A/N: I put way too much of Guns n Roses into Snakes n Barrels in this and that means it's at least a little painful. Hints of Tony/Pickles but nothing really explicit.

Cover picture from evilcreampuff on deviantart, it's the only thing happy about this.

Tony spoke through his music. He really, truly did like no one else I knew. He was so inarticulate in interviews and real life. I spent so much time watching him stumble through the most basic ideas but I knew it was different from, like, Sammy or Nathan. Sammy and Nathan couldn't get their thoughts out through anything but Tony could. The words weren't there for him but the music was. That's why I was so hard on Tony. That's why things fell apart.

Tony was the reason I stayed in the apartment with him and Sammy. I mean, I liked Sammy fine, he was a decent drummer and he was shockingly nice for an LA rocker but he wasn't what I was looking for. Tony was what I was looking for. Once I had Tony, I just had to fill in the rest of my band. No one else really wanted to be in a band like I did. Tony just wanted to speak in his native tongue and Sammy just wanted to show off his body and make some money without being a stripper and Bullets already had his time in the spotlight. But I wanted that band, really fucking bad and they just followed me.

That doesn't mean that I didn't like them. I fucking fell in love with them. They were my family. And there are a bunch of old interviews and home videos from the first tour where you can see how in love with them I was. The one that hurts the most one of the roadies took from the bus, me and Sammy were outside and Sammy had slung me over his shoulder, spinning me around. We were both laughing so hard that the camera could pick up my wheezing. Sammy set me down in front of Tony and I batted his hat off playfully, he picked me up and put me on his shoulders in retaliation. And that's what the whole first tour was like, a bunch of dumb kids messing around and accidently gaining fans in the process. It was another reason everything fell apart.

I miss everything from that tour but I think I miss that Sammy the most. He was like the cool older brother everyone wished they had to me. He was really dumb sometimes and he forgot things easily but he was so fucking affectionate that you didn't really care. Sammy's still nice, still that unusually nice guy who let me into his apartment when I first got here but he's not all here anymore. He forgets a lot of things now, not songs but other things like stupid jokes and what the apartment we shared looked like or what city we're in. Sammy's not the reason things fell apart though, I am. Me and my stupid attachment to Tony.

We fell apart and Bullets left and Sammy got even more fucked up and Tony started hating me because I can't understand Tony anymore. We got really famous, way too big for our own good. Because then we were swimming in cash and girls in the middle of LA and every numbing substance was available to us and we were all so fucked up on the inside that we took them because we needed it. Then Tony started drinking, not like the rest of us, but really drinking. I didn't care until I realized that he stopped plucking at his old acoustic guitar at night when we couldn't sleep or when he needed to say something. He stopped playing any music outside of shows. And that meant he stopped speaking to me.

So I started screaming at him. Screaming as loud and as viciously as I could, pretending that it was about the band and not about us. I'd tell him that he was playing like shit. I'd tell him that his drinking was way out of control. I'd tell him that he had a problem. I never said anything to Bullets who actually OD'd and had to go to rehab or Sammy who I hadn't seen sober in months. I just yelled at Tony because he was different. He was the reason we were here. And I hoped that maybe if I yelled loud enough he'd yell back and I'd finally be able to understand him. It wouldn't be his music but it wouldn't be a stumbling mess either. It'd just be Tony, even if he hated me.

I was so desperate to hear Tony again and really understand him that I'd tear my own band apart and make him hate me. And I did. I'm the reason that Bullets is gone and I'm the reason Sammy gets so fucked up and I'm the reason Tony is only barely still here. But I can't stop because I still haven't heard him since the first tour. And I'll keep trying until he's gone or I'm dead or he finally starts talking to me again.