#tuneback

            ‘ no, i didn’t use all of it. ’ but there is the distinctly empty black nail polish bottle sitting in front of them. well, fugo, how do you explain that?

hair. // accepting selectively

“Everything is terrible. The world is ending. My career is over. I just spent like 400 dollars on hair dyes and none of them turned out to be the exact shade of pink I needed to get rid of the spots entirely. I’m going to end up bald, Leone. Bald.”

At the very least, Trish was taking ‘defeatist’ humour to deal with how distressing seeing those fucking spots in her hair was. Every time she saw one black dot in the sea of pink, her thoughts were thrown entirely to that horrible, truly evil man. She had to suppress the urge to nurse her once-cut wrist, or her neck and stomach.

She heard an indiscriminate ‘mmhmm, bald,’ from behind her, no doubt the huff of breath released to conceal a snicker at her apocalyptic prophecy of the end of days (and hair.) She swivelled around on the chair to face him mixing the developer and dye, seeing his own mane neatly pinned back to avoid getting any of it on his own.

“Laugh all you want,” she warned. “But if I end up having to go bald, you will have to as well in solidarity. That’s right, I’m dragging you into this, Abba. There’s no escape.”

Trish pauses, then whispers more menacingly: “No escape.”

Fugo had never been the type to posture or to put down--but the moment Bruno had mentioned that he’d recruited a new member into the team, he’d been put on edge. It wasn’t so much the fact that Fugo was no longer the only member of Bruno’s team... it had to be the anxiety that he was being replaced in Bruno’s team. That he would soon be set aside and forgotten, no longer relevant.

Perhaps it was childish of him, but he couldn’t stand letting anyone else shoulder in and remove him from his rightful place.

It’s just his luck, isn’t it? He avoided cracks in the sidewalk, didn’t go under ladders or break any mirrors recently, and yet it was nothing short of bad luck that he was going to get stopped carrying a couple bags of coke on him. If they even get that far, when they could book him for the drunk disorderly behaviour that got him kicked out the bar (and the cops called) in the first place.

“Evenin’,” Formaggio stated, head tilted a little upwards to even be able to look the man in the face, let alone his eye. He thought that, perhaps if he didn’t leg it like the other grunt had ( which, now he was thinking about it, he isn’t even sure if the police caught sight of him. So he had all their time to himself! Fantastic. ) it would help his chances of making himself seem.. innocent.

“ -- Can I help ya wiv anythin’, mate?”

i’m not a good person. don’t pretend i am.

“ -- Would it help to hear it any easier if I said that I think you’re a bad policeman, but a good person, then?” Were he not so stoic of a teenager, then his grimace would’ve been seen rather than heard. He knew whatever he said might be disregarded or, Heaven forbid, isolated to be derided, but it was a risk he was willing to take.

He never expected anyone from Buccellati’s squad to treat him fairly, really. He didn’t need them to be friends with him in order for him to achieve his dream, and he wasn’t planning on giving anything more than courtesy. Something he was swiftly finding to be a commodity that they weren’t used to, if life had anything to say for it.

“I don’t pretend anything, Abbacchio. Pretending is for children.” remarks the child amidst an adult’s world. His wit was acerbic but he was still who he was. The lack of worldly experience was as evident as the youthfulness on statuesque, symmetrical features.

                       to us, this world had never been kind. had it  ? it was a bitter-sweet thought, drifting listlessly on the precipice of oblivion.

with the arch of his back pressed firmly against concrete slabs, decrepit and forgotten, lay waste by the hands of time, by negligence, he arches his neck, vision obscured by a veil of dark tresses, plastered to his countenance by a bloody sheen.  how many things remained unsaid, lingering upon a trembling lip; choking on the chrysalis of life, fading.

every muscle laments his agony. nails burrowed desperately into fractured shrapnel, damp earth stuffed in the crevices between. his teeth gnash, a single bead of pellucid sweat trickles down his pallid countenance.

for abbacchio’s call, rasped, too, is waning. cold and eldritch the fingers that swathe his neck, embrace him as if he were a child lost to the callous tides of fate.

a frail hand grasps protruding concrete, blood and mud congealed, in his wake smeared across once ashen walls. knuckles grow weary beneath a faltering wrist, brittle bone having splintered, ghastly white jutting out from a macabre wound. a solitary thought, restless in his mind’s obscurity. he had to make it. he … had to make it.

but his shoulders grow rigid, lurching forward, coughing and spluttering, hand concealing his mouth in a feeble attempt to prevent it. tiny rivulets seep down his hand, his arm, staining white, torn sleeves a dark crimson.

he’s close. close enough that he can hear the erratic breaths being sucked through clenched teeth, discerning the silhouette of another, slumped in a corner of this seemingly endless darkness.

but no longer can his strength prevail, how voraciously it was being sapped away. first, his knees buckle, staggering, it all gives way too quickly, blind hands colliding with piercing gravel, scraping away tattered flesh. a barely audible hiss resonates.  still, with resilience a decaying kindling, he drags his leaden limbs forward.

exhausted hands seek, fingers quivering in their search until finally, somewhere in the darkness, they find each other. amongst this world built on the funeral pyres of their comrades, corpses stacked upon corpses until theirs too would become an ornament of an adversary’s triumph.

❝ i’m … sorry … ❞  his words, rasped over the crashing blood-red tides. and perhaps, he was not worthy of forgiveness.  he lays beside abbacchio, clammy hand, resting atop of his. slowly, soft crescents fall closed, his chest heaves with the burden of each breath.

… i love you ..