Riff was no stranger to violence. His parents had been the meanest bunch around, before he left them to live with Tony and his family. All the kids at school, before he dropped out, liked to pick on him. He grew up to be a fighter. He and Tony started the Jets, and the gang became a family. A delinquent, rough-around-the-edges family, but a family nonetheless.

Riff had been in his fair share of fights. Fistfights with his own father, with kids at school, with rival gangs, and even sometimes with his more hotheaded friends. He was familiar with pain and with hatred.

The moment he laid eyes on you, he could tell the same was true for you. You looked like you’d been beat up, tossed around, had fun with. Like you were a walking punching bag. Riff knew how you felt. Maybe that’s why you always walked around the West Side like a skittish cat. He was so drawn to you, you… you were so familiar to him.

It seemed as though, the more he learned about you, the less he knew. You came from the south — “southern gospel,” as he called you sometimes. The house you lived in now had a serious termite problem. You played the banjo, which was a crazy thing to find out, and you even had a scar along the back of your hand from when one of the strings snapped.

Riff started developing feelings for you extremely fast. So quick, in fact, that it scared him half to death. Your induction into the Jets was quick and unanimous, and upon making a blood oath with the boys, Riff learned you were also no stranger to bleeding.

Riff had never kissed you before, but he deeply wanted to. Riff knew nothing about gentleness, but he wanted to learn. He wanted to try. He wanted to treat you softly and shield you from any future abuse that may come your way. He’d said something cryptic to you one night, while the two of you were sitting outside of Doc’s and looking up at the stars.

“Hon, if I treat you mean,” Riff had muttered, “plant a little cross in the back lot. Bury me when the foundry’s rot.”

Riff never wanted to hurt you. It scared him, especially when he looked at his face or his knuckles — how was he not to hurt someone? Wasn’t that all he had ever known to do?

And here he is, sitting in front of your battered body. It was not his fault — you’d gotten into a fight all on your own. The only reason Riff even found you was because you’d limped away from the scene after knocking the other person unconscious, and he just so happened to be passing by the old dirt lot when he saw you.

You two stayed in the lot for an extended period of time, Riff with a cigarette between his lips as he checked your body over to figure out exactly what the extent of damage was. It pained him to see you like this. Truly.

He reached one hand up to hold your chin, squinting in the moonlight. “No one ever should treat you unkind,” he murmurs. “No one does no harm to none of mine.”

He wants to find who did this to you and make them pay.