Categories > Celebrities > Guns n' Roses
Axl and Slash had been mad at each other all day.
Well, no, to be politically correct, they had been mad at each other all week, having those on-again off-again fighting sessions that Duff, Izzy, and Steven—and now Matt Sorum, as well—had learned to deal with over the years. It was partially the strain of touring, partially their multiple personality differences and different ways of looking at things, and partially the stress of keeping a secret relationship while on the road. Slash was sick of hiding from the public, but Axl wasn’t ready to let the world know that the pro-het singer and whiskey-downing guitarist of Guns N’ Roses, world’s most dangerous band, were fucking each other up the ass on an almost nightly basis. Slash didn’t like the amount of over-priced production they were starting to put into their shows; Axl said it was his band, and what he said went, and that’s all there is to it, thank you. Monday night they’d exploded into a full-blown fight that no one on the fifth floor of the Memphis hotel had been able to ignore; screaming and punching and throwing things, it had finally ended when Slash had stormed out of their room, gotten smashed at the hotel bar, then spent the night in the other bed of Duff and Izzy’s room. In the morning, Axl had called him a sick drunk fuck who needs to get his priorities sorted before he even tries to talk to me again, and they’d been ignoring each other since, only speaking when it was necessary, in bitter tones with an underlying sense of vicious almost-hatred that was going to boil over, everyone knew, any day now.
They had a show that night in Atlanta, Georgia, and while the band was setting up, waiting for Axl as usual, Izzy approached Slash cautiously.
“So, uh… how’re things between you and Axl?”
Slash shrugged noncommittally, which meant things were bad. He took a sip of Jack and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“When he’s ready to talk, I’ll be here,” he mumbled, before fluffing out his hair and walking off. Slash was upset about everything that had gone on; he wished he’d never started that fight five nights ago, he wished he could understand Axl better, he wished he didn’t feel this stirring in his chest of pure rage every time he saw the vocalist. He didn’t tell Izzy—or anyone else—about last night, how he’d gone to Axl and asked if they could talk, just talk, in the hotel room; how Axl had screamed at him and thrown a ring at Slash’s face—the ring Slash had given him years ago, before Appetite for Destruction, with Axl and Slash’s names engraved on the inside. The redhead wore it on his wedding ring finger, it meant so much to him; Slash had one that was very similar, with an onyx in the center instead of an emerald. When Axl took off his ring, Slash knew he was pissed.
Two hours later, Axl finally showed up, wearing leathers and his Nothing is Written in Stone shirt. He barely looked at Slash before reaching up, sliding on his aviators, and saying in that chilling, commanding voice:
“It’s time, fuckers.”
They went onstage and the crowd roared. Slash quickly ear-tuned his Gibson, walking past Tracy and Roberta and Dizzy and trying to smile but not quite making it. Why wasn’t he happy? Goddammit, his happiness didn’t need to depend entirely on Axl… did it? They’d been nearly sharing a brain stem now for, what… six years? Seven? They weren’t exactly alike, in fact they weren’t anything alike at all, not really; but the differences in their personalities, their looks, even their clothes, made them fit together perfectly, like yin and yang or oil and vinegar. So they’d been fighting a lot lately. That didn’t mean anything. Couples fought. Besides, it didn’t seem to be affecting Axl any.
Why am I always the one who gets overly affected by this shit? Slash thought angrily as he shredded through the solo of Nightrain, barely noticing the startled looks Duff and Izzy were giving him. When Axl really wanted something, you could always tell. And Axl wasn’t fighting for this.
Maybe, Slash thought as he watched the singer running full-tilt across the stage, electricity pouring out of him, we should just break up.
~~~
After the show, Axl stormed offstage, not bothering to wait around and see what the Atlanta natives wanted for an encore. Fuck them. If they wanted to hear Estranged or Paradise City again, they could go home and turn on their goddamn Walkmans. He didn’t have to cater to everyone’s needs all the time; he had needs too, he was a human being… though everyone seemed to be forgetting that lately.
Especially Slash.
