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

ANDY XVII

You said you tried to rekindle your relationship with your brother at this time?

I did, I felt like Matthew had slowly started to encompass my life. When I was a teenager I was always Matthew's sister, he took up everything. Nothing was mine, my friends were Matthew's friends, my stuff was Matt's stuff. Matt. Matt. Matt. It was all him.

He left my, our, whatever house when I was thirteen but it feels like I've been stuck to him. Even when he was killing himself with what he chose, it felt like he was killing me. I had to look after him because he was...he was blood wasn't he.

People can judge me all they want for how I handled and defended him for his sentence, I get it right. To most people he fucking, he beat a man with a metal pipe where's the moral greyness or whatever in that but he was my brother. And there was so much complex shit to do with...you know what you can read up on the case, it's been five years. I don't have, the fucking mental capacity to go over that again.

But at the end of the day, he was my brother. How could I not? He was a part of me. As well as the fact that I had looked after Helena, I was still looking after Helena. I was his Willing Relative, so I only had half choices when it came to him.

So I thought, he's eating everything from me. Again! I had left, I was living halfway across the world yet I was still locked into him, a platinum record holder who had performed at fucking Stadiums and was planning a World Tour. I needed to talk to him again, not just through lawyers. His sister, not his benefactor.

// Skin of my Teeth: A for the record interview with Adrianna Rose, 1995 (aired in 2019)

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w. discussions of child neglect, drug abuse and addiction and HIV/AIDS (as well as period typical homophobia regarding it). references to past racism.

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"For fucks sake," Andy hissed as she pushed her knuckle into her mouth in a feeble attempt to try and make the cut over the skin hurt less. The card had slipped from her hand as she'd tried to force it into the envelope. The fucking shop had said it was the same size but it didn't feel like it, the corners crumpling under the strain.

It was a cute card as well, cute in the sense of appropriate for a two year old but also not enough of an eyesore to sit over the family fireplace. A pale pink with a small tribe of dancing cats across the bottom holding up a happy birthday banner in a soft lilac colour.

She'd picked it up back in December, the same week the fateful day she had returned to the living room and pulled Axl across the Atlantic. Andy looked over at the gun still resting in the corner, Axl was still yet to move it and she doubted that it would change anytime soon.

She had checked to see if it was loaded. It wasn't but the ammo was still inside one of the upper kitchen cabinets, the metal shells locked inside their cardboard box. Metallic with the red strip wrapped around the end, they were quite pretty in the light but so had the blood that had slowly dripped from her nose onto the kitchen floor.

What would the remnants of Axl's skull have looked like? Probably not so pretty, blood and fleshy pink as well as the ivory bone shards.

Andy pressed her teeth down over her lip, no amount of vaseline could save the chewed up skin and muscle over what her teeth had torn through. But it was better than what it had been for the past few months, it was a good pain. A bruise from the night before, a brilliant scar that only bought memories of adoration and so much love, all love.

Whether by her own teeth or Axl's, pulling at the flesh as their bodies pushed against each other, tightly wrapped together as their ribs clashed together and legs entangled as if they were vines. Hands dragged through his hair until they reached the skin of his back, her nails scratching into the skin of his neck and back, beautiful and warm underneath her skin.