Chapter Text
Los Angeles, California, May 1985
This is never going to work, Izzy thought, watching Steven with dismay. Good drummer, but the kid had about a thousand pieces on that set. The rack toms, the kick pedals... too much, all of it. Too much noise, and not the right sound, too much of a heavy-metal setup. He glanced at Duff, who was sitting on the sofa, long legs stretched out in front of him, fiddling with the tuning pegs on his Fender. They had to be on the same page, right? Duff hadn’t hauled his ass down here to play in some Californian, head banging metal group, the same old shit that everyone was doing. He knew it, Izzy thought, keeping his eyes on Duff, hoping to catch his eye. Sure enough, Duff looked up from his bass, glanced at the set, and then at Izzy. He cracked a smile and cocked an eyebrow, shaking his head slightly, which made Izzy grin. Of course they were thinking the same thing.
He watched as Steven stopped playing and Axl leaned forward in his chair in front of the guy, talking about songs, about what they wanted to hear next. Izzy took his chance while the noise had stopped and got up from the floor, leaving his guitar in the corner, and crossed the room behind Axl. Duff’s eyes stayed on Izzy as he came towards him, and Izzy felt very self-aware as he sat down next to him.
“Dude...” Duff whispered. “This is not what I thought we were going for.”
“It’s not,” Izzy agreed. “Steven’s not bad, though.”
“No, no, not at all, he’s just got too much shit,” Duff murmured, plunking strings up and down the neck of his bass. “Izzy, we gotta get rid of some of that.”
“Yeah, I think so too.”
Izzy watched Duff as the drumming started up again. He was watching Steven and tapping his foot along with the backbeat, fiddling around with the bass, the corners of his mouth slightly turned up. Izzy chuckled and Duff glanced at him, catching his eye again. Izzy knew they were sharing thoughts.
The drumming stopped again.
“That sounds good man, that sounds good,” Axl said.
“Thanks,” Steven answered, rotating his wrist.
“I’ve got just one more tune to try out, it’s one we wrote, I just wanna see how it fits.”
“Sure, no problem. But sorry, first, dude, I gotta piss.”
“We don’t have a bathroom. We just go outside.”
Steven shrugged and set down his sticks on his snare. “I’ll be back in a sec.” He got up and went out the door, his sneakers thumping down the apartment stairs.
“So what do you guys think?” Slash piped up, but Duff had already gotten to his feet and started walking over to the set.
“He’s good, but something’s off, it’s just not quite right,” Axl said, tilting back in his chair. “Duff, what are you doing?”
“Izzy, c’mere. Hurry.”
Izzy got to his feet and went over to Duff, who had picked up one of the stands of rack toms.
“Go open the hall closet for me and then come back and get the other one,” Duff instructed, hoisting the drums up to his chest and hugging them against his body so they wouldn’t fall.
“Hey, what the fuck are you guys doing?” Slash asked, sounding mildly alarmed as Izzy hurried down the hallway and yanked open the door before slipping past Duff and getting his arms around the other set of rack toms.
“Helping,” Duff answered, holding the door open for Izzy as he crammed them in beside the vacuum cleaner, which was gathering dust. “Okay thanks Iz, now hurry and go sit back down and let’s see what happens.”
“Don’t worry,” Axl said to Slash, who looked slightly scandalized. “You’ll give them back, won’t you?”
“Sure,” Izzy answered, plopping back down on the couch. “We’re not tryin’ to rob the guy.”
“No, of course not. Just helping,” Duff said again, sitting back down too and winking at Izzy, who felt his stomach jump a little.
The door swung back open and Steven came back in.
“Okay, sorry about that. Where were we?”
Axl explained what it was they wanted him to play as Steven re-settled himself in front of his set, Axl not even cracking a smile to give them away, for which Izzy was grateful. Slash crossed his arms. Steven nodded at Axl and twirled his sticks again, glancing down at his kit.
“Hey, wait, hold on. What happened to my other drums?” he exclaimed, looking around himself as if they had fallen and rolled away, somehow unnoticed. “Where the fuck did my drums go?”
Izzy’s shoulders shook slightly, a laugh about to bubble out of him, and Duff pressed his knee into Izzy’s, warning him to restrain himself. This worked remarkably well, the laugh dying in Izzy’s throat. He swallowed jerkily, glancing at Duff, whose eyes were on Steven.