Stupid curly-haired fuck, he thought as he watched the guitarist brush past him in the hallway, on the way to his own dressing room. Never should’ve let him into my life. He couldn’t figure out what Slash’s problem was: bringing their relationship out into the open would kill everything; he’d have the press breathing down his back and the fans in tears and Rolling Stone would do some special on “Fags in Bands” and his stepfather… oh Jesus, the Reverend would fly straight from Lafayette to wherever they were to spit out his own two cents… and probably give Axl a well-deserved, twelve years overdue caning. And what was wrong with spending some extra money? So they didn’t really need the grated stage and the background singers and the backdrops and the occasional, extravagant parties he threw at the nearest Ritz-Carlton or Hilton. They had the cash, and Axl would be shot to hell before he let it just stay in his bank account. Besides, he knew what Slash would spend it on: drugs and booze.
It wasn’t like Axl didn’t love Slash. Oh no. He loved him, more than he’d loved anyone in his entire life. Slash, and what they had, meant the entire world to Axl. But recently he’d been getting the sinking suspicion that there was something in Slash’s life that would always take predominance over the singer, and that was liquor and blow. Axl didn’t care if Slash drank at parties, in moderation, with someone to drive him back to the hotel after. Hell, he didn’t even really care if Slash did a few rocks here and there. But Axl had also grown up in a secluded Christian town, where everyone was always in everyone else’s business, and there were some things that you just couldn’t change your mind about, no matter how hard you tried.
Sometimes, Axl reflected as he walked into his dressing room and slammed the door shut, I think maybe Slash means more to me than I do to him.
~~~
Several hours later, after ignoring two waves of groupies and refusing to speak to a rather frantic-sounding Duff, Slash decided it was time to go talk to Axl. This couldn’t keep going on. It just couldn’t. They didn’t play nearly as well when they were mad at each other, and they both knew it. He would go to Axl’s dressing room, and make him talk to him, make him just sit there and listen, for once. Slash knew Axl would probably have some long-ass speech prepared, with some form of a vague apology thrown in at some point, and he didn’t want to hear it, in all honesty. He wasn’t in the mood for Axl’s rants, not tonight, he was only looking for one thing: communication. Something which, frankly, had been lacking between them for quite some time now. If they split, so be it. At least there wouldn’t be this tightrope tension between them anymore. One of them would leave the band—though Slash suspected he’d be kicked out before Axl would abandon his dream—and everyone would be happy.
Well, no, but keep telling yourself that, Hudson. Maybe you’ll actually believe it one day.
He reached Axl’s dressing room and knocked. A moment later the singer answered, wearing boxers and nothing else. He’d washed his hair and was clearly in the middle of drying it; Slash could hear the blow dryer whirring faintly in the adjoining bathroom.
“You wanted something?” Axl asked, a bit warily.
“You realize it’s nearly one in the morning and we’re still here,” said Slash. Not at all what he’d meant to say, but hey… nothing ever went the way it was expected to go when you were with Axl Rose.
The redhead shrugged, then took a step backwards. “Come in?” he suggested, and Slash did. The room smelled like Axl—leather and nicotine and strawberries and chocolate and that cologne he always wore—and Slash did his best not to inhale the scent he’d been missing for the past week. Axl wandered into the bathroom again.
“Just be a minute,” he called over the sound of the dryer. “Sit, if you want.”
Treats me like a dog, like he can order me around. Still, Slash sat, and waited for Axl to finish drying his hair. It took fifteen minutes, and Slash was getting a bit impatient by the time the singer walked back out, running his fingers through his hair, fixing it up. He sat across from Slash and said:
“What do you want?”
“I’d have thought that would be perfectly obvious to you, Axl.”
“No, actually, it isn’t. You’ve been ignoring me for the past week, and all of a sudden, you show up in my dressing room like, now read my fucking mind; know what I want so I don’t have to say it.”
Slash’s mouth dropped open. “Ignoring you?! I haven’t been fucking ignoring you; if anything, you’ve been the one avoiding me. You threw the fucking ring at me, or have you forgotten that?” He reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out the ring, holding it in Axl’s face. The singer frowned and shoved Slash’s hand away.
“You’re just pissed because I’m not wearing one more emblem to signify that I fuck you every night.”
“Oh please, Axl, I fuck you. You couldn’t fucking top if you tried, you shit pansy.”
His emerald eyes narrowed and flashed and turned a dangerous, hellish green shade. “Don’t start that shit, Slash. You know good and damn well why I don’t… Anyway, I don’t see why you’re being all pissy about my giving you that ring back; we all know what you wear that bandanna in your pocket for. And we all know who gave me the goddamn nipple ring, which literally everyone can see once I take my shirt off.” He knew what Slash was getting at—he was about to start up again on how they should come out—and Axl did not want to hear that again. When would the guitarist respect his choice? How much would it take for Axl to get things back to the way they were in the eighties?
