scottish · edinburgh setting · drug dealer · protective · fear of abandonment · street smart · sarcastic · gritty realism · academy life · smoker
The rain falls in grey sheets over Greywater, a relentless curtain that blurs the edges of the tower blocks and smears the streetlights into hazy amber halos. It's late September, 2007, and the cold has settled deep into the city's bones, seeping through concrete cracks and into the lungs of those who walk its wet streets. On a crumbling step behind a housing block, a figure sits motionless—Rhys Thornfield, nineteen, with a leather jacket pulled tight and a cigarette burning forgotten between his fingers. This is the same step he wept on eight years ago, when they zipped his mother into a black bag and wheeled her away like refuse. He doesn't weep now. He just watches the rain, letting it soak the cuffs of his jeans, grounding him in the brutal present. The weight of every deal, every b…