FicWad

A/N: I can't believe this story is almost ten years old now... I can still remember sitting in my high school classes writing the chapters in my notebooks. Anyway, as with Shameful Metaphors three years ago I just felt guilty about leaving this one unfinished and as such whipped up an ending for it over the course of the evening. I didn't have anything planned when I was a teenager, at least not as far as I can remember, so all of this is just pretty spur-of-the-moment and based off a few things I interpreted as "hints" from earlier in the story. Eighteen year old me wasn't really the best at thinking up super complex, detailed plots, though she certainly thought she was... hah.

Also, the rape and underage tags are there for non-graphic flashbacks. No rape occurs in the present-day time of the story.

Hope y'all enjoy.

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In the morning when I got to the office there was a newspaper article taped to my door. Carefully cut out and worn at the edges, it was clear it had been read multiple times. There was a grainy picture at the top, black and white, and maybe twenty lines of text. I took it down, unlocked my door, and walked inside. I tossed my car keys into the glass dish on my desk and spread out in the chair. I lifted the article to within my line of vision—and then stopped.

WILLIAM BAILEY, the caption said, JEFFREY ISBELL, AND MARK MCDUNN WIN FIRST PLACE IN INDIANAPOLIS BREEDING COMPETITION. The picture was unmistakably of Axl and Izzy, both of them much younger. Axl’s hair was in a bowl cut; Izzy’s wasn’t much better. They weren’t smiling; Axl’s brow was furrowed tightly. He held the rope attached to a massive pig, shoving its nose around in the dirt at his feet. Izzy had something reptilian crawling across his shoulder; an iguana, maybe. Mark was between them, beaming at the camera. His arms were around their shoulders.

William Bailey, age 17, is among the youngest members of the annual Indianapolis Breeding Competition, along with fellow Jefferson High junior Jeffrey Isbell, age 16, the article said. Sponsored by Mark McDunn, age 34, the boys have spent the past year working on—

I stopped reading. My eyes skipped back to the top of the clipping. The date was wedged into the corner: March 9, 1975. Frowning, I skimmed the rest of the article: natives of Indiana… McDunn, a member of Bailey’s father’s church… “I’ve known Bill most of his life,” McDunn said, “I’ve always sensed extreme potential in him…”

I set the article down. My hands were shaking a little, for some reason. Mark had told me he’d met Axl in Los Angeles. Axl had told me the same, or anyway a similar story—he’d met Mark when he was starting up in the animal field. Neither of them had mentioned Izzy—and now that I thought about it, Izzy hadn’t ever really brought Mark up, either.

Maybe this was a fake article. Except the picture was real. The picture was real, and so was the discomfort in Axl’s face, and in Izzy’s.

A member of Bailey’s father’s church…

I remembered Axl telling me about his stepfather, or anyway alluding to his actions. Biting my lower lip I reached for my landline—then stopped. It was unlikely anyone else would be in their offices already, it was barely past six a.m. Besides I didn’t know who had left me the article; Mark might have, but I didn’t know why Mark would want to out himself, so to speak, as a liar. It seemed unlikely Axl would want me to know something like this, or anyway that he’d want to tell me like this, so the obvious remaining culprit was Izzy… but I knew Izzy didn’t consider any of Axl’s past his business to tell. Especially not since Axl had blown up at him for revealing their past sexual history to me.

I dragged my hands down my face and exhaled, softly. The sun hadn’t even fully risen yet, but already it was shaping up to be a long fucking day.

--

Axl showed up around eleven. He found me in the tiger exhibit; I had it closed for feeding and inventory, and as I stood in a safe area of the habitat observing the tigers’ behavior I heard footsteps behind me and then there were fingers in my hair, and his mouth pressed against my neck.

“Morning,” he whispered to me. His voice was hoarse, low; he smelled like cigarettes and like coffee, and I turned in his loose grasp and curled my hands in the collar of his shirt, drawing him a little forward. He glanced reflexively at the tiger cage but the workers were all inside feeding the animals and there weren’t any visitors around so he allowed our noses to brush, and then for me to kiss him. His mouth was warm, a little dry. I felt him smile against my lips; momentarily he pulled back, trailing his fingers slowly from my hair, down my arm.