“You took off the ring though, Axl,” Slash snarled, frustration and hurt making him agitatedly run his fingers through his hair. “You might as well be dumping me.”
“I should dump your ass,” Axl hissed back, surprised but not willing to show it. He stood and started pacing, and Slash wondered if he knew how much like a wild animal he looked when he was angry. “You don’t like any of my ideas anymore—”
“The fuck is this coming from?”
“Oh please, Slash, I ain’t stupid. You hate the setup for this tour. You hate Tracy and Roberta and Dizzy; you’re gonna hate that fucking horn player I’m thinking about hiring; you hate the parties I throw.”
“I just think it’s a waste of money, that’s all.”
“You think everything not spent on your fucking heroin is a waste of money,” Axl snapped. Slash was on his feet in an instant, as Axl had known he would be, and he shoved the ring back into his pocket and walked up to face Axl, gripping his shoulders in his hands, forcing the singer to stand still.
“That’s not true and you know it.”
“Yeah? It’s not? I bet you’re strung out right now, aren’t you, Slash?” Axl’s voice took on a mocking, caustic tone; it sounded whiny even to his ears, but when he was upset, this is what happened.
This wasn’t at all where Slash had intended the discussion to go. It wasn’t going to end well tonight, but he’d known that already. Not strung out, just drunk off my ass, he thought, but didn’t say it out loud. Instead, he did the only thing he knew to do when he needed Axl to stop talking: he kissed him. Not gently, not passionately, but forcefully, brutally. Like he was attacking him. He shoved him backwards, and the singer was too startled to protest in time, and Slash had him pinned against the wall in a matter of seconds, gripping his collar in his hands and ravaging his lips viciously, all the anger and hatred he’d been feeling inside of him coming out in this one act.
“Get the fuck off!” Axl snarled, or tried to, because Slash was biting his lips and drawing blood and it hurt like hell. He shoved his leg between Slash’s, trying to maintain some semblance of balance, but all that did was open up a new doorway for Slash to go through, and he did: he reached down and grabbed at Axl’s groin, roughly seizing his cock through his tight leather pants and squeezing hard. Axl made a surprised yelp at the back of his throat and automatically, instinctively, his free hand came out and smacked Slash across the face. Axl wasn’t a big man, but he was a fighter, and his punches came hard and unpredictable. Caught off guard, the guitarist reeled backwards, and Axl straightened up instantly, reaching up and wiping at his lips. The amount of blood that came off his skin and his tongue scared him a little bit, and with a sudden, animalistic cry, he launched himself at Slash, throwing them both to the ground and slamming his fists repeatedly into the guitarist’s face. Slash’s hands came up automatically to shield his head, but he found Axl’s thin wrists in easy distance, and he grabbed them instead, stilling the beatings and shoving up, forcing Axl off him. They changed positions, so that Slash was straddling Axl instead, and then he hissed:
“You wanna fuck me? You want me to mark you mine in just one more way?” He was reaching down and unzipping his pants, and then, with the fluidity of a trained expert, he let go of Axl’s wrists and hit him, a hard, knuckles-first hit that would leave a purplish bruise under Axl’s left eye for weeks after.
“Roll over,” he said. “You don’t wanna go public? Fine. We’ll do it in private. And I’ll show you just how rough I can get.”
So the tables had turned. Axl was shaking; the voice Slash was using was cold and angry and nothing at all like how he talked on a daily basis. They’d fought hard enough to get to this point once before, and that had been when they were coming to terms with how they felt for each other. That time, Slash had stopped before things got too far; this time, though, Axl could see it wasn’t going to stop. He made one last attempt to get up and was forced down by Slash so hard his head hit the floor.
“Fuckin’ roll over, you bitch.”
So Axl rolled over, flashes of memory flooding his brain the entire time. William Rose, Sr., had done this to him once, said those exact words, or words that resembled them, in that tone. The good and holy Reverend had done this to he and his brother and sister as well—all threats, knife included, teeth and tongue and rough, hard fingers.