“I don’t know man. Are you sure there's something missing? Could just try the song with the kit as is, for now?” Axl asked.
“I guess,” Steven said doubtfully, looking around himself once more. “They were just here.”
Axl sang the intro again and Steven re-positioned his sticks and began to drum, forgetting about the rack toms for the moment. Izzy sat up a little straighter. Yes. That was it. That was the sound. It was a lot closer anyway. He looked at Duff next to him. His light eyes shone with satisfaction, his foot tapping along again. He thought so too.
When Steven finished, Duff grinned. “Tight! That was tight.”
“You think so?” Steven smiled, twirling his sticks. “Thanks, dude.”
“For sure. It’s clean. I like it.”
“Me too,” Izzy said. “Nice work, man.”
Stephen beamed, his sticks twirling faster. “Axl? Slash? What do you guys think?”
Axl nodded. “Fits good.” Slash merely nodded.
As Axl went to get some water and Steven and Slash began taking parts of the kit apart, getting ready to leave, Duff laughed his throaty laugh and turned to face Izzy, lighting up a cigarette.
“Well, then.”
“We’re taking the second kick pedal and the cymbals next,” Izzy whispered.
Duff shook his hair out of his eyes and laughed again. “You got it.” He offered Izzy the cigarette, who took it, closing his lips on the same paper that Duff’s had been around moments before.
“That’s our guy,” Izzy declared, handing it back to him, the bass callouses on Duff’s fingers meeting his. “I’ve decided.”
“Well alright then,” Duff said. “If you’ve decided he’s our guy, then I guess he’s our guy.” He smiled at Izzy, who felt a tug in his stomach again. “Easy as that.”
“We gotta find out what Axl thinks first, though.”
“Izzy,” Duff said, blowing smoke out his nose, “we both know that if you’ve decided, that’s what’ll happen. You, my friend, are the heavyweight of this organization.”
Izzy laughed. “Right.”
“Just you wait,” Duff leaned back, stretching his tall body. “You’ll see.”
---
6 miles west of Needles, California, March 1994
So much for that, Izzy thought.
>He stared down into his unsweetened iced tea, swirling it around in the glass. Funny how times change but the feelings never do.
He sighed, looking up at the TV in the corner of the empty bar, MTV playing quietly. This was just one of those days. He sipped his tea and scribbled curlicues on the notepad in front of him, resting his chin in his hand and watching the ink sputter out of the pen, allowing his thoughts to wonder. Some days the ideas flowed like a river, and some days his mind was quiet. Everything could be so quiet sometimes.
He set down the pen and looked up and out of the window, out at the road cutting through the desert. The sun was at its three o’ clock position, lazily slow-baking the sand. The cacti and Joshua trees stood stalwart against the breeze that was rattling the multi-colored wind chimes on the porch, which Izzy could hear faintly through the glass.
God, he missed Duff. He let his head drop onto his arms, feeling his heart ache stubbornly throughout his body. It was still hard sometimes and that ache surfaced from time to time, and the feeling of emptiness where Duff should be could be so conspicuous. Izzy hadn’t realized it at the time, young as he was - but over the years it had become clearer than ever - that the easy connection he had found with Duff wasn’t something you got every day. It wasn’t easy to just find someone like that, and quickly get that mutual understanding and level of comfort, to operate on the same wavelength that effortlessly. Izzy had discovered that he could not get that with many people; in fact, most people downright annoyed him.
Izzy sighed again, running his hand through his dreads. He hadn’t called his him in months. There was a time, from around June of ‘92 to April of ’93, where they had talked often, sometimes up to three times a week. But that had tapered off and, eventually, ended.
Izzy knew that not everyone could let go of addiction as completely as he had forced himself to do. But at the same time, so much of what he had seen in Duff was beginning to be blotted out by the booze, and that, of all the bullshit that had happened, was what Izzy couldn’t stand. Couldn’t stand to hear the life go out of Duff’s voice, and the quickness go out of his laugh. He never saw him, but Izzy knew that if he had, he would have seen the keen gleam fading out of his eyes, unable to penetrate the haze. And so the calls stopped. Izzy, unwilling to hurt himself more and more by continuing to watch the downward spiral, and Duff, forgetting to call in his stupor, or, maybe, ashamed to. Or maybe Izzy didn’t mean to Duff what Duff meant to Izzy, and he just didn’t care enough. Izzy wasn’t sure.
