#it was supposed to be a smut oneshot but it turned into something philosophical-angsty with pg rating

[vincess-princess]

Am I a Monster?

hi everyone i’m not dead and even still writing! this was written as a request for @prettyboysixx1974 and spent some time in my drafts (two months uh-oh) before i finally got down to finishing it. sorry camryn, i promised it’ll be smut here, but it turned out that it would be extremely out of character, so i decided to not include it. i hope you’ll still enjoy it though :) ah, and meet my new amazing, lovely beta-reader @polska-tankietka !

Fandom: Guns N’ Roses Author: @arnold-layne Rating: Teen Relationships: Izzy Stradlin\Axl Rose Word Count: 2475 Tags: sex worker\client au, minor violence, unholy thoughts

A meeting with a pretty red-headed hooker makes Izzy ask himself a very important question.

“How much?”

“Depends on the type,” the redhead closed his eyes and blew out a puff of smoke. Izzy couldn’t help but look at him, curling his thin, delicate lips around a cigarette. He’s never seen such a pretty hooker. “Oral, handjob, blowjob, classic?”

“All at once.”

The redhead’s eyes widened in surprise, but only for a second. “That will cost you a pretty penny.”

“So nice of you to care about my finances,” Izzy grinned, making a direct eye contact with the guy until he gave in, blinked confusedly and looked away. “No need to worry, I could afford ten hookers like you, if I wanted to.”

“I gotta check that you won’t screw me,” snapped the redhead in return, “and you don’t look rich. Show me the money.”

“Appearances can be deceiving. And you haven’t told me the price yet,” Izzy reminded.

“20$ for oral and handjob, 30$ for a blowjob and 70$ for a classic. 120$ total. You pay half up front,” the guy said it so quickly, that he either was incredibly good at counting or created all these numbers right away especially for Izzy.

“Don’t you think you value yourself too much, boy?” Izzy said only for the sake of saying something, already reaching for his wallet. “You are going to lose all your clients with a price list like this. Here is your half,” Izzy passed him two dirty dollar bills, which the guy instantly hid in his jacket.

“So nice of you to care about my income. Show me the other half,” the redhead demanded, relaxing a little only after Izzy showed him another two dollar bills. “Alright. Are you gonna rent a room or do you have an apartment? There’s a nice hotel down the road…”

“No, we are going to my place,” Izzy interrupted, reaching for the redhead’s shoulder to guide him towards his car, but he shrank back, not allowing to touch him. The hooker got a grip on himself the very next moment, but it was too late.

“Hey, what the fuck? I wasn’t gonna hit you or something!” Izzy frowned at the redhead. God knows he had never treated his whores badly, but if this one was going to avoid even a harmless contact, like a fucking virgin, he wouldn’t be fun at all. “You’re a newbie, aren’t you? That’s why I haven’t seen you here before?”

“No,” he shook his head. “I used to work in another part of the city.”

“Why did you move then?”

“The police,” he said dryly, this time allowing Izzy to take his arm, and followed him to the car in silence. This boy was a tough nut to crack, and Izzy wouldn’t even bother with him, preferring to find a more compliant hooker, if the guy wasn’t so incredibly, astonishingly beautiful. He should be standing on  stage, not on street corners. Izzy found himself thinking with some kind of compassion, but quickly shrugged these thoughts off – the guy chose it himself, after all.

“What’s your name, by the way?” he asked while starting the car. The guy cast him a strange look, but answered, although reluctantly:

“Axl. Without ‘e’.”

“Nice to meet you, Axl without ‘e’,” Izzy said carefully, watching Axl’s facial expression. He expected a negative reaction, but, to his surprise, Axl smiled.

“Still better than ‘Axel’.”

“It doesn’t sound like a real name,” apparently, Izzy hit too close to home, because Axl pursed his lips in irritation.

“Now it does. Yours?”

“Izzy.”

“Did your parents want a girl?”

“No.” Izzy slammed on the accelerator and, accompanied by screeching of the tires and Axl’s almost as high-pitched shriek, he drove onto the road.

***

“Ten hookers?” Axl said skeptically, having walked through the door after Izzy. “It was them who had made such a mess here?”

“Yeah, exactly,” Izzy said, putting his arm around Axl’s waist and guiding him to the room. “If you have a problem with it, you can clean up here yourself.”

“Another 100$ dollars - and I’m at your service,” Axl replied playfully. He seemed to finally relax, but Izzy could still feel the tension in his body as they walked across the room, side to side, and sat down on the couch.

“Alright,” he grinned and pretended to reach for his wallet.

