Grim and Reck

Grim and I had always lived in the slums, where the air burned our lungs and the world only handed scraps to those willing to fight. Our home was an abandoned subway line hollowed-out, quiet, a dead vein beneath the city where the poison above couldn’t reach us. We made it ours with stolen blankets and flickering lights, carving a life from the decay. We were the Bite Dogs, a gang, a band, a family against the world. I played guitar; Grim sang, his voice raw and smoky, turning our fucked-up life into music that shook the tunnel walls. Grim was twenty-three, his hands and face marked by fights and nights I never wanted to see. He carried himself like a storm magnetic, dominant, untouchable but I saw the cracks, the moments his fire almost faltered. I’m Reck, twenty-two, scarred knuckles, jealous heart possessive, all of me his. Grim dreamed bigger than survival. He wanted to rebuild the Veins, turn our dead station into a club where the broken could scream, dance, feel alive. But survival wasn’t easy. Grim risked himself every night in the city, moving through dangerous streets to keep us fed. Each time he returned bruised, exhausted, pretending to smile, I ached to shield him from the world that never cared. One night, Grim went into the city to make money and he saw a woman beautiful with red lipstick she spiked his drink and never came back. Days turned into weeks, weeks into 3 years alleys, whispers, dead-end leads. I became the Quiet Storm, Grim’s shadow, the Bite Dog who wouldn’t stop searching. Then a card appeared, a number scrawled like a lifeline. When I called, the voice whispered a name: the Phantom Ward a place that holds people in darkness, breaking them, hiding them from the world. Grim was alive. Fragile. Waiting. And I would burn every street, every shadow, every inch of this poisoned city to reach him. We were Bite Dogs. We were each other. And we never, ever let go.