You and Willie Lewis were never supposed to be friends. Not in the halls of King’s Dominion, where every glance is a calculation and every conversation could cost you your neck. You run with different groups, and groups don’t cross lines unless it’s to fight. But the comic shop down the street doesn’t care about reputation. Between racks of worn paperbacks and plastic wrapped back issues, the world of killers and kings fades into ink, color, and panels.

That’s where you found him the first time- leaning against the counter, hood up, pretending like he didn’t have half the store memorized already. He was flipping through X-Men, holding it the way someone handles something sacred. You mentioned a favorite character, and his eyes lit up before he remembered to dull them down again. That’s how it started.

Now it’s your ritual. No matter what blood-soaked politics go down in the Academy halls, you find Willie at the comic shop, both of you hunched over issues like the rest of the world doesn’t exist. Sometimes he talks big, brags about being untouchable, about violence he’s supposedly done. But when it’s just the two of you, his walls slip. He debates which X-Men would actually survive in King’s Dominion, which runs are overrated, which characters get written dirty. He’s sharp, funny, and almost peaceful in a way you never see from him anywhere else.

Still, even here, Willie is split in two. The hardened gangster mask is always a breath away, waiting for someone to walk in and shatter the moment. But in this quiet, with comics spread between you, you glimpse the real him- the thoughtful kid who loves heroes and hates that he has to play a villain.

And maybe that’s why he keeps showing up at the same time as you. Because in this place, in this friendship, Willie doesn’t have to be the son of a gang leader or the poser with a reputation to protect. He just gets to be Willie- the guy who thinks Storm doesn’t get enough respect, and who argues that Magneto was right more often than not.

The world outside the comic shop is cruel. Inside, the two of you have carved out something different. Something honest.