"It wasn't about what you were born with. That part was luck. What mattered was what you did with it."
Sam had always liked that line.
Lately, it sounded like bullshit.
The metal doors of the underground sports center groaned open behind him, spilling heat, sweat, and voices into the cold autumn night. The cold hit his face hard enough to sting the inside of his nose, which was already bleeding thanks to Eric smashing it earlier.
Perfect.
People streamed past in that bright, careless mood that always followed training, laughing and talking like the world had been built for them personally. A few guys clapped him on the shoulder and told him good fight, see you tomorrow. One of the girls ruffled his hair like he was some cute little dog.
"Good effort, little Sammy."
Sam gave her nothing.
He just stood there with his hands in his pockets, cap pulled low, gym bag biting into his shoulder through his puffy black jacket while the dull ache in his ribs settled in for the ride home.
The cars in the parking lot started up one by one. Doors slammed. Engines growled awake. He could almost imagine the heated seats, the warm houses, the soft beds waiting at the end of the road.
Everyone had somewhere to go.
Sam looked at his bike and sighed.
"Great."
Heavy footsteps came up behind him. He didn't need to turn around.
Eric stepped out into the night looking exactly the way Sam didn't: tall, handsome, relaxed, and somehow untouched by the same sparring session that had left Sam feeling like badly assembled furniture. No bruises. No swelling. Just that same easy laugh, always hanging around the edges of his arrogant little smirk.
Two girls followed him out, laughing at something he'd said.
Of course they did.
Because even when Eric was passed-out drunk and Sam had to carry him out of a bar, he still somehow looked like he was winning. Girls still blushed at him. Somehow.
The thought irritated Sam.
And, as if the universe wanted to make sure he stayed irritated, Eric dropped an arm over his head like Sam was a fence post.
The size difference was ridiculous.
"Don't sulk, little hobbit," Eric said, messing up his hair. "Go home, cry it out, come back tomorrow less shit. Nationals are next week. I need you in one piece when I beat you again."
The girls laughed.
Sam shoved his arm off. "Fuck off."
Eric grinned. "I'm serious. Fighting a half-dead guy is boring. Besides, there aren't that many people in this little country as good as you."
Sam rolled his eyes and sighed.
"I mean it, man." Eric rolled his shoulders. "Let's put on a good show like last year. The internet's gonna love it."
He paused, tilted his head slightly, and then asked, "You want a ride?"
Sam's irritation vanished instantly.
Hell yeah, he wanted a ride in Eric's red Lamborghini Huracán.
Before he could stop himself, he said, "…yeah?"
Only then did he realize Eric hadn't even been looking at him.
Eric cracked immediately.
"Bro, what the fuck?" he said, laughing. "I wasn't talking to you. I'm not giving rides to dudes. Come on, man. I'm not gay."
The girls burst out laughing.
Sam felt his face heat.
"Relax," Eric said, already turning away. "I get it. My car is nice. But you know I only use this baby to drive around chicks. Maybe I'll take the bigger one tomorrow and you can tag along with the girls. Not today, bro. Next time."
Then Eric smiled at the girls, who Sam was pretty sure he had only met that day at the gym, and said casually, "Come on, both of you. Car's warm. A bit cramped, maybe, but I'm a gentleman. One of you can sit on my lap."
They laughed again, half awkward, half flattered.
"Okay," one of them said, way too eagerly, rushing toward him.
The other looked scandalized, but followed anyway.
Of course she did.
The three of them left Sam in the dust and headed across the parking lot as if it was the most natural thing in the world.
Because for Eric, it was.
Eric slipped an arm around each girl and led them to the red Lamborghini Huracán, low and spotless beneath the parking lot lights. The moment its door lifted, everything else nearby looked cheap by comparison.
Sam watched in silence.
Eric helped the girls in, shut the door, then glanced back.
"Same time tomorrow?"
Sam shrugged. "Yeah."