“Good morning,” I said, and he laughed. He tilted his head a little, one side to the other, so that I heard the bones in his neck pop, and then he said,

“So listen, Iz and I were talking yesterday after work and he wants to jam with you and me this weekend at my place… we were thinking about tomorrow afternoon, would that work for you or do you have plans.”

“Oh, uh—no, no, I don’t—I don’t think so, no.” I remembered the collection of Izzy’s guitars at Axl’s in his piano room. I wondered if this had anything to do with the article I’d found on my desk; judging from the mention of Axl’s stepfather in the article I doubted it would be politic to bring it up, but Izzy had never expressed any sort of interest in my guitar-playing before. “That would be super cool, actually,” I said to Axl, and he huffed out a soft laugh. With his left hand he reached up and brushed a few loose curls off my face.

“‘Super cool’, huh?” he murmured softly, teasing.

I reached out and shoved at his shoulder. “Shut up,” I muttered, and Axl’s mouth twitched as he leaned in for one more kiss pressed to my temple before walking off. I watched him go—the soft fall of his hair against his shoulders, the arrogant loping grace of his legs—then made sure my workers were doing okay with the tigers, and walked on. At the giraffe exhibit Izzy was giving the male a rubdown; I took note of the weight and temperature, and then I said,

“Ax just told me you want to have a jam session tomorrow at his place.”

“Uh-huh,” Izzy said to the soft flank of the giraffe.

I cleared my throat. Izzy glanced up, eyebrows lifted slightly.

“Did you—” I hesitated; I had no idea what the fuck I was doing, but I plowed on: “I found a newspaper clipping taped to my door this morning.”

Izzy’s expression didn’t change. “Huh.”

“I don’t have a subscription or anything.”

“Sounds myster—”

“It was about you, Axl, and Mark in a competition in Indiana,” I said.

Izzy didn’t really freeze, but I saw a muscle twitch in his jaw. He looked back at the giraffe, running his hand slowly down its ribs. “Neither of us met Mark until—”

“Cut the crap, Jeffrey,” I hissed, stepping closer to him, and his eyebrows raised further. “I know Mark didn’t leave that article; it proves he lied to me, and I doubt Axl left it either because of the way he is, so that leaves either you or some random friend of yours from back home you’ve recruited to—”

Izzy pinched the bridge of his nose. “Slash…”

“Just.” I drew in a breath. “Please, Iz. If Axl and you both are gonna be at his place tomorrow and I know something like this about you—I just want to know how much or how little I should say. And it looks super fucking weird that you—if it was you—you left that article on my door and you won’t admit it but I don’t know why you would’ve left if unless you wanted me to kn—”

“I left it,” Izzy muttered. His hands were tense against the giraffe; abruptly he stepped back, folded his arms. “I didn’t think—shit. I don’t know.” He huffed out a tiny, tight laugh. It sounded a lot like Axl’s. “I didn’t think you’d bring it up.”

“What the fuck—”

“Yeah, I know.” Izzy rolled his eyes. “It’s dumb. Don’t rub it in.”

I bit the inside of my mouth. “So why—”

“I wanted to find some way to segue it into the conversation tomorrow. I thought if I brought it up first, if I was there as a buffer… Axl might take it easier and be more receptive to telling you.”

It didn’t make much sense to me, but then I was younger than both of them, considerably so. Also, Axl was—difficult at the best of times. Izzy had known him the longest and if Izzy thought that x plan was the easiest way of dealing with him—

“I don’t want to upset him,” I said, quietly. “If this is going to, I mean if me finding out whatever it is will hurt something between you, or between us—”

“It’s exhausting watching you and him interact with Mark,” Izzy interrupted. His voice was sharp, more so than I’d ever heard it. The giraffe made a soft restless noise and shifted, and Izzy closed his eyes. I watched his throat flex as he swallowed. “I had as much to do with—everything—as Ax did. He doesn’t get to fucking… control how I deal with what happened. I don’t like seeing Mark around and I don’t like the effect it’s having on Axl either, I know he thinks he’s subtle and good at hiding it but not to me. And it’s not fair to you, either. I know you like him… he shouldn’t hide this from you.”

A chill wrung its way up my spine. “Hide what from me?”

Izzy opened his eyes again. He made a soft clicking noise in his throat, and the giraffe moved out of its enclosure. When Izzy turned to me, his face was sad. Gently hurt and aching.

“Don’t judge Ax, okay?” he said, softly. “We were both so fucking young…” And then, before I could ask any more questions, he brushed past me on his way out of the cage.

