The Celts (West Side Story: Riff X Reader)

Chapter 3

"What is wrong with you?" Nettie demanded, sticking her head out of her window. I had been aggressively cleaning the dagger on the fire escape. It was dark and the electricity was out, so all I had was the moonlight.

"What?" I turned to look at her.

"You haven't spoken to anyone since you got home. And now you're doing that." My sister said as she climbed onto the fire escape. She was wearing a gray dress and her short auburn hair was fluffed up just above her shoulders. Our mother had the most beautiful fiery red hair and blue eyes and our father had glossy brown hair and milky blue eyes. Nettie inherited their most attractive features: our mother's button nose, and our father's jawline and height. I inherited many of their good traits as well: our father's freckles, the dazzling blue of our mother's eyes, and my hair was closer to our mother's color than Nettie's was. "Did something happen?"

"Do you remember when Ronan told us to hide from every Shark or Jet we come across?" I asked, placing the dagger and cloth beside me.

"Yes." Nettie nodded, eyebrow raised.

"I did not do that." I said with a sheepish smile.

"You were with one of those?" Nettie's milky eyes widened in shock. 

"I was getting money from the betting boxes at the races and this guy started talking to me." I told her. "He must have followed me out or something, because he caught me in the alley next to the laundromat. He got me against the wall, then I pulled my knife out and got him against the wall, then he got me against the wall again, so I kicked him and ran away." Of course I left out the part where I gave a Jet a kiss.

"Who was it?" Nettie asked in awe.

"He said that his name is Riff." I told her, reading her expression as it shifted from wonder to shock.

"Liza, That's the leader of the Jets!" Nettie gasped. My eyes widened in shock. She looked up towards the sky to determine the time, but there was really no way to gauge what time it really was because of the rain clouds, which were taking a break from drenching the Manhattan streets. "I should be getting to bed. I have a long day of begging in the cold ahead of me." We bid each other goodnight and she went back inside. I did not resume cleaning the dagger. Instead, I leaned back against the cold, metal bars and closed my eyes for a moment. 

My eyes flew back open when I heard a metal clang below me. I looked down to see Riff in the process of climbing the fire escape. I gripped the dagger and pretended like I didn't see him. He continued to climb up until he was standing in front of me. I had decided to keep my eyes shut.

"How did you find us?" I asked, eyes still shut.

"I have eyes on every corner of this city." Riff said in a hushed voice, which was lacking the threatening quality it had contained before. "It wasn't difficult."

"You're a creep." I whispered, opening my eyes. He was standing in front of me, wearing the same thing he had on before. His face was still calmly unreadable. He was looking down at me with a quizzical expression. I decided to stand up as well. 

"Why did you come to Manhattan?" Riff asked. The question was surely not ethically motivated. 

"Galway is extremely impoverished." I said, trying to put a little bit more distance between us, though to no avail because I was already against the cold metal railing of the fire escape. "Our mother got very sick and our father died at work. The ship left two days after she died. Most of our parents are dead."

"Ours too." Riff said. He finally backed up. He placed his hands on the railing and looked out over the damp alleyway. I joined him at his side and tried to figure out if he was admiring it or judging it. "You know, that move earlier really threw me for a loop." He turned his head to look over at me.

"That was the goal." I said, barely stifling a triumphant smile.

"Do you do that a lot?" He asked, tone unreadable.

"I try to avoid it." I said as I fiddled with the end of the braid I had done. "I've done it before when it was my last resort."

"Was that your last resort?"

"No." I shook my head.

"Then what made me any different?" Riff asked. My cheeks burned with the feeling that I was being interrogated.

"I didn't want to stab you," I said with a shrug. "And frankly, I don't think you would have reacted at all."

"I've been stabbed before." Riff said, laughing quietly.

"Of course you have." I said. He turned the rest of his body to me and began unbuttoning his tattered shirt halfway and pulling the  sides of the shirt apart to reveal a jagged white line on his chest.

"We scheduled a fight between Jets and Sharks." Riff told me. "Their leader, Bernardo, stabbed me and they thought I'd died, but I was just passed out."

"That's horrific." I breathed, forgetting to remove my eyes from the scar. 

"Wait, look at me really quick." He said. I turned my gaze from his chest to his face. He brought his hand up to my lip. "You have something on your lip." The final word of his sentence trailed off and abruptly ended when he grabbed my face and kissed me far more passionately than I had kissed him earlier that day. My arms found themselves wrapped over the back of his neck. His right hand was on the side of my face and his left hand was on the small of my back. It was him who broke the kiss.

"Meet me behind at Barley's Deli this time tomorrow." Riff said in a quiet voice. His voice seemed to have removed his spiked armor while we were kissing.

"It's shut down." I said, auburn brows furrowing.

"I know." He nodded. I agreed to meet him.