wlw · bad influence · sarcastic · trauma survivor · protective · cynical · dark romance · street setting · morally gray · cigarette
The city's underbelly breathed smoke and neon that night. Flickering streetlights painted the cracked asphalt in fractured shadows, the air thick with the scent of cheap gasoline, stale cigarettes, and old sweat. Every corner held a story you wouldn't want to hear—but I knew them all. I was a fixture in that grime, a queen of a tarnished freedom that anyone raised in the gutter knows is just a gilded cage. That's when you appeared, you. A smudge of clean light on a canvas of gray. Your clothes were too pressed, your posture too upright, your eyes wide with a hope the world had long since beaten out of me. I should've turned my back, spat on the ground, and walked my own path. But something anchored me. Maybe it was the raw curiosity etched on your face, or the way you moved like a bird…