--

By the following afternoon I was a fucking mess. I’d slept at my mom’s the night previous out of nerves but as I drove to Axl’s—Black Sabbath bruising the radio speakers; Satan laughing spreads his wings…—I began to wonder if perhaps I should’ve just bitten the bullet and stayed with Axl. My hands were shaking on the steering wheel. I had the newspaper article folded up in my jeans pocket; Izzy hadn’t told me to bring it, but I wanted physical evidence in case Axl tried to deflect.

I wasn’t stupid. I could put some of the pieces together for myself without hearing the whole story. Mark’s fingers curled against their shoulders… Mark telling me Axl had rejected him… Axl telling me Mark had tried to rape him… I wasn’t stupid. But I wanted to hear the truth, the whole truth.

(And nothing but the truth.)

(So help me, God.)

I turned onto Laurel Canyon. Izzy was already parked at Axl’s as I drove up, so I parked in the street. It took me a few seconds to stop my hands trembling, but eventually I managed, and then I walked inside. Izzy and Axl were already playing as I walked through the rooms to the piano room; as I got closer I recognized the song (Hanoi Rocks’ “Taxi Driver”).

I stepped into the room. Axl glanced up and smiled at me. Izzy kept his head down, cigarette smoke trailing from his mouth.

“Hey,” Axl said, finishing his scales with a flourish and slowly sliding himself off the piano bench. The sunlight caught in his hair and turned it golden, sharp fire orange. I could see little pale wisps of it flying off at the edges. He walked towards me and took my hands in his. He leaned in and kissed my forehead. “Glad you’re here. There’s beer in the fridge if you want, or we can just get started, we were just fucking around—”

“Why did you lie to me?” I blurted, without thinking. Axl raised his eyebrows, stepping back slightly; on the floor, Izzy had gone totally still.

“I don’t lie—”

“Oh, huh,” I said, and wrenched the article from my jeans, so hard I nearly ripped it. “I guess some other redhead fucker must’ve told me bullshit stories about his past, then.”

Axl’s mouth was tight and pale in the corners. He reached out and snatched the article from me. His eyes scanned the first few lines; his mouth tightened further, and then he looked back up at me. He was crumpling the article in his hand.

“Where the fuck did you get this,” he whispered.

My head was spinning. I had no idea what the fuck I was doing. Angry at Izzy for putting me in this position essentially blind I glanced at him, and Axl’s nostrils flared. He turned; folded his arms.

“Iz?”

Slowly, Izzy slipped the guitar strap from over his head and stood. “I’m sick of lying to him, Ax,” he said, “he likes you, and you like him, and—”

Axl threw the crumpled newspaper article at Izzy’s face. It bounced off his forehead and landed on the floor between them. “You—this wasn’t your fucking decision to make—”

“He raped me too, Axl,” Izzy said. Counterbalanced against Axl’s sharp rise in volume his voice was almost blistering in its lowness, and deadly. “You were there, you watched—”

“Shut the fuck—”

“You were a kid, I was a kid, it wasn’t either of our faults but Slash needs to—”

Axl’s fist swung out. It collided with Izzy’s cheekbone. I jumped in surprise as Izzy stumbled backwards; started to run in to grab his arm to catch him, but Axl was shoving me out of the way next, lunging at Izzy, hands spread open to wrap around his throat. I grabbed Axl by the back of the shirt collar and hauled him backwards; Izzy crashed into the wall and fell to the floor with a thump. He hadn’t hit his head but even so he sat for a moment dazedly before pushing himself back up to his feet. Axl was panting like a wounded animal in my arms, straining, disobedient dog on a leash, trying to get away from me.

“How fucking dare you,” he snarled. He was so angry spit was flying from his mouth. “How fucking dare you tell Slash any of that shit.”

“I’m sick of dealing with Mark,” Izzy snarled back. “I’m tired of having to work with him and look at him and since you’re too much of a fucking coward to deal with—”

This time Axl slammed me in the stomach with his elbow to get away from me. While I was doubled up gasping he lunged at Izzy again; by the time I’d straightened up he’d knocked Izzy out, bloody mouth, bruised eye, and he was gone.

