Trigger warnings: Eating disorder, mention of death, panic attack, depression

Black Veil Brides: Due to unforeseen circumstances, we regret to announce that our upcoming tour is being postponed. All current tickets will be valid at rescheduled shows and there will be a half price discount on all of our official merchandise for the whole of next week. We are deeply sorry and cannot express how upsetting this is. Please be assured we WILL make it up to you in any way we can, and if we didn't have to do this, we wouldn't. All our love to you. 

Andy is teary.

Because of the postponing of the tour, sure, but mostly because Dr Rhodes is trying to get him to talk again, and he doesn't want that - to 'talk about it'. Because talking about it means thinking about it, and all he's been doing for months is trying not to do that. Not that his efforts has been very successful, mind; he somehow thought about it enough to end up here.

A while ago, he stopped listening to what the man is saying. Something about recovery or the importance of being open or another thing he considers bullshit. Instead, he looks at his hands and his fingers and the needles embedded beneath his tattooed skin, wonders what they would look like if they were just bones. He shakes the thought away but it has already tethered itself firmly to the wall of his mind, so he instead offers it a place to stay for a while. It's not like he'd find out what that'd look like, not while he's here under the watchful eyes of nurses and doctors and this stupid psychiatrist. 

"Andrew, it's important you listen." 

He sighs and continues imagining a hand which consists just of bone and a thin covering of skin to hold each bone in place. 

"Andrew." 

"I'm not interested in anything you have to say." 

Dr Rhodes is frowning, as he has been for the entirety of the pointless, painful session. "It's important for you health, Andrew." 

"Do you think I'd be in this situation if I cared about my health?" He shakes his head and pulls his eyes from his hands to the open book in his lap. He picks it up. 

"You need to be willing or recovery won't work." 

"Great, let it not work," he mumbles dismissively. 

"Andrew-" 

"I'm reading." 

Dr Rhodes gets up, decides he'll just have to keep persisting in later sessions, and leaves the man to his own company. 

Once he's gone, Andy puts the book down and returns to staring at his hands. He blinks to push the tears back but they come anyway, so he shuts his eyes and opens them a minute later with hopes of having eliminated them. He has not, and he turns his hands over, watches how his bones move, how his knuckles jut and that bone in his wrist seems sharp enough to break skin. He closes his fists and looks away from them because they're not what he wants them to be. Then he lifts the neat covers from him and pulls the gown up over his hips and his ribs. He puts a palm flat on his stomach and exhales, then inhales, then sucks in to create an even more sunken feeling. He pushes on his stomach until it's uncomfortable. Those mean things are getting loud again. He'd lost them for a while, after they brought him here, but now they're back. 

Why are you letting them do this to you, Andy? Why are you letting them win? You want to win. We want to win. Don't let them win, Andy. They mustn't win. 

He moves his hand from his stomach to his left hip, feels the ridge and the dip, the solidness of bone against the softness of skin. 

Remember how it felt before they were force-feeding you? Remember how good it felt, being in control like that? Remember it, Andy! Remember it! 

His hand finds his ribs. He runs fingers over each bump, counting them over and over, wishing the dips could somehow become deeper, the ridges sharper, the flesh thinner. Wishing he could touch bone, could feel its smoothness, could stroke it, could admire it. 

You can't let them do this to you, Andy. Why are you letting them do this to you? 

Yes, why. 

He pins his hand to the bed by his side, forces himself to stop this self-torture. He covers himself back up. Those mean things, he can't listen. He knows that. After all, listening was what got him here, and listening is what makes him feel this way. He can not listen, and yet everything inside is telling him to. 

He lies down, pushes his face into the pillow, tries so hard not to cry that he ends up crying harder, which only angers him further. Anger at himself, at those things inside his brain, at food and what it's made of him, at the world, at anything and everything. Anger until it's heartbreak, and heartbreak until it's an inability to breathe and a series of loud cries. Loud enough to bring in a nurse. 

"What's wrong?" She asks. "Is it your heart?" 

Andy just cries harder at that. Yes, he wants to reply. Yes, it's my heart. I've broken my own heart. 

She makes him turn onto his back, then understanding that it's nothing needing medical attention and breathing out in relief. She does what she can to calm and comfort him, but he pushes her away and turns back onto his front, where he sobs and gasps and gasps and sobs, the pain of what could be a bullet in the chest plaguing him, and yet, he refuses any sort of comfort. Perhaps because he doesn't trust them, or perhaps because he doesn't deserve them. Which one, he couldn't say, but he cries wildly and without means to stop, hoping devastatingly for a heart attack to come and steal it all away. 

* * * 

Jinxx visits hours later, in the early evening. When he says at reception who he's here for, a nurse comes to show him the way and, as they're walking, explains to him the earlier incident. He enters the room saddened and careful, closing the door behind himself with a soft click and sitting on the chair beside the bed. It's hard to tell whether Andy is awake or asleep. "Hey, buddy," he says quietly. 

Turned away from Jinxx, Andy looks at the corner of the window in his line of sight. He says nothing. If he were to try, he's sure nothing would come out. 

"I brought you some things," Jinxx says, despite not being sure if the man in listening. He knows he couldn't not speak. Somehow, that'd be much worse. "I used the spare key you gave me for emergencies to get your Batman comics and stuff, I hope that's okay. I'll leave them on the side." 

That brings a welling to Andy's eyes.

"Lonny is gonna come tomorrow, with Jake. We all really miss you." 

Andy blinks and tears leak free. He turns slowly over, wary of the wires and the tube. They replaces the tape after he had calmed down earlier, since his tears had caused it to become loose. "Help me up," he weakly murmurs, reaching an arm towards the elder, who moves towards the bed and slips a comforting and secure hand beneath his shoulder blades, lifting him off the mattress. Andy looks at him silently with his eyes wet. He brings his bottom lip between his teeth takes shaky breaths. Then he bows his head and lets more tears escape, despite the burn left by the previous ones. He shakes his head. Jinxx's hand is still supporting him and he says, without lifting his head to find the man with his eyes, "I don't want to do this anymore." 

Jinxx doesn't have a response straight away. With his other hand, he strokes hair from Andy's face, watches it fall back over his eyes, and repeats. "It's not gonna be this way forever," he says. 

"I don't want it to be this way now," Andy half-whispers. His hand trembles as he brings it to his face, wipes tears helplessly across his cheeks. His weight - what little amount of it there is - rests almost entirely on Jinxx's hand. He looks up at the man now, his eyelashes dark and stuck together, and he sobs. 

Jinxx moves from the chair to the edge of the bed. There, he turns and, with his hand still between the younger's shoulder blades, pulls him gently closer. He moves his hand to Andy's head, which he softly strokes, as the man sinks, weakened by his own mind, into his arms, until the scene resembles that of a father comforting a child.