FicWad

Slash

I didn’t make it very far after I stumbled out of the stadium. I had way too much to drink after the smack and my body couldn’t take it. I stopped and leaned against the cool brick wall of the back of the stadium and doubled over and puked my guts out for what felt like forever. My stomach was irritated that there was blood in the vomit and that scared me. My whole life scared me right now. I felt so horrible for cheating on Duff; it was eating away at me inside. Every time I kissed him, every time I told him I loved him; every time we made love, which wasn’t very often I felt like a lying piece of shit. His loving eyes made me squirm and he knew something was wrong. I didn’t know what to do, I wasn’t worth shit right now and I didn’t deserve him. I needed to tell him the truth; I knew he was going to leave me because of it but he deserved the truth because I couldn’t go on like this.
I loved Duff with everything I had in me. He was my whole heart, part of my soul, my mind, and my body completely belonged to him but I had violated every bit of trust he had in me and I felt like shit, worse than shit, whatever the lowest of the low was that was me.

I had found a groupie in the last city we were in, somewhere in Delaware and had bought a shit load of smack from her. I shot up constantly to stop the guilt and pain but I felt like it was making me an empty blank nothing and that wasn’t helping Duff either. I walked a couple of blocks before I found an empty dark alley with a dumpster I could hide behind and I walked over to it so I couldn’t be seen and took my works out of my jacket pocket; I needed this. I had a special inside pocket sewed into this jacket that I kept everything in. I’m terrible at this. I use jacket sleeve as a tourniquet and I have trouble getting a vein. By the time I actually hit myself I have four new needle marks on my arm. Great, there won’t be able to hide any of that shit from Duff; not that he doesn’t know. I just don’t want him to blame Izz for it.

I feel the rush of the heroin run through me but something’s wrong, I must have had too much because things are blurry and I can’t breathe. Then everything goes black. The next thing is know Duff is smacking me in the face and I can tell from his voice that he’s sobbing. “Duff? I whisper and try to open my eyes but my eyelids feel like lead. “

“Slash, Slash, can you hear me? Are you awake? Please wake up baby boy please!” He begs through his sobs.

“Duff, I whisper again,” I’m awake. Don’t cry, I’m ok baby, I’m fine,” I tell him.

He pulls me up off the ground and hugs me. ”You weren’t ok baby you were laying here in a pile of puke hardly breathing. I’ve been looking for you everywhere, in clubs, in strip joints; then I started looking alleys and I found you here, you were so close to dying, you could have been robbed or stabbed, or both, or your heart could have finally given out! Oh my god I’m glad I found you and that you’re alive, I was almost too late! I’m going to give you a little coke so wake you up some ok?”

“Yeah,” I need some, I can’t even open my eyes

“Yeah I know, like I said you were almost dead! You stupid mother fucker don’t you know when you’ve had enough? Why would you do more? Slash what is going on with you? I feel like no matter I do you’re slipping through my fingers. It’s been like this since I married Mandy, what happened Slash are you mad at me? Is it because she had to tour with us? That I had to have sex with her? That it basically turned you into my “mistress” even though I didn’t want to? Please tell me Curly Sue please? Something’s eating your soul, your eyes are so blank when you look at me and you let Axl be all over you on the stage? Is that it? That he’s touching you? Do you want me to get him to back off of you?”

I curl up into a ball and start to sob my heart out, I couldn’t do anything but cry and cry and cry.” Getting him off of me would be a start!” I cry. I had to tell him and I had to tell him now. I feel arms around me and he pulls me up off the pavement and sits me on his lap. I just bury my face in his neck and shoulder and continue to cry. “If I tell you you’ll hate me and it could destroy the band, it could destroy everything!” My sobs grow harder and they’re wrenching my body as they run through me.

“Ok…well nothing that happened is going to make me love you any less, it might hurt me or make me angry but Slash loving you is something I need to keep myself alive like air. Shit when you left the stadium I had another really bad panic attack and couldn’t breathe, I thought I was gonna pass out. Izzy found me, got me to breathe, got me up on my feet so I could go and find you. I can’t imagine my life not loving you. So breathe and tell me. You’re dying slowly keeping whatever the secret is and doing so much heroin is speeding it up!
I look up at him into those hazel eyes and my mouth opens and closes but I can’t say anything; I just manage to choke out more sobs and I look away. He’s never lied to me that I know of, if anything he’s told me way too much truth. He’s let too much shit happen-like giving in and marrying Mandy and not standing up to those record company guys and telling them he wasn’t giving me to them, stuff like that. I know he knows that this thing with Mandy hurt me but I don’t think he grasps how much of a betrayal I think it really is. I feel like I’m bleeding inside when I see press coverage of their wedding and him feeding her cake and getting into the limo with her draped across isr lap. He’s smiling in those pictures, he’s smiling at the altar, she’s still here.

