TW: Mention of death and soaking.
Ever since he could, Samuel loved reading.
He always found a great joy in getting to imagine far away worlds and daydream about living in them.
He liked most genres and authors but one thing he did despise though was Shakespeare, he didn't just dislike it he hated it with every ounce of his being.
When he was young he always looked forward to getting to read his literature, his mother had always said that he had to wait until he was thirteen to start reading it.
She had always said that for his thirteenth birthday she would get him Romeo and Juliet, she said it was his father's favourite of Shakespeare's books.
It was only her and Specs for as much of his childhood as he could remember.
She told him that his father had been fighting in the Civil War and was killed by the enemy.
He thought of his father as a great hero and he wanted to be like him when he grew up.
Unfortunately, when he was around five his eyesight started to go decrease and so he could never join the army like his father.
By the time he was seven, his mother couldn't afford to keep him in school anymore.
He couldn't do many things but his mother had continued teaching him how to read until she fell ill.
His mother passed away when he was eight and he vowed to somehow get Romeo and Juliet for himself when he turned thirteen.
He didn't even know how he would pay for it, he planned to resort to theft if needs be.
Not long after her death he found himself a home in the alley behind a library where he would read books on the Civil War, trying to learn as much about his father as possible.
He noticed some things didn't add together, like the dates of the Civil War and his birth and how there was no record of a man under his fathers name ever dying or serving in it.
He didn't know how to feel about the information, he couldn't feel anger at his mother but he felt our rage towards his father.
His master plan to read Romeo and Juliet went down the drain very quickly and he swore that if he ever saw it he would raise hell.
Not long after making that vow to himself, he was found by a boy named Racetrack Higgins.
He had been wandering around aimlessly when he bumped into a pair of brothers, the Delancey brothers, who decided that him walking was suspicious and tried to soak him.
Race fought then off surprisingly well for a nine-year-old before more boys came to help him.
Specs thought they were after him and had tried to run.
He quickly learned that trying to run away from ten or so Newsies all standing in on big group and the only way away is past them all is not the greatest of ideas.
He remembered very little from that day, it was largely a blur.
He just remembered fear from being grabbed by multiple boys at once, being brought to a lodging house they said he could live in, his old, worn clothes being thrown away and being given some not as old and less worn clothes.
He mostly remembered meeting different people, with some weird names.
After he'd been working with the Newsies for a little while he had saved up enough money and bought himself a new pair of glasses.
From here his Newsie name, Specs, was born and Samuel was a person of the past.
~~~
606 words
YOU ARE READING
Illegal Romance || A Spromeo Story
FanfictionIt had been a few months since the Newsies won their strike against Joseph Pulitzer and things had finally started to go back to normal. For most of the Newsies that was anyways. Two of the Newsies, Specs and Romeo had their own problems that they...
