how soon is now? || w. a rose [i/v]

ANDY VII [E]

Do you think he was justified?

Define that.

That Axl was right about what he said about his bandmates.

[snorts] You're gonna have to be more specific than that.

That they were killing themselves with heroin, that it would be their last performance

I'm not saying it was right to say it, but was he lying either, no. All Axl has ever said what he thought was the truth, so it doesn't matter if I think it was justified or not, because he did.

So they were killing themselves with heroin?

Have you looked up what Opiates do to you? They're not exactly good for the system, as much as you like to spin it as rockstar behaviour. All other addicts are looked down upon as wastes of space that ruined their own lives, but not us right.

You're calling them addicts?

We're all fucking addicted to something or other, like you're addicted to putting words in people's mouths to sell a good story.

// Interview with Andy Bernow, 1990

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w. reference to drug abuse, nsfw

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God the ringing was annoying, piercing through her skull like a constant hammering down. Axl's phone had been ringing for over ten minutes now, the incessant caller not getting the fucking message. It had to be somebody from Geffen, probably asking about last night's or tonight's performance.

Andy was in half the mind to pull it out at the plug, like they had done after the VMA's, but something told her this would lead to more far reaching consequences. This way they could both pretend they were still asleep, which Axl actually was and Andy was in a half mind to return under the sheets.

She leaned to fill the glass with water in the kitchen sink, popping out two paracetamol* from the packet. Her head was killing, wrapped tightly in a vice around her temples and the lightning running down her forehead. Her beta-blockers still didn't seem to fully do their job, whether that be the palpitations or the migraines, she couldn't be bothered to think about it.

She was probably gonna have even worse palpitations if that fucking phone didn't stop soon. Andy supposed she should blame Axl, he was the one who had technically caused the mess and was not making any real attempts to repair the shattered glass, but she couldn't.

At the incessant ringing she should have gone and woken him up, pulling him out from under the duvet and facing whatever the consequence of last night entailed. But she hadn't, she had let him keep sleeping. His copper hair wrapping around the pillow and falling across his face and the light shadow that was glazing across his jaw, lit up by the light peeking into the dark room.

His eyelashes brushed across his cheekbones and it was cliché, but he really did look younger as he slept on, his breaths completely mellow and even and the lack of any crease between his eyebrows. She had indeed been shocked by the motion that next February would hold his twenty eighth birthday while she reached twenty two in April, but at the same time, was it really surprising? He was a soldier that held heavy burdens across his shoulders, crushing down on his bones, as if he was Atlas holding up the sky. And maybe he was, or at least he was being expected to hold up whatever his band was.