Sometimes Nikki makes him sleep in her room, I don’t know if they fuck or what but I hate it. Any red carpet events she’s there hanging on his arm and I’m walking behind them with a fake smile on my face with Izzy or Steven. When we come offstage she’s always right there and he tells her to go away but she rarely does; she comes to the parties and hangs all over Duff so that every girl in the room knows he belongs to her. If he gets too chummy with me she buts in and hangs on him until we back off of each other. The only way I can get him alone backstage is to grab him before she gets to him. I hate that bitch, I hate thinking about Duff fucking her, I hate thinking about walking in that night and seeing her ride his dick, I hate the smug looks she gives me because she knows that I hate it that she gets him in her bed sometimes, especially on the nights Duff stays with her she’ll make comments like “Picking up a groupie to warm your bed up tonight Slash?” because she knows Duff won’t be there, he’ll be with her. On those nights Duff gets so drunk he can hardly stand up much less fuck a girl. He says she tries to come onto him but he can’t always get it up for her, she thinks he needs erectile enhancement drugs; I laughed so hard I cried when he told me that one! It’s like no, he just doesn’t need you. She’s a pretty girl, I’ll say that for her but Duff’s just not into her. We tried to have a three way once but Duff and I could only get hard if we were touching each other. Boy did that piss her off.

But none of that excuses what I did, none of my pain excuses me from sleeping with Izzy. It doesn’t matter how dead I felt inside that day and that he brought me back to life, probably saved me from overdosing, none of that matters. I burst into another round of sobs again. I’m clinging to Duff’s shirt for dear life praying that the love of my life that’s in my arms isn’t going to slam my head into the pavement when I tell him I slept with Izzy but I have to tell him, I can’t keep doing this. I can’t keep living with this horrible secret inside of me.

“Baby, what is it? Please baby boy tell me what’s wrong? Everything between us has been weird since the wedding; it’s like there’s some sort of distance between us. Slash, look at me,” he says but I won’t. Finally he turns my face back and forth until I meet his eyes. He leans in and kisses me softly and says “Baby, tell me, it’s killing you whatever it is tell me. Tell me right now, I can’t watch you kill yourself anymore. Your arms look like someone pounded nails into them, sometimes you can barely stand up, I don’t know how you played tonight you’re so fucked up; you couldn’t even form words before you ran off; I was scared to death! Then I thought I had od’d on coke because my whole body went numb and I couldn’t breathe I mean I was like gasping like a fish. Izzy found me, came back looking for the two of us and he hit me in the back and that stopped the chest spasms and I could breathe and he gave me a couple of valium and I chewed them up and came looking for you, they’re just starting to kick in. Anyway I searched all the bars and clubs near here, no one had seen you so I started checking alleys; you didn’t make it very far. You still had the needle in your arm and you were just sprawled out on the pavement and you have a hell of a lump on the side of your head where you fell over, I thought you were dead! That’s the second time you’ve done that to me now what is going on! You tell me right now or I swear to god I’ll leave you here and never speak to you again!”
“You won’t speak to me again anyway,” I whisper.

“You know that’s not true,” he says adjusting me so that my head is in the crook of his arm like a baby but also it forces me to look at him. I try and talk again but I freeze and sob. “Shhh, calm down Slash, breathe baby breathe, in and out, just like that, come on, do it with me in and out and it does help.

I close my eyes and enjoy what I’m sure are the last few seconds in Duff’s arms and I take a deep breath and just blurt it out. “While you were in Vegas getting married I slept with Izzy. I’m sorry. I was just so angry at you and I was afraid of what would happen when you came back if they would let us be together or if you would love her or what and that’s not all I was mad about! I was and still am mad about a lot of things like how you didn’t say no in that band meeting about those record execs having me for dessert, you didn’t beat the shit out of the guy who made me bleed; by the way and let me tell you that wasn’t just a little injury, he really hurt me but you were still healing emotionally about what those guys did to you and I wasn’t about to drop that kind of bomb on you, you needed caring for at that moment and I wanted you to look at me like a man who was capable of taking care of you, not a kid. Then you didn’t say no to this whole Mandy thing, if Nikki wants her around so much let him fucking marry her! Now unless your ass signed a pre-nup in Vegas half of everything is hers!"

“We did sign a pre-nup she gets nothing,” Duff says a little shocked.

"Anyway Izzy found me down at the cigarette machine crying and I didn’t want to be by myself and he was afraid I was gonna od too so he let me come in his room and watch TV. I fell asleep rolled up into him crying and I woke up later and took a shower and put my pants on and was slipping out of the room and own down the hall when he was in the shower to get clean clothes for myself because I didn’t want to sleep in an empty room and he had a huge bed and a couch. So anyway when I came out of the bathroom in a towel and I turned away but he asked me something about you and I started crying and then he was there behind me hugging me telling me it was going to be ok and I don’t know how it happened but it did and I’m sorry Duffy I’m so, so sorry.” I just start sobbing again.
Duff has gone completely still and rigid. “So Izzy, knowing what a high, drunk, sad mess you were and had sex with you anyway?” Duff asks.

