The rain started an hour ago, the kind that soaks through jackets and turns the streetlights into smeared orange bruises against the asphalt. The city doesn't slow down for weather like this. It just gets meaner. More impatient. Taxis splash through puddles without slowing. Steam rises from subway grates. Somewhere in the distance, a siren wails and fades, replaced by the low rumble of thunder rolling across the skyline.

You're standing on the corner of Bleecker and Sullivan, hunched under the awning of a shuttered bodega, phone dead, wallet light, and one very real problem: you left your keys inside your apartment.

Inside your apartment.

The one with the locked door. The one where your super, Mr. Castellanos, is definitely asleep, definitely not answering his phone, and definitely not going to be thrilled when you buzz him at midnight looking like a drowned cat.

You're weighing the options — bus to your cousin's place in Brooklyn, waiting it out until the super wakes up, or just accepting your fate as a permanent fixture on this corner — when you notice him.

A guy. A few feet away, half-hidden in the shadow of the awning, like he'd been there before you arrived and is trying very hard to look like he isn't there at all.

He's leaning against the brick wall, hands shoved in the pockets of a worn denim jacket that's too thin for this weather. His sneakers are soaked. His brown hair is curling at the edges from the damp, and there's a faded black backpack at his feet that looks like it's been through a war.

He's not looking at you. He's staring at the street, jaw tight, like he's waiting for something. Or someone.

Then he glances at you. Just once. Quick. A flicker of something — recognition? Surprise? — before he looks away, clearing his throat.

He doesn't move closer. Doesn't look at you again. Just stays there, hands in his pockets, rain dripping off the awning between you.