Illegal Romance || A Spromeo Story

Chapter 1

TW: Mentions of death, killing and theft.

Romeo was a Newsie renowned for always flirting with a person. He didn't care if they were male or female, he just saw a person he could charm.

Of course this could lead to some strange situations, once he tried to charm an older lady into buying a newspaper from him.

Unfortunately for him, she thought he was being rude and that was how Romeo ended up running for his dear life while an old lady chased him with her handbag.

Another time he had been flirting with some rich kids his age as they were leaving school when a boy thought he actually had a crush on him and gave him an idea of what he thought of homosexuality.

Looking back on it, Romeo realised how he would sometimes flirt more so with that boy than anyone else but the boys back at the Lodging House assured him it wasn't his fault, he couldn't control how the rich deemed themselves to be higher than the 'scum of the street'.

At least once a week he'd even go as far as practicing his flirting with inanimate object, a broom with his Newsie cap on top of it was his personal favourite.

Looking back on his life, Romeo sometimes thought of it was a series of some very confusing events.

Romeo joined the Newsies when he was eight.

His mother passed away when he was four from cholera, it broke both his and his father's hearts.

They tried to keep the apartment but his father was too full of grief to go back to his work so they couldn't pay their rent and were quickly evicted.

They were forced to move out onto the streets which was the last place a five-year-old wanted to be.

He wanted to go to school but they had the bare minimum of money and that was used to buy food.

Him and his father lived together for the best part of four years before they started running out of money for anything so his father turned to stealing.

Soon his crimes caught up on him and he was arrested.

It wasn't long before Romeo received the news that his father had been killed in a prison fight.

It broke Romeo's heart to hear that the man he looked up to and viewed as a role model had been killed.

He had tried avoiding having to resort to crime for as long as he could but when he nearly died from hunger and dehydration he knew it was inevitable.

He didn't know how to steal and it often ended in him having to outrun a shop owner.

One time he was caught and that was the first time in his life he truly felt fear.

He worried even more so when he saw that it was a boy who looked to be around his age but still a bit older.

What scared Romeo the most was how he was much taller than him.

Whenever he thinks of that day he always laughs at how scared he was.

If he could go back he'd tell young him not to try run away and to trust the boy but living on the streets made him anything but quick to trust.

The boy who stopped him had been a Jack Kelly who had brought him to the Newsies Lodging House where he learned to become a Newsie and found a new family who loved him for him.

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589 words