Slash reached down and yanked his pants to his knees, then made Axl take his pants off too, then made him get on his hands and knees, like a dog. He was no longer sure what he was doing, but for once in his life he was the one who held all the power, and there was some small, extremely sick part of him that was relishing every bit of this. He bit Axl’s shoulder, hard enough to draw more blood, and then he thrust in, with no warning, no lube, not even a tiny bit of stretching. Axl’s screams echoed off the walls of the dressing room, and Slash had to reach around and slam his palm against the singer’s mouth to get him to shut up.
“I will make your life hell if you make one more sound,” he growled.
“Fuckin’ kill…” Axl mumbled something against Slash’s palm, indistinctly and harmlessly, and Slash made a brief laughing sound that belonged in a goddamn Stephen King novel before pulling halfway out and then thrusting in again, roughly. A warm trickle of blood had started its way down Axl’s thigh, and he felt tears spring to his eyes. He was being weak, and he wasn’t going to let Slash know he was overpowering him… but shit. This hurt. He bit at Slash’s hand as savagely as he could, and the guitarist made a strangled sound, jerking away and cuffing Axl’s jaw.
“Fuck you,” he spat, and he started thrusting faster, like they were having real sex. “Fuck you and all your fucking money wasting spiels and all your goddamn ego-trips.”
“Fuck you too,” Axl snarled, wincing in pain and trying to get away from Slash, who just held him tighter, piercing his flesh with his nails. “Fuck you for making me need you. Fuck you for everything you’ve ever done to make me love you, because god knows I fucking hate you now.”
“Good,” Slash spat. He could feel the blood now, hot and uncomfortable and smelling of iron, and he wanted to stop, but he couldn’t let Axl win. “I hate you too. I fucking hate the hold you have on me, and I hate every goddamn time I’m reminded of it, because it just makes shit like this hurt more than it should.”
“You… hurt…” Axl grunted, sweat and tears pouring down his face. “Fuck you… for saying that…” He gritted his teeth and then the tears really started flowing, and he could hardly speak because his voice was so choked on itself.
Slash pulled out then, and sat back on his heels, his cock dangling limp and bloody between his legs, feeling like one of those sick and twisted bastards who got off watching their boyfriends get raped savagely in dark alleys… or in lighted dressing rooms. He couldn’t keep his eyes off Axl’s ass, which was covered in blood and semen—whose? Who fucking came during this shit? Me? This made me come?—and looked like it was going to be one giant bruise by tomorrow. Once Axl realized that he wasn’t going to get anymore, he fell over, his limbs quivering worse than they had been all evening, still sobbing. He was in pain and he was ashamed to be in pain, but he was angry, and that made him talk through his tears:
“You don’t fucking hurt,” he snarled. “You don’t need me. You just need your drugs and your guitar and you’ll be just fine. You wanna make me into some sort of society freak by bringing us out into the spotlight so that people can stare at the mixed homosexual couple. You don’t care.”
“I don’t care?” Slash stared. “Fuck you, Axl. You bastard, you know good and goddamn well that I need you. I feed off your emotions. Everything you feel, I feel too. Do you know how fucking much it hurts me to fight like this with you?”
Axl weakly gestured at his ass. “Not a lot…” he mumbled, but it didn’t sound convincing, and Slash crawled over, zipping his pants up and lying next to him.
“I’m sorry for what I did,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry for fighting with you Monday evening, and I’m sorry that I just hurt you… I’m just sorry all over.” He didn’t want to break up with Axl, not anymore. Everything hurt. He needed it to be okay again, needed to know that tomorrow morning, he’d be waking up in the right hotel room. But still…
“If you wanna split with me, I’ll understand,” he said softly.
Axl didn’t answer right away, and Slash got worried. He reached out to touch Axl’s jaw, but to his surprise the singer leaned in, kissing him gently. The heat coming off his scabbed lips was startling, and Slash’s heart broke again as he realized he’d done that.
“Look at us,” he said. “Lying here after I got raped, acting like we’re gonna make love.” He laughed shakily, a few more tears spilling out. “I don’t wanna… split with you. I think we need to talk, like… a serious talk, not that fight that just happened… but I can’t split with you.” Another kiss, another reminder of what had just taken place. “I love you too goddamn much.”
“I love you too,” Slash replied, now crying a bit himself, and he reached up and wiped the tears off Axl’s bruised face, and then stood up and helped Axl to his feet, and they pulled his leathers off and he put his boxers on, and Slash carried Axl out, to the still-waiting limo.
“Who knows,” Axl mumbled sleepily against Slash’s chest as they settled into the backseat, “maybe now I’ll learn to top you.”
