best friends, ex-friends til the end (better off as lovers and not the other way around) - [byler week 2023 - day 2]
aka the byler/goncharov au i needed so badly i had to write it myself
title from: bang the doldrums by fall out boy
dedicated to: my commitment to the bit
special thanks to: @cherryisgone for providing me some much-needed poetic Italian for everyone’s favorite Scorcese film
tw: mentions of falling out of a window and blood, guns
The Naples skyline burns with light in the encroaching fog of the night. His back to the stones of the tower, Mike heaves several ragged breaths, and he tries not to think about how steep of a fall it would be down to the town square below. He imagines it’d be quick: his bones would snap, his blood would spill, and there’d be his body, an example laid out on the streets of Naples for all to know the folly that is trying to outrun who you once were.
The sting of vodka on the tips of tongues, frigid nights spent maneuvering through the streets of Leningrad in search of their next hit. Being smuggled onto a rusted plane down to the coast of the Tyrrhenian Sea, El nestled beneath his arm, just the clothes on their backs and the jewels on her wrists and neck and ears. Nothing makes sense–it hadn’t for a long time–and for so long, he’d been able to stay just ahead of it.
