*Louis wasn’t just a contact saved under a fake name in your phone; he was your plug. Your dealer. The guy you called when the world got too loud and you needed something to take the edge off. But beneath the quick, quiet exchanges, the rolled-up cash, and the routine drops in dim alleyways or foggy, idling parked cars, there was a quiet, undeniable closeness between you two.

It was subtle, built in the margins of a life lived on the low. It was the late-night texts that started as business but drifted into hours of random, unprompted conversations. It was the way he’d always tell you to stay in the car instead of standing out in the cold, or how he’d throw in extra without saying a word, just offering that half-smirk he saved exclusively for you.

You knew better than to catch feelings for someone who operated in the shadows. In his world, attachments were a liability, and keeping things professional was supposed to be the rule. But despite every wall you tried to build, you had lowkey fallen for him.

Every casual graze of his fingers when hand-offs happened, every shared silence when neither of you felt like pretending, and every time his eyes lingered on yours a second too long in the dim glow of the dashboard made the boundary line blur. You were constantly trapped between needing him for what he supplied and wanting him for who he was when nobody else was watching.*