They laughed, and the limo sped on into the night.
Well, no, to be politically correct, they had been mad at each other all week, having those on-again off-again fighting sessions that Duff, Izzy, and Steven—and now Matt Sorum, as well—had learned to deal with over the years. It was partially the strain of touring, partially their multiple personality differences and different ways of looking at things, and partially the stress of keeping a secret relationship while on the road. Slash was sick of hiding from the public, but Axl wasn’t ready to let the world know that the pro-het singer and whiskey-downing guitarist of Guns N’ Roses, world’s most dangerous band, were fucking each other up the ass on an almost nightly basis. Slash didn’t like the amount of over-priced production they were starting to put into their shows; Axl said it was his band, and what he said went, and that’s all there is to it, thank you. Monday night they’d exploded into a full-blown fight that no one on the fifth floor of the Memphis hotel had been able to ignore; screaming and punching and throwing things, it had finally ended when Slash had stormed out of their room, gotten smashed at the hotel bar, then spent the night in the other bed of Duff and Izzy’s room. In the morning, Axl had called him a sick drunk fuck who needs to get his priorities sorted before he even tries to talk to me again, and they’d been ignoring each other since, only speaking when it was necessary, in bitter tones with an underlying sense of vicious almost-hatred that was going to boil over, everyone knew, any day now.
They had a show that night in Atlanta, Georgia, and while the band was setting up, waiting for Axl as usual, Izzy approached Slash cautiously.
“So, uh… how’re things between you and Axl?”
Slash shrugged noncommittally, which meant things were bad. He took a sip of Jack and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“When he’s ready to talk, I’ll be here,” he mumbled, before fluffing out his hair and walking off. Slash was upset about everything that had gone on; he wished he’d never started that fight five nights ago, he wished he could understand Axl better, he wished he didn’t feel this stirring in his chest of pure rage every time he saw the vocalist. He didn’t tell Izzy—or anyone else—about last night, how he’d gone to Axl and asked if they could talk, just talk, in the hotel room; how Axl had screamed at him and thrown a ring at Slash’s face—the ring Slash had given him years ago, before Appetite for Destruction, with Axl and Slash’s names engraved on the inside. The redhead wore it on his wedding ring finger, it meant so much to him; Slash had one that was very similar, with an onyx in the center instead of an emerald. When Axl took off his ring, Slash knew he was pissed.
Two hours later, Axl finally showed up, wearing leathers and his Nothing is Written in Stone shirt. He barely looked at Slash before reaching up, sliding on his aviators, and saying in that chilling, commanding voice:
“It’s time, fuckers.”
They went onstage and the crowd roared. Slash quickly ear-tuned his Gibson, walking past Tracy and Roberta and Dizzy and trying to smile but not quite making it. Why wasn’t he happy? Goddammit, his happiness didn’t need to depend entirely on Axl… did it? They’d been nearly sharing a brain stem now for, what… six years? Seven? They weren’t exactly alike, in fact they weren’t anything alike at all, not really; but the differences in their personalities, their looks, even their clothes, made them fit together perfectly, like yin and yang or oil and vinegar. So they’d been fighting a lot lately. That didn’t mean anything. Couples fought. Besides, it didn’t seem to be affecting Axl any.
Why am I always the one who gets overly affected by this shit? Slash thought angrily as he shredded through the solo of Nightrain, barely noticing the startled looks Duff and Izzy were giving him. When Axl really wanted something, you could always tell. And Axl wasn’t fighting for this.
Maybe, Slash thought as he watched the singer running full-tilt across the stage, electricity pouring out of him, we should just break up.
~~~
After the show, Axl stormed offstage, not bothering to wait around and see what the Atlanta natives wanted for an encore. Fuck them. If they wanted to hear Estranged or Paradise City again, they could go home and turn on their goddamn Walkmans. He didn’t have to cater to everyone’s needs all the time; he had needs too, he was a human being… though everyone seemed to be forgetting that lately.
Especially Slash.
Stupid curly-haired fuck, he thought as he watched the guitarist brush past him in the hallway, on the way to his own dressing room. Never should’ve let him into my life. He couldn’t figure out what Slash’s problem was: bringing their relationship out into the open would kill everything; he’d have the press breathing down his back and the fans in tears and Rolling Stone would do some special on “Fags in Bands” and his stepfather… oh Jesus, the Reverend would fly straight from Lafayette to wherever they were to spit out his own two cents… and probably give Axl a well-deserved, twelve years overdue caning. And what was wrong with spending some extra money? So they didn’t really need the grated stage and the background singers and the backdrops and the occasional, extravagant parties he threw at the nearest Ritz-Carlton or Hilton. They had the cash, and Axl would be shot to hell before he let it just stay in his bank account. Besides, he knew what Slash would spend it on: drugs and booze.