--

I made sure Izzy was okay—no concussion, nothing broken, frozen peas to press against his lips—then I ran out. Axl hadn’t taken his car; Izzy had parked behind him, I suppose foreseeing this outcome, and it didn’t take me long to catch up to him. He was walking with purpose in a southerly direction but he was crying and it was slowing him down enough I could overtake him. I came up as slowly as I could and said his name but he still jumped about ten feet and almost hit me before I grabbed his wrist and forced his arm down.

“Axl,” I said; I was breathing hard, I didn’t know why. “What the fuck.”

“You’re lucky I didn’t kill that little shit,” he said. Void of the vicious snarl present in his house his voice had dropped about twenty decibels, and dripped with poison and vitriol. “Fact, maybe I better oughta go back and finish the job—”

I tightened my grip on his wrist, hard enough I felt the bones grind together. “Stop being such a fucking shit,” I snapped, and he turned his glowering hellish gaze on me. His eyes were bruised beneath his hair, reddish in the corners, unslept. I glared at him until he cut his eyes from mine, and I felt some of the strain leave his muscles. When I released his wrist it was tentative and I was prepared to grab him again but he only stood there, shoulders slumped, chest rising and falling with rapidity. But it wasn’t until his breath caught in his throat that I realized he was starting to cry again.

“Axl—”

“I didn’t want you to know,” Axl whispered. Now he sounded only tired. Defeated. “I was never going to tell you.”

I furrowed my brow. “Why?”

“Because it’s fucking—it’s embarrassing,” Axl said. His fists were clenched white-knuckled at his hips and I didn’t know what to do so I reached out and took one. He glanced up at me, then down at our hands. Then, slowly, he unfurled his fingers and twined them with mine. He let me back us up to the grass and we sat together on the lawn of an empty house.

“It’s not embarrassing,” I said. “Or, I mean, I’m not embarrassed. You already told me he came onto you—”

Axl huffed. With the back of his free hand he wiped his mouth, and then his eyes.

“You don’t have to tell me,” I said, but Axl shook his head. His smile was bitter.

“Iz is—I know he means well, I know he’s just… whatever, traumatized, same as me. But he fucked this up. If I ever told you it was supposed to be on my terms. But now every fucking time I see you, every time I’m around you all I’m gonna be able to think about is this shit, and how you know just enough but not the whole thing, and how you’re probably speculating, and—”

“I wouldn’t specu—”

“You’re fucking adorable,” Axl muttered. It didn’t sound complimentary, so I kept my mouth shut, and after a moment he sighed. He said,

“This doesn’t get repeated. To anyone.”

“Of course not—”

“And if you fire McDunn because of this that’s—whatever, your prerogative, but don’t fucking tell him you know.” His hand tightened in mine. “You have to fucking promise me, Slash.”

“I promise,” I whispered. His eyes burned into mine for a moment longer, violent green. Then he exhaled.

“So like you saw in the article, McDunn was in my stepfather’s congregation. He liked Stephen a lot, I remember when I was a kid and I met him the first time he said something like, ‘I hope your career path is going in the same direction as your father’s,’ and I was just kind of like, ‘Uh, sure,’ because who the fuck talks like that to a four year old… but anyway he really admired him, his—whatever, the way he preached. His views on the faith and on God and whatever. He’d left the Catholic Church some time before and you—well, maybe you don’t know but when Catholics join Fundamentalist churches they go fucking apeshit, I don’t know why. It’s so fucking bizarre because I’ve been to a few Catholic services and they’re so much easier to deal with and sit through, they’re not hours and hours of singing and rambling and people fucking falling into the aisles desperate for that ‘personal relationship with Jesus’—

“Anyway Mark was insanely into the shit for years. And when Iz and I were maybe thirteen, and we’d known each other for a couple months, Stephen—well, first he got into telling me that I was a sinner because I listened to rock and I wore these shirts… low-collars… anyway a while after that he must’ve talked to Mark and some of the other men in the congregation and one Sunday we all were in the church and Stephen said he had an announcement, and would all the young teenage boys come to the front. So me and my friend Chris went up, and Iz came too because sometimes Iz tagged along to church, and Stephen said him and Mark had cofounded a Bible study group because our church didn’t have one and wasn’t that a shame, etc. etc. So all the parents were super thrilled and it was great for about two minutes until we got into the back where the study group was supposed to take place and it was just a bunch of cameras and chairs and pillows. I asked Stephen what was going on and he said they were going to film us studying to send to churches across the country. I asked where the Bibles were and he hit me and told me to quit back talking.

