Buttered Popcorn

Chapter 17.5: May 25, 1987

That night, the two bands decided to go out for a night of drinking and partying- though many of their nights were spent the very same way.

The habits of the two most notorious rock n' roll bands were known to many, though not experienced by the majority.

Nikki had quickly made his way out of the stadium after seeing Steven and Jimmie kiss, and had been hiding in his hotel room drinking away his consciousness and delving into his lethal habits. The needle seemed to be his best friend in the comfort of the cold, uncomfortable hotel bathroom.

After hours of restless knocking and phone calls to his room, Tommy had finally got through to Nikki and convinced him to go out on the town with their band, they'd agreed to meet up with Guns N' Roses at a local bar to begin their antics. Jimmie tagged alongside the latter band with Steven, and was excited to party with her partner.

Axl waved over a waitress and ordered a few bottles of alcohol for the table, sending a few flirtatious winks to the blonde girl as she took the order. Jimmie's head rested gently on Steven's shoulder as she observed the group around her buzzing with life and conversation. The dim lights were hazy across the sticky bar counters, and the live band feistily fueled the energy of the entire room and dancing crowd, much to Axl's judgement.

Slash and Duff were engulfed in a debate about which drink was better, vodka or whiskey. The bassist persisted that the clear poison was the superior, to which the guitarist would simply shrug and mumble a careless, "Whatever, man." Tommy and Vince scouted the bar for girls to pick up, and Mick hummed a small-talk conversation with Izzy. Jimmie's eyes briefly bounced over to Mötley's bassist, who had his buff arms crossed and stared intently at the glossed surface of the table, littered with all sorts of glasses and bottles.

Nikki was unusually quiet.

Jimmie quickly averted her attention back to Steven's warm hand as it rubbed small circles on her thigh- a soothing gesture that somehow drowned out the abundance of noise swarming around her. As he had done countless times before, Slash placed yet another shot in front of Jimmie with a cocky smirk.

Returning his expression with her own quirked eyebrow, the curly-maned guitarist shrugged, "Don't take it if you don't want to." With a scoff, she snatched the shot from the table and stared at the nearly-overflowing glass. The brim taunted her with each waft of the toxic aroma. Slash knew how to play his game, and how Jimmie was one of the most stubborn and challenging girls he'd ever met. Using that to his advantage, he also loved to party with her.

Jimmie and the guitarist's small cups clinked with one another's and they both prepared for even more alcohol. Steven's eyes glowed with pride as she took a short breath and threw the drink back down her throat, stacking her shot glass with her other ones, counting seven total.

Or was it six? She didn't know, her vision blurred as her hazy eyes attempted to focus on each and every glass.

The blond drummer whooped for the girl and hooked his arm around her waist, kissing all over her messy hair while her cheeks blushed deep red- not only from the alcohol. Steven engulfed himself in yet another expressive conversation with Mötley Crüe's own drummer.

The bitter-sweet lingering of whiskey rested across her tongue while she cringed at the taste. Slash hadn't allowed her five minutes without a shot since they'd first arrived at the swarming bar.

Duff sent a wink to Jimmie once he caught her cuddled embrace into his drummer, and smirked once she smiled back. Izzy's muffled chuckle came from the other side of Steven, and Jimmie began to notice that everything seemed muffled. Slash's suggestive cheers for her to take another shot, Steven's words form his own conversation. Even her own fucking thoughts.

"I feel sick."

Jimmie's meek words drowned into the buzz of conversation around them. Suddenly, the alcohol had begun to hit. Though she'd tried her best to direct the statement at Steven, he continued on with his laughing and his drinking and his partying.

She couldn't handle it anymore.

Without another quiet groan, she slipped out of the booth and stumbled her way across the bar, shoving beside a path of dancing, sweating bodies packed like sardines within the walls.

The bar's wooden floors bulged and blurred in her warping vision. The loud music began to obnoxiously thump in her muffled ears and her tongue twitched to spit up the toxic alcohol in her system. Without any coherent thoughts, she tried her best to free herself from the bar's suffocating environment.

It was all too much, too fast.

Upon the desperate entrance to the bathroom, she found it was crowded with a sea of women, all adjusting various aspects of their revealing outfits: pushing up their boobs, shifting up their skirts, wiping off smeared lipstick. The tiled room reeked of perfume and artificial makeup- Jimmie gagged and tumbled back out of the door.

Now being on the opposite end of the bar from the exit, she yearned for a breath of fresh air. That's all she needed, was air. Yet somehow, she couldn't seem to breathe.

Each and every body slicked her skin with their sweat as she squeezed by, the crowd seeming to get thicker with each person she passed. A few grabbed at her and even slid their hand up her body as much as they could before she pushed past them as well. She couldn't fight back at this point.

The tight jeans that caged her thighs, her lungs suffocating in the cinched top across her chest- it was almost unbearable.

As she tumbled out into the busy street of Los Angeles's nightlife, she spit up her stomach's contents and grabbed at the rough brick wall for support. Jimmie's knees buckled under her and she attempted to regain her unsteady balance. The brim of her vision began blurring furiously through the thick dam of tears at the incessant gagging and vomiting.

Bile stung her mouth as she spit the distasteful saliva from between her lips and wiped at her face with the back of her shaking hand. Revisiting her surroundings and finally taking a breath in, she soaked in the humid, summer air around her. Her slender fingers desperately ran through her hair to free her face of the sticking strands.

Heaving breaths, she bit her raw lip in the realization that Steven wouldn't be following her out. He hadn't even looked her way as she miserably and idiotically stumbled around the bar. It was a demented fucking cycle, as Jimmie saw it. He would get high until his pupils engulfed the sea blues of his eyes and dilated. His hands would shake much like her own were, only from dramatically opposite things. He wouldn't come for her. He didn't follow. He wasn't going to save her.

He never would.

Though the thought pained her stubborn heart and her lip quivered with denial, it was true.

He didn't blindly follow her path. He didn't hear her calls as she leaned into his shoulder. He wasn't standing beside her. He wasn't even fucking there.

A hot drip ran down the length of her neck, another a few moments later.

In the blur of chaos and the desire to escape, she hadn't realized the tears didn't stop. In fact, they trailed across her skin in a taunting, creeping speed. Inch by inch, moment by moment, the tears seemed to engulf her whole.

Her hand pawed at her face, wiping away the trail of despair and slicked her hair back with the remains. She should've known Steven wouldn't come.

After all, who the fuck would?