It wasn’t like Axl didn’t love Slash. Oh no. He loved him, more than he’d loved anyone in his entire life. Slash, and what they had, meant the entire world to Axl. But recently he’d been getting the sinking suspicion that there was something in Slash’s life that would always take predominance over the singer, and that was liquor and blow. Axl didn’t care if Slash drank at parties, in moderation, with someone to drive him back to the hotel after. Hell, he didn’t even really care if Slash did a few rocks here and there. But Axl had also grown up in a secluded Christian town, where everyone was always in everyone else’s business, and there were some things that you just couldn’t change your mind about, no matter how hard you tried.
Sometimes, Axl reflected as he walked into his dressing room and slammed the door shut, I think maybe Slash means more to me than I do to him.
~~~
Several hours later, after ignoring two waves of groupies and refusing to speak to a rather frantic-sounding Duff, Slash decided it was time to go talk to Axl. This couldn’t keep going on. It just couldn’t. They didn’t play nearly as well when they were mad at each other, and they both knew it. He would go to Axl’s dressing room, and make him talk to him, make him just sit there and listen, for once. Slash knew Axl would probably have some long-ass speech prepared, with some form of a vague apology thrown in at some point, and he didn’t want to hear it, in all honesty. He wasn’t in the mood for Axl’s rants, not tonight, he was only looking for one thing: communication. Something which, frankly, had been lacking between them for quite some time now. If they split, so be it. At least there wouldn’t be this tightrope tension between them anymore. One of them would leave the band—though Slash suspected he’d be kicked out before Axl would abandon his dream—and everyone would be happy.
Well, no, but keep telling yourself that, Hudson. Maybe you’ll actually believe it one day.
He reached Axl’s dressing room and knocked. A moment later the singer answered, wearing boxers and nothing else. He’d washed his hair and was clearly in the middle of drying it; Slash could hear the blow dryer whirring faintly in the adjoining bathroom.
“You wanted something?” Axl asked, a bit warily.
“You realize it’s nearly one in the morning and we’re still here,” said Slash. Not at all what he’d meant to say, but hey… nothing ever went the way it was expected to go when you were with Axl Rose.
The redhead shrugged, then took a step backwards. “Come in?” he suggested, and Slash did. The room smelled like Axl—leather and nicotine and strawberries and chocolate and that cologne he always wore—and Slash did his best not to inhale the scent he’d been missing for the past week. Axl wandered into the bathroom again.
“Just be a minute,” he called over the sound of the dryer. “Sit, if you want.”
Treats me like a dog, like he can order me around. Still, Slash sat, and waited for Axl to finish drying his hair. It took fifteen minutes, and Slash was getting a bit impatient by the time the singer walked back out, running his fingers through his hair, fixing it up. He sat across from Slash and said:
“What do you want?”
“I’d have thought that would be perfectly obvious to you, Axl.”
“No, actually, it isn’t. You’ve been ignoring me for the past week, and all of a sudden, you show up in my dressing room like, now read my fucking mind; know what I want so I don’t have to say it.”
Slash’s mouth dropped open. “Ignoring you?! I haven’t been fucking ignoring you; if anything, you’ve been the one avoiding me. You threw the fucking ring at me, or have you forgotten that?” He reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out the ring, holding it in Axl’s face. The singer frowned and shoved Slash’s hand away.
“You’re just pissed because I’m not wearing one more emblem to signify that I fuck you every night.”
“Oh please, Axl, I fuck you. You couldn’t fucking top if you tried, you shit pansy.”
His emerald eyes narrowed and flashed and turned a dangerous, hellish green shade. “Don’t start that shit, Slash. You know good and damn well why I don’t… Anyway, I don’t see why you’re being all pissy about my giving you that ring back; we all know what you wear that bandanna in your pocket for. And we all know who gave me the goddamn nipple ring, which literally everyone can see once I take my shirt off.” He knew what Slash was getting at—he was about to start up again on how they should come out—and Axl did not want to hear that again. When would the guitarist respect his choice? How much would it take for Axl to get things back to the way they were in the eighties?
