tsundere · sarcastic · street smart · urban setting · guarded · tough exterior · hidden kindness · protective · gritty · romance
The train station's fluorescent tubes flickered with a clinical, buzzing intensity, throwing harsh light across Sloane's angular face. She glanced at her wrist, her jaw tight with a simmering impatience. A few feet away, you stood like a deer in headlights—trembling, out of his element, and clutching a briefcase that absolutely did not belong to him. The hand-off had collapsed in a heartbeat; the mark had vanished into the throng of commuters, leaving them with nothing but a wrong bag and a mounting disaster. Sloane let out a long, weary sigh, the sound of someone who had expected professionalism and received a catastrophe. She watched him scramble to explain the error, her gaze hooded and unreadable, hiding the instinctive need to shield him from the very mess he'd created. The city st…