“Then Mark and one of the other single guys from our church came over to me and Iz and told us we had to remove our shirts because God disapproved of how we were dressed, and in order to purify ourselves of sin we needed to be unclothed like Adam and Eve.”

My throat tightened. So did my hand where it still rested in the grass. He glanced down, then up at my face; his mouth twitched, and he said,

“I’m sure you can guess what happened after that. It went on until Iz and I left Lafayette four years later. It wasn’t every week, but it was pretty often. If I tried to bring it up at home Stephen would say he had no idea what I was talking about and then whip me later with his belt. So I kept my mouth shut and so did Iz.

“When we left we didn’t tell anyone, we just made a plan in secret and packed our shit and went. But I guess Mark must’ve stalked us—on Stephen’s orders, I guess—because a couple months after we got here he started showing up around where I was working. I was trying to get into animal husbandry because animals don’t lie and they don’t try to fuck you and they don’t touch little kids and they don’t film it—and I was working at Tower Records to try and fund my way through college and he came on one of my shifts and started harassing me and begging me to listen to his side of things, that he’d left the church, he realized my stepdad was wrong, he never meant to hurt me or Iz… Neither of us had the money to file a restraining order and I don’t know if something like that would’ve even occurred to us back then but anyway it was around that time that incident occurred I told you about, when he tried sucking my dick and I shoved him off. Except the difference was he was telling me all this shit about how it was going to be so different this time around, and how he was going to take care of me like he should have when I was a kid, and I just shoved him off and kicked him in the ribs and in the jaw and I ran. And I quit my job and couch-surfed until I could get started in what I do now. So that’s—everything.”

It was quiet for a while. I could hear birds in the distance singing. Axl hadn’t let go of my hand, and after a moment I said,

“What about—what Izzy told me, that you two were together once?”

“Oh.” He huffed again, softly. “Yeah… that was—when they’d film us sometimes they made us touch each other instead of them. And after a while Iz and I got curious if it would do anything for us outside of that room, ‘cause it sure as shit didn’t do anything for us in there.” He smiled, wryly. “It didn’t. But I fucked my way through half of Lafayette before we left. I wanted to fucking—feel something, you know? I wanted to prove to myself not all sex has to be like what Stephen and Mark were making it…” His breath caught again, and I squeezed his hand. He looked down again, then back at my face. There was something heady and difficult to interpret in his eyes; when he spoke, his voice was even quieter, and very hoarse.

“You’re the first,” he said; he was nearly whispering. “The first person I’ve ever slept with who didn’t know at least some of that. And I feel normal when I fuck you and I feel normal when we kiss and I didn’t want that to stop so I didn’t tell you, I lied, I went along with the lie Mark made up, but I shouldn’t—I’m sorry I did it, I’m fucking—I fucked everything up. After Mark tried to suck my dick here I didn’t see him for about two years and then one day I went to a seminar and it was him, and after he approached me and we were in public so I knew he couldn’t do shit and he said he wanted to work with me with animals and I said no, thanks, but that was when he established the lie and I just, I went along with it, I’m sorry, Slash, it wasn’t fair—”

“Ax,” I whispered back. I was crying; I didn’t know when I’d started. “Ax. It’s fine, I’m not angry.”

His eyes flicked over my face. “You’re not?”

I shook my head. I reached up, brushed his hair off his forehead. “I’m glad you told me now,” I said. “I don’t blame you for any of it. It wasn’t your fault.”

He exhaled once, shakily. He didn’t seem to know what to say; finally he said,

“Thank you,” and smiled, tremulously. I smiled back, and kissed his cheek.

“I can’t promise I won’t kill McDunn after I fire him, though,” I said, and Axl snorted. He stood, pulled me up with him. For a moment we stood there in the afternoon sun, his hair like burnished gold, like trapped flames between us. Then he said,

“Is Izzy okay? I didn’t—I mean, I shouldn’t have…”

“No,” I agreed, “you shouldn’t. But he was fine when I left. I did hear him kind of mumbling about McDonald’s, though…”

Axl snorted again. “You lying fuck,” he said, without heat. He shoved my shoulder, and I shoved him back. He reached over and curled his fingers through my belt loops, and we headed down the street towards the strip of restaurants to pick up McDonald’s before going home.