~The Izzy Cam~

Slash was busy 'talking' to paparazzi, outside the tour bus at the Headbanger's ball rock festival. This basically meant he was most likely buzzed, listening to what the paparazzi said and giving halfhearted answers.

He peered over their heads and spotted Skipper drowsily emerging from the tour bus, wiping her eyes. He loved the way she looked when she was sleeping-an expression of pure innocence- though he never told her so. He decided to wake her even more, nonetheless, with one of their favorite movie scenes.

"Adrian! Adrian!" He yelled in the midst of one of his responses to the paparazzi. She perked up, a mere twenty or thirty feet away, with a comical grin plastered on her face. "Rocky!" She called immediately.

"Adrian!" "Rocky!" She sprinted down the stairs from the tour bus and across the empty loss, penetrating the crowd like an oar through water. The paparazzi, as well as the rest of the band standing next to Slash, looked utterly confused. "Adrian!"

"Rocky," she almost whispered, throwing herself into his bare chest. They shared a warm embrace before pulling away from each other, and glancing at everyone's confused facial expressions. "Well... what the fuck was that?" Axl questioned, frowning with irritation at Skipper.

"Haven't you seen 'Rocky'? The end scene after Rocky fights Apollo Creed?" Slash nodded knowledgeably, with an arm around Skipper's shoulders.

"Oh yeah!" Izzy chimed, after a few seconds of thought. "Adrian was kinda hot, but not in the way Skipper is. She was like the 'Hot For Teacher' music video hot, you know?" Steven nodded.

"You guys should just... fuckin' get married already." Slash smiled to himself dreamily, Skipper screwed up her nose. "Why the hell would we do that?" "Yeah." Axl agreed, feeling the strong urge to remove Slash's arm from her.

"Adrian and Rocky did," Duff pointed out; Slash and Skipper exchanged a glance before looking away shyly.

****

"Ridiculous!"

People say 'I couldn't care less,' just as much as they say 'I hate you' these days. It's pretty overused, people mix up 'could' and 'couldn't' when trying to effectively use the phrase. At this moment in time, I could truly say the words and mean it. At least when it comes to what happened tonight.

"Absolutely embarrassing! Do you wish to make me out as a fool? Mission accomplished if you did!"

I watch Daddy pace back and forth like a caged tiger, spewing angry words at me once in a while, thinking of others during long periods of uneasy silence. His fists clench the material of his leather pants, his teeth grind loudly. I sit in one of the auditorium seats, gazing at him without interest. He shoots a hateful glance my way more than once, obviously expecting some sort of apology. I offer none.

"Do you have anything to say for yourself?" I yawn, sitting back in the chair. "I dunno, I had a lot of fun tonight, so thanks for providing that."

"A child!" He goes on raging. "You're nothing but a child! Doing immature things just because you know it will piss me off, flaunting around in front of grown men with the naive notion that they won't take advantage of you! I gave you the opportunity to clean up your act on your own, Skipper! Keep on like this and you'll be back in this house before you can blink!"

"Yeah, whatever Pops." I swallow my slight offense, and pretend to be completely unaffected by his words. "Can I go now? I've got some... 'flaunting' to do."

I told myself that I forgive my father. I told myself that no longer would I hold his ten year leap of absence against him. I told myself that a long time ago, when I was vulnerable, when I was victimized and needed someone to lean on.

I suppose my acts of rebellion are fueled by the fact that I truly haven't forgiven him for leaving me and Moonsie. Maybe I blame him for her death, just slightly less than I blame myself. It's hard to listen to a person, respect a person, when all you can think about is the expression on your mother's face before she went in to surgery. The expression on her dead features when the life leaked out of her.

Going to the funeral alone.

What's to respect about a man who'd let his daughter go through that?

"You..... Skipper!" "Prince."

He groans out of frustration. I suppress laughter.

"That's it! Just leave! And I'd better see you at Michael's wedding, or you're in for it!"

So that's his form of punishment now? Watching me squirm as my first love marries another woman, when he promised to come back to me? That's pretty low, especially for an absentee father. He overcompensates, which for me only translates into his being a complete hard-ass.

I stand leisurely, and give myself a good stretch. Maybe it's a bit of an adjunct to let out a loud yawn, but I do so anyway. "Sure, yeah, whatever."

He turns on his heel and irately struts toward the door, just so that I couldn't be the one to leave first. That would make it look like I won the argument-which I did- but he can't stand that. He slams the large doors as loudly as one could slam heavy slabs of wood, and leaves me there to release my laughter.

I sneak into the guitar gallery to find a gift for Slash, and I discover a perfect one, gleaming and glittering and making the other ones look like they aren't worth the paint on them. I tuck it under my arm, and flee the mansion.

****

"He's there?" I point nervously toward the main section of the smoke-filled bar, the usual smell of alcohol and sexual tension invading my nostrils. Unfortunately, when asked where he wished to spend his birthday night Slash picked a bar: the very same bar in which we talked seriously for the first time, and I... also happened to kiss Izzy.

"Yeah, don't be nervous. Whatever you have, he'll probably like it." Duff shrugs informally, tugging at the brown roots of his hair. They need to be dyed. "Probably. We agreed on a twenty-dollar spending limit, right?"

