respect your elders!" screamed Stephen from the safety of his pulpit.

"Fuck you," Bill said again, and he stormed out of the church without looking back.

~~~

Axl woke up drenched in a cold sweat. He looked over at Laurie, sound asleep in the next bed; now that she was in her eighth month, she had trouble staying comfortable and preferred to sleep alone. He hesitated, not wanting to wake her up, then slipped on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt and went down to the hotel bar without disturbing her.

"I'd like Absolut Vodka, straight up," he told the bartender. The man nodded and, cleaning out a glass, poured the clear liquid into it and handed it to Axl. The singer drained his first glass and got a refill. He heard someone call his name but his brain, already fuzzy from the drink, didn't really register it until he felt a pair of unfamiliar hands on his shoulders and turned to face...

"Brynn? Brynn Daniels? Is that you?" Surprise flickered across Axl's face; though Brynn had been touring with them now for nearly a month, she had never approached him, preferring to stay with Duff or Matt, neither of whom had a steady girlfriend.

"Yes, Axl," cooed Brynn softly, "it's me." She reached over with one of her perfectly manicured hands and took the bottle from him. "What're you doing down here, drinking vodka?"

Axl reached out and took the glass back, drank, and got his second--or was it his third?--refill. "Nothin'," he said to Brynn. "Just...felt like drinking. What're you doing down here?"

She lifted one foot up slightly as if examining it, then brought it down so that her toes brushed slightly against Axl's leg.

"I just was wandering around," she said. "Just wanted to see what the inside of a Saskatchewan hotel looked like."

"And what conclusion did you arrive at?" asked Axl, his eyes brighter than usual.

"It looks the same as all the other hotels!" said Brynn, and they both laughed. As Axl got his fourth refill, he noticed that Brynn was starting to get off her stool. Head swimming slightly, eyes blurring, he reached out to grab her and nearly missed her arm.

"Where're you goin', baby?" he asked, his speech slurred.

"Nowhere," said Brynn, and she sat down on his lap. There was an instant when a clearer, more lucid part of Axl's brain tried to tell him that this was wrong, but he ignored it, took a sip of vodka, and slipped one arm around Brynn's waist so that she wouldn't fall. For a while they sat there in silence, Axl drinking and Brynn rubbing the skin on his fingers, then abruptly the background singer asked:

"Have you ever gotten drunk before, Axl?"

"Once or twice," he said, taking another drink and noticing the way the liquid swirled around the inside of his mouth, cooling his tongue and cheeks, then burned on the way down his throat and into his stomach. He let out a sigh and put the glass down on the bar. The bartender started to refill it but Axl put out his hand:

"No, man, no more."

"Good," muttered the bartender, too low for Axl to hear. The lead singer had just finished his fifth glass of vodka, which was way more than most people could handle.

Brynn passed her hand along Axl's thigh, and he tensed up and shivered a little; the memory of his stepfather's abuse was still strong in his mind from the dream, and he didn't like being touched by someone who wasn't Laurie.

"D'you know something, Brynn? You're really pretty," said Axl after a bit. His vision swam before him; as he studied the side of Brynn's neck he felt a sudden pulsing between his eyebrows and had to steady himself against a rush of nausea.

She turned around in his arms and smiled beatifically at him. "Really?" she said.

"Uh-huh."

Their lips met. A corner of Axl's mind screamed, you better knock it off! but he ignored it and slid his tongue between her lips, tasting her. The vodka told him to put his hand up her shirt, and he did, feeling around for her breasts and rubbing his thumb against them. She moaned into his mouth and ground her hips against his; there wasn't anything in the world anymore, nothing except Brynn and her beautiful, luscious body...

"Axl?"

He heard her call his name but couldn't quite bring himself to let go of Brynn. He retracted his hand from beneath her shirt and mumbled something into her mouth that was a cross between "get off" and "shut up".

"Axl." He felt her hand on his collar and before he quite knew what was happening to him he was being dragged backwards off the stool. His head was pounding again; vision swimming; his gut roiling inside of him, reacting, finally, to the enormous amount of vodka he'd drunk. He turned around and came face-to-face with Laurie, who was still wearing her pajamas and looked positively furious.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing?" she asked angrily, locking her eyes onto his and noticing how bloodshot and swollen his were.

He wrenched his neck so that her fingers would leave his collar and glared down at her. "You wanna explain why you're up, Lauren?"

"I have a right to be up, Axl," she snapped. "I couldn't sleep, and you weren't in our room, so I came down to find you." Her eyes flashed from him to Brynn, who was still sitting there, looking mildly stunned. "I can't believe you were making out with her!"

All the fight went out of Axl all of a sudden; he hung his head and started:

"Laurie, I didn't mean--"

"Sure. Okay. I want to go back up to our room and discuss this." She reached out and grabbed his wrist, leading him out of the hotel bar and to the elevator. The ride up was silent; when they got to their room, Laurie unlocked it, they went in, and she shut the door.

"Now," she said, turning to face him, "why were you kissing her?"

Axl passed his hand over his face. "Laurie, look, I'm drunk--"