In any case, Izzy thought, gulping down some iced tea to uncramp his throat, it was over now, and there was nothing he could do about it. He couldn’t do for Duff what Duff wouldn't do for himself, and that was the hard fucking truth; and if Duff didn’t want to talk to him, he wasn’t going to force it.
Heavyweight, my ass, Izzy thought sourly, pushing the fruitless notepad away and draining his glass. For a while, yeah, but my god, how times change.
He set down three one dollar bills on the counter and headed for the door. Maybe he’d play a little guitar on the porch before he left.
---
Seattle, Washington, March 1994
Duff rolled over, open eyes meeting darkness, a sick feeling hitting him in his midsection almost as soon as he woke up. He coughed and sat up in bed, rubbing his eyes. He squinted at the red glint of the alarm clock - it was one o’ clock in the afternoon. He yawned, making his jaw ache, and turned on the lamp. The light hurt his eyes and he turned away, swinging his legs out of bed and fingering an oozing sore on his leg, wincing. He put his head into his hands and ran his fingers through his hair, the bad feeling in his midsection intensifying as he felt several small clumps come out between his knuckles, which he just let fall to the floor on top of the dirty clothes. Such a fucking mess.
He slowly got up, body aching, and made his way to the bathroom that was connected to the master bedroom he called his own. The bathroom was a mess too, more dirty clothes and some empty bottles, and a packet of rocks on the counter.
Duff brushed his teeth,which made his gums hurt, and splashed his face with water. It was kind of hard to look at himself in the mirror, at his bloated body and broken out skin, so he tried not to. He shucked the boxers he was wearing and started up a shower, examining the sores on his hips, ass, and feet. These days, it wasn't even worth working up the energy to be concerned.
He pissed in the shower, and he could feel his midsection ache as it came out. He didn’t know what to wash his sores with, so he just tentatively rinsed over them with Dove, which made them sting, and he washed his dick with the same thing, rubbing off the gunky buildup that had accumulated over the past few days of no showers. He turned off the water halfheartedly and stepped out onto the bathmat, drying off his legs and tousling his hair.
He stepped out of the bathroom, turning off the light, and pulled on a clean pair of boxers before opening the blinds on his window. It was overcast but not stormy. He grabbed the half-finished bottle of wine off the bedside table and headed downstairs.
Taking a swallow as he walked, he passed through the airy kitchen and straight onto the back porch, where he sat down on the cedar two-seater swing that hung from the ceiling. There were carvings on the back, and Duff traced a finger along them as he took another sip from the merlot. His fingertips hurt, too. Actually, every inch of his body hurt - his head, his eyes, his nose, his chest, his insides. He couldn’t even breathe through his nose, just his mouth, so his throat hurt too.
Duff stared out at the green rolling hills that were almost right in his backyard and listened to his heartbeat pounding away resignedly in his head. He drank some more wine. It’d been a while since he’d heard from any of the Guns guys. He’d talked to Axl before he went on tour for Believe in Me, but only once since he got back and not since then. Slash, who wasn’t good with communication, he hadn’t heard from at all. He’d talked to Matt once about three weeks ago, but he was busy with his own shit. Gilby, Duff wasn’t close with and probably never would be. And then of course, there was Izzy... when was the last time he’d talked to Izzy? It seemed like ages. Where even was Izzy? What was he doing? Duff realized he didn’t know. It would probably be good for him, to talk to Izzy... he would understand...
It was so hard though, Duff thought. Izzy was gone, like the wind down the road, and here he was still, drinking from dawn to dusk and still nursing this damn cocaine habit, stuck in the same old situation. So many memories of him, though... they hit Duff in a wave and almost overwhelmed him. Izzy playing his guitar night and day, “noodling,” as he liked to call it. Izzy, playing that damn Georgia Satellites album over and over until everyone was driven to distraction. Izzy, banging on the kit along to the Ramones whenever he was frustrated.
Sighing, Duff remembered how they used to talk to each other until the morning, laughing at times, serious at times; he had shared everything with him, really, because he could, because Izzy made it so easy. It was a comforting thing, talking to Izzy, but as much as Duff missed him, it wasn’t right anymore, really, because Izzy had moved on and he couldn’t. Still, lord, it had been a while.
Wonder what Izzy would say if he could see me now, Duff thought dully. He drank some more wine.