"Oh, yeah," I vaguely agree, gazing out to the table Slash was sitting at. The whole place seemed to be tinted a dark orange. Several paparazzi are situated about the bar, but the band doesn't seem to care. I figured that Duff could keep his mouth shut, but I didn't tell him what I'd brought for Slash.

"Well... now or never." Duff urges me along, staring at his blonde girlfriend waiting for him at the bar counter. "Look, I already picked you over her once. If I do it again, I swear I'll never get laid. So unless you wanna go back there and-" "You can go, Duff." I quickly dismiss him, slightly repulsed at the thought of doing that... with such a shifty man.

"Thanks." He speeds of toward his blonde whore. I grab my gift from where I hid it among the bar stools, hide it carefully behind my back, and slowly push my way through the tipsy bar patrons to where Slash is seated. I stand over him wordlessly, until he interrupts his conversation with Rosie to look up at me.

"Um... Curly?"

"You're twenty-two today." I state, somehow managing to conceal the fact that I'm sweating buckets and terrified of his reaction. He scoffs, removing his top hat from his mess of hair and setting it on top of mine. It's a bit large, but my hair usually helps keep it up.

"I told you not to make a big deal out of that," he pretends to whine, while Rosie cuts me a sharp glance.

"Well I kinda did. I got you something. Something you're either gonna love, or hate."

"A snake?" He says excitedly, and leans forward. I knew he had a thing for them, but there was no fucking way I'd get near one, not even for him. "No," I answer patiently. "Guess again."

He takes a long drink from his water glass, and shrugs at me. "A guitar strap?"

"Close enough."

I produce my shining gift, and watch his face transform into something I've never seen before, on him at least: pure happiness.

"Fucking hell." He whispers. The whole bar seems to quiet, nothing can be heard apart from the occasional click of a paparazzi's camera.

"Oh come on! We agreed on twenty dollars!" Duff complains from somewhere across the bar. Izzy and Steven sit there wearing looks of utter awe, Rosie's expression seems unpleasantly unreadable. He refuses to meet my gaze.

"What... what the..."

"It's a Les Paul, almost like yours. It's just... made of gold."

With shaking hands he receives my gift, silently turning the thing over and over again in his hands, touching every part of it. His fingers brush the neck, the strings, the bridge. I hold my breath as he closely examines the guitar, plays a few notes. "I wrote your name on it too. And mine. I... couldn't find a marker, so I just used lipstick. I sprayed it with this crap in a can so it won't-"

"I fucking love you!" I let out a little gasp of surprise as Slash crushes me into an embrace, and the bar goes up in an odd round of applause. He smells like cologne and radiates happiness, burying his face in my hair. His top hat tumbles to the dirty bar floor.

"Nobody's ever gotten me a better gift! Where the hell did you get it? How the hell did you pay for it? Curly... I-"

"No need to thank me," I manage to pull away a bit, resting on his lap. He cradles the guitar between us, grinning like an idiot. I never see him do that, and it warms my heart that I could've inspired it. I refrain from adding that I'll be a wanted man once Daddy notices his precious gold is gone.

He does something he doesn't ever do: he grips my face and plants a warm kiss on each of my cheeks, one more for my forehead. It sparks a kind of warmth in my chest that embarrasses me too much to address. I shove it down back where it belongs, and ignore it instead.

"You are a god, Princess Nelson." I cringe, turning up my nose a bit. "Don't call me that."

I get another long embrace, and when I open my eyes, Rosie's seat is empty. I choose not to care, and focus on who matters today.

"So you like it?" Again I notice how he holds it, the way a mother would her newborn baby.

The whole bar is now livid, partying harder than they did prior to my arrival. The whole mood of the place seems to have sky rocketed, the music pumps harder, the drinks are poured taller. It doesn't matter, because all I see is Slash's elated smile.

"Yeah." He says, plucking the strings lightly, and looking up at me with all kinds of emotion. Emotion I do not dare to categorize.

****

I sigh dreamily, somehow happy after having gained not a wink of sleep; knowing that the stunt I pulled tonight will be all over the tabloids by morning. They always take Slash and I the wrong way- part of me thinks of him like he'll be my brother one day.

I'm happy, having just permanently bought a residence on cloud nine- until someone bursts into my office.

"I swear, if I have to tell you guys one more time about the art of knocking-" "Chief Nelson!" An unfamiliar nurse pants, staring at me with panicked eyes. "One of your friends is down in the pit! He's having Grand Mal seizures down there, they're asking for you!"

I roll my eyes, shaking my head slightly. "Is he kinda short, really blonde?" I would expect Steven in a situation like this, having put just a little too much junk inside the syringe this time. Just like always.

"No!" She muses animatedly. "He's tall, with long black curls."

I don't think I've ever run so fast in my life to get down to that damned pit.

FUUUUCK NO

Sorry that I've waited so long to update. I had finals week at school (aka cramming for hours every day) and I was so exhausted I couldn't even think about writing. I've had plenty of time now that school's been done for a few days, and so here we go! A new chapter, and summer is here.

Updates will be a bit slow, only because I have a lot of things going on! I hope you'll understand. (New chapters will come about once or twice every week or so).

Vote and comment!