"I see that," she snapped. "You think that's some sort of excuse? Where's your brain, Axl? Are you thinking? Why in the world did you get up in the middle of the night to go down and drink--what was it you were drinking?"

"Vodka."

"Yeah. Vodka. Why would any sane person get up in the middle of the night to go down and drink that for no reason? And then why the hell did you let her get all over you like that?"

Suddenly Axl's fury returned, and he stepped a little closer to Laurie. "There was a reason for it, Lauren, but I don't think I'm going to tell you because you're too much of a self-centered bitch to hear it. And besides--she didn't start kissing me. I kissed her."

Laurie folded her arms across her chest. "Oh, Axl, I wish you would enlighten me and tell me why you think it's smart and decent to go down and drink however many glasses of vodka, let some slutty background singer sit on your lap, then start making out with her and sliding your hand up her shirt."

"Why don't you tell me why you think it's smart and decent to fake like you're in love with me, then go off and have sex with my best friend, get pregnant, and not even bother telling me until you were about three months along? I'm sure you've got some great excuse for that."

"Why do you always have to bring that up, Axl? I wasn't even with you when Izzy and I--when we were together. Anyway, I'm giving it up; I don't see what difference it makes."

"The difference," said Axl, "is that it isn't mine."

"And thank God for that," Laurie said without even thinking.

Axl's eyes narrowed. "What--"

"I'd hate for my child to grow up with a father who went and kissed other women while his girlfriend lay sleeping in their hotel room upstairs, supposedly blissfully unaware of the whole thing. And anyway--" she hesitated-- "everyone knows that you'd beat the kid to a pulp, just like your stepfather."

In the few seconds before his hand made contact with her skin, Laurie noticed Axl's irises, how suddenly they grew from their usual dusky turquoise to an almost midnight black. His face contorted with rage and vicious anger; before Laurie could say anything else she felt the stinging slap against her cheek and knew she'd gone way too far.

"How dare you say I'm anything like my stepfather, you fucking bitch? You never knew him, you have no idea what the hell he was like. I am nothing like him."

Laurie glared up at Axl, rubbing her cheek. "Considering what you just did to me, and the way you treated Erin when you were together...I'd have to say you're well on your way to being just like Stephen Bailey."

This time Axl didn't bother just slapping her: he balled his right hand up into a fist and slammed it straight into the tender area of Laurie's cheekbone, directly below her left eye. The tendons in his arm were so tense and taut that you could see them standing out against his skin. He struck her, again and again, violently; the pent-up anger and torn viciousness he felt at his most recent dream all coming out against Laurie. He hit her so hard she fell back against the bed, where she curled up in a ball despite her large stomach, sobbing, covering her face with her hands, begging him:

"Stop it, Axl; please quit, I'm sorry, I take it back, Axl; stop hitting me, please stop hurting me, please...!"

It wasn't until he slammed a punch into her upper right arm that Axl's eyes finally seemed to clear and he realized what he was doing. His arms relaxed; he stumbled back a few paces and stared down at his girlfriend, shaking and sobbing on their mattress. He just looked at her for a few seconds, shock and revulsion at himself running through his veins, then he started forward, one hand outstretched in a feeble attempt to make right all the wrongs he'd just done.

"Laur..." he whispered. "Holy fuck, Laur, I'm so sorry--"

Her head whipped up from the crook of her arm where she'd buried it. Her cheeks were black and blue and red with finger-marks; tears streaked down her skin. When she saw him coming at her again, her eyes went wide with terror and she jumped up as fast as her overweight body would allow and backed up against the hotel wall.

"Don't you touch me, you bastard," she hissed, and Axl was so surprised and hurt by this that he stopped mid-step, stumbled backwards. This gave Laurie enough time to adjust her pajama top before running out of the room, slamming the door shut behind her. Axl started to go after her, but suddenly the vodka in his system caught up with him and he fell into the bathroom, gagging and vomiting. By the time he was finished, he was exhausted, and he collapsed against the side of the sink, breathing heavily. He shut his eyes, intending to rest for only a few seconds, but before he could stop himself he'd passed out, his fist still half-curled in on itself.

~~~

Laurie ran out through the lobby and into the still-dark night of the Canadian winter. It was absolutely freezing outside, and Laurie wrapped her arms around herself, shivering violently. She detached one arm from her waist long enough to wave down a cab, then slid into it and said:

"The airport, please. And hurry." (She was intending on going back to Los Angeles and having Slash send her bags down later.)

Perhaps things might have gone the way Laurie wanted them to that night; unfortunately, the driver of her cab happened to turn onto a street just as a very inebriated truck driver was coming the opposite way. The truck driver swerved over into Laurie's lane; the taxi driver honked loudly but the trucker didn't hear him over the blaring bass of his music. Laurie heard the taxi driver swear in French and her head snapped up just in time to see her doom pummeling straight at her at seventy miles an hour, in the form of metal and gas and blindingly white glass headlights.