#guns n roses

Thursday drabbles week 2, some slice-of-life sluff circa 1991. Wrote this one at the height of my obsession with Slash’s polka-dot shirt Next week… I haven’t decided yet. A piece of an a/b/o AU maybe? Or something with a bit of angst? What do you guys think?

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“Ah, fuck!”

The red solo cup was now on the floor of the backstage hallway, and it’s vodka-cranberry contents were now soaked into the front of Duff’s shirt.

Fuckin’ figures, the one day he doesn’t wear a black top, he manages to make a mess of himself.  Not that he wasn’t normally a mess, but they were filming a TV interview in five minutes!

‘They’ meaning him and Slash, as usual.  Duff did a lot of interviews with Slash, mostly because the management didn’t want to deal with wrangling Axl and because everybody seemed to want to hear from Slash – as oblivious as the guitarist seemed to be to that fact.  Duff didn’t have much to say to reporters himself, but the logic was that if they went together, between the two of them they would be intelligent enough and sober enough to get through the interview without stirring up any shit.

Normally, Duff resented the 'dumbass rocker’ stereotype more than anything… But then there were moments like this that made him wonder if the buddy system had something to it.

Slash was already gripping the edge of Duff’s ruined shirt, “Hey, hey it’s ok man… Let’s just get this off you, huh?” 

Duff let Slash tug off his shirt, watched him stretch out on his tiptoes to get the hem over Duff’s head.  Then Slash started fumbling with the buttons of his own shirt, and Duff snorted a laugh.  

“Are we both gonna do the interview half-naked?”

“Nah, man, c’mon…” Slash admonished with a grin on his face as he shrugged off his shirt and held it out to Duff.  “Here, you wear mine, it’s big on me so it’ll fit you fine.  And I got my jacket so I don’t really need it.”

Duff accepted the shirt from Slash and slipped it on.  The cloth was still warm from Slash’s body, Duff did up a couple buttons then ran his fingers down the soft, velvety black fabric interspersed with shiny little silver dots that were slippery beneath his fingertips.  The shirt was comfortable, almost cozy, in that lived-in way like a favorite blanket.  It was always slipping off Slash’s shoulders when he wore it – quite often as of late – but on Duff it was just loose enough.  The sleeves were a bit too short, so he cuffed them, and when he looked up Slash had his fringed leather jacket on and was rocking on his toes, waiting for Duff to finish preening so they could hurry up and get this interview over with.  

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Axl ☺