“You took off the ring though, Axl,” Slash snarled, frustration and hurt making him agitatedly run his fingers through his hair. “You might as well be dumping me.”
“I should dump your ass,” Axl hissed back, surprised but not willing to show it. He stood and started pacing, and Slash wondered if he knew how much like a wild animal he looked when he was angry. “You don’t like any of my ideas anymore—”
“The fuck is this coming from?”
“Oh please, Slash, I ain’t stupid. You hate the setup for this tour. You hate Tracy and Roberta and Dizzy; you’re gonna hate that fucking horn player I’m thinking about hiring; you hate the parties I throw.”
“I just think it’s a waste of money, that’s all.”
“You think everything not spent on your fucking heroin is a waste of money,” Axl snapped. Slash was on his feet in an instant, as Axl had known he would be, and he shoved the ring back into his pocket and walked up to face Axl, gripping his shoulders in his hands, forcing the singer to stand still.
“That’s not true and you know it.”
“Yeah? It’s not? I bet you’re strung out right now, aren’t you, Slash?” Axl’s voice took on a mocking, caustic tone; it sounded whiny even to his ears, but when he was upset, this is what happened.
This wasn’t at all where Slash had intended the discussion to go. It wasn’t going to end well tonight, but he’d known that already. Not strung out, just drunk off my ass, he thought, but didn’t say it out loud. Instead, he did the only thing he knew to do when he needed Axl to stop talking: he kissed him. Not gently, not passionately, but forcefully, brutally. Like he was attacking him. He shoved him backwards, and the singer was too startled to protest in time, and Slash had him pinned against the wall in a matter of seconds, gripping his collar in his hands and ravaging his lips viciously, all the anger and hatred he’d been feeling inside of him coming out in this one act.
“Get the fuck off!” Axl snarled, or tried to, because Slash was biting his lips and drawing blood and it hurt like hell. He shoved his leg between Slash’s, trying to maintain some semblance of balance, but all that did was open up a new doorway for Slash to go through, and he did: he reached down and grabbed at Axl’s groin, roughly seizing his cock through his tight leather pants and squeezing hard. Axl made a surprised yelp at the back of his throat and automatically, instinctively, his free hand came out and smacked Slash across the face. Axl wasn’t a big man, but he was a fighter, and his punches came hard and unpredictable. Caught off guard, the guitarist reeled backwards, and Axl straightened up instantly, reaching up and wiping at his lips. The amount of blood that came off his skin and his tongue scared him a little bit, and with a sudden, animalistic cry, he launched himself at Slash, throwing them both to the ground and slamming his fists repeatedly into the guitarist’s face. Slash’s hands came up automatically to shield his head, but he found Axl’s thin wrists in easy distance, and he grabbed them instead, stilling the beatings and shoving up, forcing Axl off him. They changed positions, so that Slash was straddling Axl instead, and then he hissed:
“You wanna fuck me? You want me to mark you mine in just one more way?” He was reaching down and unzipping his pants, and then, with the fluidity of a trained expert, he let go of Axl’s wrists and hit him, a hard, knuckles-first hit that would leave a purplish bruise under Axl’s left eye for weeks after.
“Roll over,” he said. “You don’t wanna go public? Fine. We’ll do it in private. And I’ll show you just how rough I can get.”
So the tables had turned. Axl was shaking; the voice Slash was using was cold and angry and nothing at all like how he talked on a daily basis. They’d fought hard enough to get to this point once before, and that had been when they were coming to terms with how they felt for each other. That time, Slash had stopped before things got too far; this time, though, Axl could see it wasn’t going to stop. He made one last attempt to get up and was forced down by Slash so hard his head hit the floor.
“Fuckin’ roll over, you bitch.”
So Axl rolled over, flashes of memory flooding his brain the entire time. William Rose, Sr., had done this to him once, said those exact words, or words that resembled them, in that tone. The good and holy Reverend had done this to he and his brother and sister as well—all threats, knife included, teeth and tongue and rough, hard fingers.
Slash reached down and yanked his pants to his knees, then made Axl take his pants off too, then made him get on his hands and knees, like a dog. He was no longer sure what he was doing, but for once in his life he was the one who held all the power, and there was some small, extremely sick part of him that was relishing every bit of this. He bit Axl’s shoulder, hard enough to draw more blood, and then he thrust in, with no warning, no lube, not even a tiny bit of stretching. Axl’s screams echoed off the walls of the dressing room, and Slash had to reach around and slam his palm against the singer’s mouth to get him to shut up.
