Page 13 of Eternal
We cook, we clean, and we’ve been living here for an entire year because the mission we did took longer than we planned. Vlad is leaning against the brick wall, the red glow of his cigarette briefly lighting up his face as he takes a drag.
I light my cigarette, standing beside him and we smoke in silence for a while.
I’ve known Vlad since I was four, he’s like my little brother. We grew up in the same foster home, packed with kids and not a single kind soul. When I was twelve, I took him and ran, we didn’t have a choice, he was starving and bruised, and so was I. Living alone with no money wasn’t safe, but it was better than staying there.
So we lived under bridges, in tunnels, anywhere that kept the cops off our backs.
I had to fight to put food on the table, to keep us alive. I was always violent, so I started using it to make money, twelve years old, scraping by any way I could. Vlad was a kid back then, but he followed me anyway, he trusted me… He always had these big brown eyes filled with pride and enthusiasm, and I wanted him to have something softer, but there wasn’t any. Just fists and hunger.
I fought, I earned, I kept him close, and eventually, he joined me, that’s how it started, and now here we are.
He’s my oldest friend, and I can tell something’s been weighing on him. My team isn’t a team if one of us is too troubled to talk about it.
Finally, I break the silence. “Something bothering you,malysh?”
He looks at me, dark and sorrowful shadows under his eyes, then shrugs like it’s not that important. “You ever wondered if it’s worth it? This life, what we do, and all. Like wanting certain things made us sick, like they used to say back in the house?”
Damn fucking old house.
I take a drag, letting the deadly smoke fill my lungs before exhaling slowly. “Only one day out of two. But they were crazy there, they even said jerking off was a sin. Don’t think about it.”
A faint smile touches his lips. “Guess you’re right, Damir.”
I didn’t like this, the way he sounded was empty and confused.
“Hell no,” I reply, glancing at the empty street. “Don’t close yourself off, you’ve got the team, you’ve gotme.”
He laughs, low and without joy. “Didn’t know that mattered to you.”
“Don’t make it weird, fucking idiot,” I mutter, a half-smile tugging at my lips as I snuff out my cigarette. “I would kill for you,Malysh. You know it; you can talk to me, you can always count on me.”
He was family.
He’salwaysbeen family.
There’s a shift in him after that, subtle but noticeable. When we go back inside, he picks up his beer again, a bit of his old self coming back, he even manages to smile when Roman cracks another joke at him.
The others are still sitting around the table, they laugh and scream about how tired they are, drunkenly thinking about how much they miss normality and shit like that.
Vlad grabs his beer again and takes a long sip.
Roman stands up, half-drunk, and slaps his hands together.“Alright, if we can’t hit the club, we’ll bring the club to us.”
Yuri grins, already pulling out his phone, and within seconds, the soft notes of an old Russian song begin to fill the room. It’s a song that’s familiar, one we’ve all heard a hundred times, but tonight it feels different, more nostalgic, the kind of song that pulls memories from the depths of your chest and makes them feel like they happened yesterday.
Vlad stands, his body swaying slightly with the beat, his beer in hand. Oleg follows and even stops texting his girl for once. Yuri and Roman follow suit, their movements a little clumsy, but full of life, full of something that feels real.
I stand by the door, watching them.
The way they move, the way they laugh, the way they’ve become a family in the purest sense.
I catch a glimpse of Vlad’s face. His mouth is curved in a smile that hasn’t been there all night. He’s laughing now, his eyes light with something genuine. He finally looks like the Vlad I know.
For a second, I wish I could freeze this moment, I wish I could snap a picture of them all, this family I’ve built because I never had any, happy, carefree and unaffected.
I take out my old phone from my jacket, one of those brick models with a blurry camera and a scratched-up screen. Slowly, I raise it and frame the shot.
The room is bathed in soft, yellow light, I press the button, the fake shutter sound crackles, and for some reason, I find myself smiling. They look happy… drunk, buthappy, and right now, that’s all that matters.