I sigh “He said we shouldn’t he gave me all the reasons we shouldn’t, I gave him more reasons but in the end I just needed someone or something because the love of my life was off marrying someone else and the man Izzy adores beats the shit out of him and had a woman in his room and we were each just there in a bad moment of weakness. I, I don’t know what to say to you. I’m sorry, I’m a piece of shit junkie, a liar, a cheater, a nothing just leave me here and let me finish myself off with what’s in my pockets.
He slapped me hard across the face. I pulled back and away from him stunned; and then he slapped me as hard as he could in the other direction. Blood was running down my face and dripping off my chin. “Do not ever let me hear you say that I should leave you to finish yourself off. What do you somehow think you being dead is better than you being alive and warm here in my arms when i’m angry at you? No matter how much you’ve hurt me I would never, ever want you dead you stupid fuck!” Lots of those words are punctuated by punches but I don’t fight back, I know what I did was wrong; I’d rather he beat me to death than leave me alive to see him in so much pain.
“But then I hurt you anyway everyday…just one more bad thing in your life to forget; you can’t forget."

“Seeing the ghost of you walking ahead of me down every street I walk down, always out of reach and unhearing; Slash I can’t think of a worse hell. Please believe me when I tell you I would see you every night for the rest of my life. Even a wife and children could never make it better; you would always be there in bed with me and my wife, always there when I played shows, the ghost of my one true love everywhere I looked; because that’s how it would be for me; you would haunt me forever.

" I don’t care what you’ve done you are the most precious thing in the world to me and I need you alive and beside me. We’re all we’ve got left you dumb fuck! Can’t you see we’ve turned into Axl and Izzy, two innocent kids from Indiana, ,came to LA, got forced to hurt the other one or watch as the other was hurt, saw a little more dying in each other’s souls everyday."

I try and sit the fuck up some more and he says “Fuck I understand in some fucked up way I let some terrible shit happen to you back to back to back; I haven’t been there for you the way you needed and I let some really bad shit happen to you. Like that night I did a shit job of projecting you from predators that were literally salivating in that restaurant booth for you when I should have said no and taken you out of there; that’s what you really wanted isn’t it? For me to stop the whole deal? I won’t look at him but I nod.

“I know you ended up being there in that car with me and that kept me alive; maybe it was fate that I saw you on that street corner, but yeah Duff, I wanted you to say it wasn’t ok with you and stop itl. I wanted you to beat the fuck out of them for ripping me open, I wanted you to have Izzy’s gun and blow them all away; but it was Izzy who showed up with the gun and got us outta there. It was Izzy who sent me into dreamland so I don’t remember it all, I was Izzy who shot you up when I forgot to give you your pills so that we could get you to the bathroom. It was him that cared for you all week while his boyfriend fucked me. It was Izzy who took care of me so I could help you, it’s all one big cluster fuck! I exclaim! “This is never what I wanted, I didn’t want Izzy to come and rescue me, to make things easier to take, I wanted it to be you! Just one time I’ve wanted it to be you! I wanted you to save me from some of the monsters out there. You protected me from the world in our bed at night, we had the best sex life I have ever had in my life, I love you desperately, why wouldn’t you ever just stand up any no for my sake? Why wouldn’t you stand up with a beretta and keep the monsters away?

He sighed, “Oh baby…I didn’t know you felt that wayl Sometimes I knew you wanted to be treated like a man so I let you choose what to do with your body; if I had known you wanted me to step in…Fuck I would have!! I wanted to keep all the bad things away from you, I just about bit through my lip in that band meeting about whether or not they were gonna turn you over the scumbags from Virgin. I wanted to grab you and carry you out of the room and out of there but I didn’t want to treat you like a baby, you really ride me for that.”

“Slash”, he says standing up to stretch ”really, why would you do this to me baby? You’re all I had, still have, I hope. It’s gonna take me a long fucking time to get past this and I’m gonna have to beat the shit out of Izzy too and that definetly wasn’t on my agenda for the evening. This isn’t over between me and you tonight but I’m sending you back to the hotel because I’m afraid I’m going to hurt you right now; if I hit you I won’t be able to stop at this second. He looks down and sees the fear in my eyes and sighs. “Hand me over all of your smack, now, he says in that voice of his that means there is no choice. I reach inside my jacket and give it all to him and he puts it away in his own pocket and pulls me to my feet. He drags me a couple of alleys down and calls one of our keepers to bring a car and he puts me in it. I head back to the hotel with a mixture of dread and relief in my gut. Relief because there were no more secrets eating away at me, no more secrets between us but dread because I didn’t know how we were going to get past this as a couple, as a band I knew there was gonna be more getting beaten tonight and I deserved it. I deserved whatever I got because I have never in my life felt more like a piece of shit.