“What the… oh shit, you almost got me there,” Axl laughed shortly, and Izzy realized he was enjoying this sound more than he should’ve. “I wish I could do the same.”

“What ‘the same’?”

“To say absolute bullshit with such a serious face.”

“Bullshit?” Izzy frowned. Axl immediately tensed up and tried to move away, but Izzy didn’t let him go, grabbing his arm and dragging him closer. Axl raised another arm, intending to push him away, but Izzy caught his wrist and pinned it to the couch.

“Let me go!” Axl freaked out, and tried to kick Izzy and wriggle out of his arms. It was a pure miracle that Izzy managed to keep a hold of him. But Axl was almost as strong as him, and it was only a matter of time before he would manage to break out. “Let me go, fucker!”

“Shut-” Izzy actually let go of his arm - and slapped him in the face with such strength that Axl almost fell off the couch. He stopped screaming and hid his face behind his arms in a quick, protective movement.

“-up,” Izzy finished calmly. Axl was breathing rapidly behind his improvised protection. Izzy couldn’t see his facial expression, only eyes shining from under his fingers, watching carefully his every move. Izzy wasn’t going to hit him again, but this alarmed reaction irritated him too much. Did he really look like such a violent monster in this hooker’s eyes?

“Stop this,” he ordered, trying to keep his voice emotionless. “If you behave, I’m not gonna hit you again.”

Axl hesitated for a moment but finally lowered his arms. “Y’all always talk like that.”

“Like what?”

“Stop making a fuss, I ain’t gonna do you anything bad,” Axl imitated mockingly. “Guess what happens next? Something bad.”

Anger rose in Izzy’s chest, its warm wave sweeping through his head, slowly driving him to losing his temper. “Haven’t you ever thought, that if you learned how to talk with clients, you wouldn’t have so many problems? It’s no doubt they beat you up. Nobody likes being talked to like that. It’s not sexy.”

“Oh yeah, poor guys, who don’t get a boner fast enough,” Axl carefully touched his cheek, that was slowly turning bright red. “Do you have the same problem?”

“What? No!” Izzy felt an almost uncontrollable urge to slap him one more time. He was growing more and more tired of this pointless conversation.

“Su-ure,” muttered Axl and recoiled in advance, expecting one more punch as a punishment, but Izzy made a great effort not to do it, instead he got up and headed towards the kitchen.

When he came back with a bottle in hand, Axl narrowed his eyes and asked with suspicion.

“Are you gonna get drunk?”

“We’re gonna get drunk,” Izzy corrected him. “You’re obviously no good when sober, so maybe a good drink will make you friendlier.”

He expected Axl to refuse indignantly, but after a second of thinking, he nodded. “Okay.”

He took the bottle and, without even reading the label, opened it and took a long gulp. “Night train,” he stated. “You said you can afford ten hookers at once, and you drink Night train?”

“No. You drink Night train.” Izzy came back to the kitchen and returned with another bottle. “I drink Jack Daniels.”

Axl opened his mouth, looked at the bottle Izzy was holding, then at his own one – and closed it without saying a word. The first sip Izzy took from his bottle tasted like a victory.

To the “a lil’ bit tipsy” stage and a half-empty bottle, Axl got in a matter of minutes, having chugged it in four or five big gulps. It seemed to have a good effect; Axl’s shoulders weren’t so tense under Izzy’s touch anymore.

“Why don’t you drink?” Axl asked suspiciously, looking at Izzy’s almost full bottle. “If you don’t wanna, give it to me!” he reached out to grab the bottle, but Izzy quickly raised it in the air. Axl didn’t insist on having it and switched to his shitty drink again. “Then drink,” he demanded. “I don’t want you to be sober while I’m drunk. You - clients - are always like that.”

“Okay, okay.” Izzy pretended to take a sip. “Everything for your pleasure, baby.”

“We haven’t got to that stage of our relationship yet.” Axl smiled slyly.

“Aren’t we going to skip it? I mean, we met an hour ago, and already are drinking together.” Mentioning that, with hookers the last stage was usually the first one felt like a bad idea. Moody one-night stands that expected anything else except a bottle of wine and a good sex usually drove Izzy mad. But with this one, he was ready to wait for a little longer.

“Yeah, probably,” Axl agreed, his smile fading away. “We could as well move to the final stage right now,” he said in such a tone that Izzy understood immediately doing this would be no good.

“Calm down, sweetheart, I’m not in a rush. Take your time.”

“Baby, sweetheart… who do you think you are to call me like this?” Axl muttered, but his facial expression softened. When he turned to his bottle again, Izzy poured out some of his Jack into a vase near the sofa. Flowers in it had been dead for a long time anyway.