“I will make your life hell if you make one more sound,” he growled.
“Fuckin’ kill…” Axl mumbled something against Slash’s palm, indistinctly and harmlessly, and Slash made a brief laughing sound that belonged in a goddamn Stephen King novel before pulling halfway out and then thrusting in again, roughly. A warm trickle of blood had started its way down Axl’s thigh, and he felt tears spring to his eyes. He was being weak, and he wasn’t going to let Slash know he was overpowering him… but shit. This hurt. He bit at Slash’s hand as savagely as he could, and the guitarist made a strangled sound, jerking away and cuffing Axl’s jaw.
“Fuck you,” he spat, and he started thrusting faster, like they were having real sex. “Fuck you and all your fucking money wasting spiels and all your goddamn ego-trips.”
“Fuck you too,” Axl snarled, wincing in pain and trying to get away from Slash, who just held him tighter, piercing his flesh with his nails. “Fuck you for making me need you. Fuck you for everything you’ve ever done to make me love you, because god knows I fucking hate you now.”
“Good,” Slash spat. He could feel the blood now, hot and uncomfortable and smelling of iron, and he wanted to stop, but he couldn’t let Axl win. “I hate you too. I fucking hate the hold you have on me, and I hate every goddamn time I’m reminded of it, because it just makes shit like this hurt more than it should.”
“You… hurt…” Axl grunted, sweat and tears pouring down his face. “Fuck you… for saying that…” He gritted his teeth and then the tears really started flowing, and he could hardly speak because his voice was so choked on itself.
Slash pulled out then, and sat back on his heels, his cock dangling limp and bloody between his legs, feeling like one of those sick and twisted bastards who got off watching their boyfriends get raped savagely in dark alleys… or in lighted dressing rooms. He couldn’t keep his eyes off Axl’s ass, which was covered in blood and semen—whose? Who fucking came during this shit? Me? This made me come?—and looked like it was going to be one giant bruise by tomorrow. Once Axl realized that he wasn’t going to get anymore, he fell over, his limbs quivering worse than they had been all evening, still sobbing. He was in pain and he was ashamed to be in pain, but he was angry, and that made him talk through his tears:
“You don’t fucking hurt,” he snarled. “You don’t need me. You just need your drugs and your guitar and you’ll be just fine. You wanna make me into some sort of society freak by bringing us out into the spotlight so that people can stare at the mixed homosexual couple. You don’t care.”
“I don’t care?” Slash stared. “Fuck you, Axl. You bastard, you know good and goddamn well that I need you. I feed off your emotions. Everything you feel, I feel too. Do you know how fucking much it hurts me to fight like this with you?”
Axl weakly gestured at his ass. “Not a lot…” he mumbled, but it didn’t sound convincing, and Slash crawled over, zipping his pants up and lying next to him.
“I’m sorry for what I did,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry for fighting with you Monday evening, and I’m sorry that I just hurt you… I’m just sorry all over.” He didn’t want to break up with Axl, not anymore. Everything hurt. He needed it to be okay again, needed to know that tomorrow morning, he’d be waking up in the right hotel room. But still…
“If you wanna split with me, I’ll understand,” he said softly.
Axl didn’t answer right away, and Slash got worried. He reached out to touch Axl’s jaw, but to his surprise the singer leaned in, kissing him gently. The heat coming off his scabbed lips was startling, and Slash’s heart broke again as he realized he’d done that.
“Look at us,” he said. “Lying here after I got raped, acting like we’re gonna make love.” He laughed shakily, a few more tears spilling out. “I don’t wanna… split with you. I think we need to talk, like… a serious talk, not that fight that just happened… but I can’t split with you.” Another kiss, another reminder of what had just taken place. “I love you too goddamn much.”
“I love you too,” Slash replied, now crying a bit himself, and he reached up and wiped the tears off Axl’s bruised face, and then stood up and helped Axl to his feet, and they pulled his leathers off and he put his boxers on, and Slash carried Axl out, to the still-waiting limo.
“Who knows,” Axl mumbled sleepily against Slash’s chest as they settled into the backseat, “maybe now I’ll learn to top you.”
They laughed, and the limo sped on into the night.
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