#originally wanted to include more of Martin in the last line but the drabble was too empty anyway

[roccinan]

I love myself, but not today

*gasp* Me? Actually writing on a writing blog??? Shocking! 

I don’t really know where I was going with this or if I’ll ever expand it and post to AO3 so for now, this drabble stays here. It’s a character study/backstory exploration for Andres (again, not exactly a headcanon I 100% believe, just an idea with some darker turns). Goes with Alvaro’s “same father” hc and can be read as compliant with Corners and also Hermanito (to a smaller extent) 

Warnings: referenced child abuse, referenced illness and drug abuse, implied sexual abuse, misogyny/sexism, references to child birth, POV 2nd person, intentional vagueness

Relationships: Mostly Andres-centric (asdfasdf no I do not condone whatever’s going on in his head); a side of #hermanos, some berlermo foreshadowing if you squint

Not sure if anyone will read this, but if you do, hope you like this experimental chunk.

I love myself, but not today

Your name is Andrés de Fonollosa. And you’re a son of a bitch. Anyone who knows a lick or two about you will say you’re a fucker from hell. A bullet for a heart and a cock for a brain. They’ll call you a vile, wicked thing that should have died in your mother’s womb. But you know it’s not true. Because the truth is, you are much, much worse.

There is a man inside you (one day you’ll give him a name), festering under skin like the once-swell of your mother’s belly. If you’re in the mood for lying, you can say he was born on a sour day, the exact hour you felt the twitch of Mamá’s nerves in your dying bones. But no, no. This man has lived with you since your first breath. You can say he fed on you until he broke out, a grinning thing of blood and teeth. 

But the truth is-- he fed you. 

Your life is hell. You don’t need anyone to tell you. You learned all about hell before heaven ever crossed your mind. You knew dirt before you thought of clouds. Knew the taste of iron and salt years before sugar touched your tongue. Back then- at least- you can admit, “Andrés de Fonollosa” did nothing for you. He doesn’t stand between you and the cigarette kissing your skin, doesn’t wipe the piss from your mother’s legs, doesn’t stop the hands tugging at your hair. You owe Andrés nothing and you owe (you’ll give him a name one day, this man you nursed since birth) everything.

You love your mother, or so you say. That’s what sons do. But when she looks at you, there’s a message between her dull eyes, one that says, “I wish you were never born.” It’s a silly thought from a feeble thing. Women, you decide, are fragile and weak. (No, a little voice says, they used to be strong, until you looked over the shoulder of her lover and saw her sobbing in a corner, withered bones and wasted salt, doing nothing to stop the blood from leaking off your lip.)

You love your mother, or so you think. You cannot say the same for your father. But in spite of your best efforts, she leaves you in hell. Once, to the powder because it’s all she can procure. And twice, when her eyes glaze over atop wet sheets. You think you should let her die. Think she might as well have died when you dragged yourself out of her womb, a warhead choking on her cord. A stretching, wrinkled piece of flesh, the prune that your father left. You won your fight with her before she even had the chance to strike.

Maybe if you had his face, she would be happier. You don’t know. You’ve never been lucky, but you like to gamble. So even as a babe, you chose to wear her face instead of his. A ghost of who she was, a challenge from your birth.

You don’t cry when Mamá dies. Because she’s not dead, not really, not when her phantom lives in your face, your blood.   

Someone says you look like a woman, but maybe he meant to say you look like your mother. It doesn’t matter. You crush his nose with the flat of your hand. Cartilage crumbles under your palm like clay. It’s not so hard to hold your own after that.

Then you think of crawling out of hell, swimming off when no one’s lurking. Looking. But you’re a spiteful thing. Not a coward, you tell yourself. Only a son of a bitch who finally grew a fucking spine. So you turn back and climb down.

This is your den, your hell. And you are king. 

It won’t be long before you learn of the sanctity of marriage, or so you claim. Before you dip your toes into the power of vows and a whiff of luxury always at the tip of your brain, you almost settle for a vapid face and cheap lipstick. Between your girl and the widow who offered to teach you French, you don’t really care who kisses you so long as there’s someone to hold your dick. (A woman, though, always a woman. Never a man. Never again.)

Until she traces the scar- one among many- on your hip one night, whispering her hand down the jagged edge. She says she likes it, “sexy, manly, a battle scar.” It’s a wakeup call. You end things there, and you don’t care if she cries and screams and calls you a bastard fucked in the head (what else is new?). You’re not going to waste any more time on the smell of cigarettes and dust on the road.

She called it a battle scar. But you know it’s a sign of defeat, an angry mark on skin that tells the world you’re nothing better than a rat on the street. No different from the men that claw at each other’s throats over anything so much as bristled pride. Your pride is of a different sort, a dignity you no longer want to lose.

Some men aim to kill. Others aim to hurt. And you, you aim to prove a point. 

And you’ve wasted enough of your youth on blood and spittle, in some effort to keep the reins of your domain. So you leave without a word. You are a gentleman, or so you say. From now on, you have a goal. You’ll walk up the hill of dirt, even if you have to limp, and pull yourself up to the looming sky. You will wash the blood off with soap and spend the rest of your life with silk and cotton, and preferably a docile, coy bride (or two, three, maybe five) at the altar. You dream of Dulcinea’s arms and a bed in the clouds, the farthest you can fly from the rotting dirt that birthed you.

No one will scar you again. And it doesn’t matter what you do to keep it that way. Better them than you, after all.

Then your father dies. He leaves a boy behind, a boy who until now, you believed grew up with everything you made do without. You see him out of spite, because no matter which pelt you choose, you’ll always be a bastard through and through. You hear that he’s frail, as pitiful as you are strong, and you think it’s mighty funny that your father built him so much worse than he built you. A pungent taste of irony, the gleeful voice says.

But when you finally speak to him, that tart voice dies, and the road shifts beneath your feet. He comes to call you “Andrés,” without a trace of disdain on his tongue. Only “Andrés.” With a needy timbre he tries to hide. His hand too shy to touch yours, even after days, weeks, months. He says, “Andrés” and you can hear the concern floating within, the faint hope that you can love him back. He calls you “Andrés” as if you were always Andrés, not something spat out and told to die.

Your name is Andrés de Fonollosa. And you’re a son of a bitch. You come from hell. But the thread of light that lures you out isn’t a hill of dirt or a sunny sky. It’s the voice of your brother and the shy smile on his lips. The Isaac to your Ishmael.

Sergio Marquina is, you think, the first spot of light in your wretched life. 

----

The second spot of light is an accent from across the sea.