Primo is a battle-cry, beautiful as death, and Terzo a doe-eyed wonder in his shadow—window-dressings grappled like silk skirts, bootheels cat-quick in the chase, to keep up, to admire; a little boy hearing drums shatter and seeing eyes painted black—a pinnacle of leather and steel; a mountain pale and deadly.
Primo is what he aspires towards, craves, in some ways: a strange creature impossible to pin down. Man and woman, beauty and beast.
If he is Robert Smith black-nailed in the moonlight, Primo is Iggy Pop on a sunset sky.
If he is a storm crashed against the rocks, Primo is the foam to wash him clean.
Mother to a saint that never calls.
St. Jude's mercy on the tongues of the abandoned.
Younger, bloody-kneed, his hair a raven's nest, he spends hours puzzling on those soot-scraped workbenches, watching a man who could have rolled from a coffin as easily as descended from the sky nurse shivering leaves back to health.
"The compost, eh? That bag there. Zito. You are never paying attention."
And how Primo moves is how he dreams: like gossamer on the coattails of the wind. Ballerina pirouettes in a swirl of chiffon. An empty room caressed by white curtains: bare, and cold, and lovely.
When Primo is older, wearier, perpetually sick and perpetually shivering, Terzo will cling to the corners of his rooms like mold: carry teas and chocolates, coffees and sandwiches, books' worth of gossip and mindless chatter, enough to distract from the pain.
But even corpse-still and sighing, his pale hair an ivory fan beneath him, nestled in those blood-velvet sheets, Primo will be grace personified. Peaceful.
The end nigh and its curtain-call welcomed.
And that, too, Terzo will envy.
"—for the next dividends—pay attention, Zito."
Hawk-eyed on the coughing, the feeble hands, the magic still steeling through him like giants—a winter gale that cuts like glass: beautiful, and pale, and deadly.
He puts on those blaring records, at Primo's request: fingers skimming the edges like emblems. And he does not dance, not anymore. Doesn't race to catch up, to spiral, to burn in the plummet—for he sees it, now: what Primo always was. Always had been.
A crownless king in a white tower. A martyr destined to decay.
"Turn it higher," the old bat hisses, cracking a wry smile.
Terzo glances over his shoulder, tipping a smirk of his own, and clicks up the dial. The room fills with cymbal-crashed prowess and growls that cling like sweat.
He'll keep copies of those albums in his old Iso, for years. On those hot summer drives, searing towards a sunset sky, he'll slide down the windows and soar.
Somewhere, Primo will be there. Teenage rebel in an old man's gun, a rose engraved on the handle. Every sermon a bullet, mage-light crackling.
Gimme danger danger danger little—
primo and terzo / stranger