Axl held his almost empty bottle to his face, looked at Izzy through the remaining liquid and giggled. Izzy rolled his eyes, but couldn’t help smiling as well. Drunk Axl was definitely more pleasant than the sober one. What kind of hooker even goes to work sober? Izzy had never seen a single one of them sober before, and he had seen a lot.

He glanced at inner sides of Axl’s arms. Blinked in amazement and outright stared.

There were no needle traces. At all.

He could as well snort shit, Izzy reassured himself. Or smoke. The guy seemed to be relatively new in business. Maybe he just didn’t get to heavy drugs yet… no, for sure, he didn’t. It was all still ahead of him.

Axl sighed with unexpected sadness and put his head on Izzy’s shoulder. Izzy froze in his place, feeling a strange, warm wave going through his whole body. That was only the arousal and nothing else, he tried to convince himself. It couldn’t be anything else.

“You alright?” Izzy asked, his voice strangely hoarse.

“Yeah.” Axl’s hair fell on his face, but he didn’t try to brush it back. From the corner of his eye, behind these loose, red strands, Izzy could see Axl’s green eyes. Greener than any he had ever seen before, and he knew Axl looked right at him with these unnaturally green eyes. ”Night train’s kicking in. You’re not that bad of a guy, y’know,” he changed the subject so unexpectedly that, at first, Izzy didn’t believe his ears.

“That’s Night train speaking, isn’t it?”

“Dunno.” Axl frowned. “Maybe. Maybe not. I’m in two minds about you.”

Izzy held the bottle up to his face, made a huge sip and hugged him. Axl raised his eyebrow but didn’t pull away. It meant that Izzy was doing everything right – so far.

Maybe he finally found the right tactic.

“Wanna some Jack?”

“Wh- Seriously?!” Axl jumped a little. “What was that fucking ‘you’re-drinking-night-train-I’m-drinking-Jack’ show?!” His eyes were sparkling with indignation.

“Well, I needed to show you who calls the shots,” Izzy was somehow absolutely sure that this was the right thing to say. He already realized that Axl didn’t like dishonesty. “But since you need it more than I do…” he offered Axl the bottle. Axl glared at him for a few more seconds, but then sighed and accepted it, the corners of his lips lowered with disappointment.

“You’re right.” He took a big sip – too big, he must have realized after he choked on the liquid and spit almost everything on his black tank top with ‘Twisted Sister’ logo. “Shit… well, it’s already black.”

Izzy tried his best not to laugh but didn’t make it. Now it was Axl’s turn to roll his eyes.

They sat in silence for a while, Axl quietly eliminating the remaining whiskey, and Izzy watching him secretly. The speed with which Axl was getting drunk alarmed him. At this rate, it wouldn’t take him long to drink to the point of passing out, and Izzy didn’t want that.

“Slow down,” he said, gently taking away the bottle from Axl’s weak fingers. “If you pass out, we’ll have to postpone it till morning.”

“Don’t lie to me,” muttered Axl, following the bottle with his eyes but not trying to reach it. “You’ll only be happier if I pass out. Won’t have to follow the rules.”

Izzy felt like he’d been punched in the gut. Anger again rose in his chest.

All evening – all fucking evening - he tried to follow these goddamn rules. And for what? To be accused of enjoying fucking unconscious bodies by the same hooker he’d been courting all that time, who he’d been trying to make as comfortable as possible, suppressing his own desires?

Axl shifted, moved his head away from Izzy’s shoulder and curled up on the couch near him.

Izzy could feel his already half-hard cock in his pants, being like that for so long that evening it almost started to hurt.  He waited all that time. From the moment he saw the beautiful hooker on a street corner, a hooker with soft red hair, delicate face, thin wrists and a cigarette between his fingers, a hooker with no typical boredom in his eyes and weariness on his face, a hooker that seemed alive and thus so much differed from all the others he had ever seen. Now this hooker – no, not like that. Now Axl was here, in his flat, on his couch, half-passed out from all the alcohol Izzy poured into him, completely at his mercy.

Fuck it, something snapped inside of Izzy, and he leaned over to Axl and covered his lips with his own, pushing his tongue inside his mouth. Under the pressure Axl parted his lips and let Izzy in, but his tongue seemed cold and lifeless. His eyes were empty. Jack Daniels had done its job well.

Even through the drunken blush on Axl’s cheeks Izzy saw the reddening trace of his own hand.

“Shit,” Izzy stopped the kiss and buried his face in Axl’s neck, desperation twirling inside of him.

He couldn’t do it to him. He just couldn’t.