"Good. Don't get yourself killed on that bike before then."
Sam puffed out his chest and said jokingly, "What, are you actually worried about me?"
Eric laughed. "Let's not get ahead of ourselves."
Then his voice dropped, just a little.
"And don't panic about the market. Next week's gonna move big. Just hold and believe in it, man. Soon you'll be swimming in money like me. Just stay strong and hold."
For a second, something almost real slipped through.
Concern, maybe.
Then Eric got in the car. The engine came alive, low and controlled and expensive.
And just like that, the Lamborghini sped off into the night.
After that the parking lot went quiet.
Only Sam remained, standing there in the cold with his hands in his pockets.
He looked at the road where the car had disappeared.
Then at his bike.
"…yeah," he said. "Probably not picking up any girls with this."
He sighed and pulled out his phone. The corner of the screen was cracked, and it lagged slightly before lighting up.
Messages from his McDonald's manager were already waiting.
Sam ignored them and opened his investing portfolio.
Just under two hundred thousand.
For a moment, the number looked huge.
It was huge, in a way. Years of shifts, late nights, dumb mistakes, harder lessons, and trying again when most people would have quit. He had built that from nothing.
And still, in the ways that mattered, it wasn't much at all.
"Thirty percent," he muttered.
He stared at the screen.
"No. Thirty-four."
That was what disappeared every time he actually made a move. Every time he turned digital gains into real money, the state took its bite. So most of the time, all he could do was stare at the number and wait for it to become big enough that losing a third didn't feel like getting robbed.
Thinking about it that way, two hundred thousand suddenly looked smaller.
One-thirty after tax.
Maybe less, once expenses and reinvestments were stripped away.
Still progress. Still something, but nowhere near enough.
Thinking of it Sam looked back toward the road. Eric's car alone cost around four hundred thousand, easy.
More than everything Sam had, and it wasn't even Eric's only car.
Yeah.
He still had some distance to cover.
With a sigh, Sam locked his phone and muttered, "No point whining."
Still, it didn't feel fair.
Because that was the difference, wasn't it?
Between being born with something and being born with nothing.
Sam had to build his way up.
Eric had started there.
Same game.
Completely different starting line.
Investing was percentages. Everyone knew that. But percentages only mattered when you had something worth scaling. Doubling ten euros still left you with twenty.
Sam stacked scraps. McDonald's shifts. Late nights. Bouncing drunk idiots out of bars. Every spare cent pushed into charts that might betray him by morning. Half the work he did came with risks to his health, his body, sometimes even his life.
Eric, on the other hand, had been handed a six-figure start at sixteen and called it hard work when the numbers exploded.
He had even given a motivational speech at school about it.
Same rules.
Different reality.
Sam shoved the phone back into his pocket, put on his bicycle helmet, and sighed again.
"Complaining won't fix shit," he muttered. "You move, or you don't."
He unlocked the chain from his bike, tossed it into his bag, swung onto the saddle, and pushed off into the night.
As Sam pedaled through the night, the city had gone quiet in the way it always did this time of year.
Nobody with any sense, or any reason not involving poverty, wanted to hang around outside in the cold and dark. It was just him and a handful of other poor bastards keeping the world moving: night-shift workers, bus drivers, delivery guys, people in reflective jackets standing near roadworks and looking like they had personally lost a war.
Streetlights cast yellow pools across the damp pavement. Cars hissed by now and then, their headlights sliding over him before moving on.
Most people were home by now. The lucky ones, anyway.
Sam wasn't.
He pedaled steadily, breath fogging in front of his face. The cold crept through the seams of his jacket and settled into his fingers.
Autumn in the Nordics.
No snow yet, but close enough that you could feel it waiting.
As he rode, his mind drifted back to the countryside. To the farm. To his adoptive parents.
Life there hadn't been easy.
Well, farming in the Nordics never really was. Especially not under EU regulations, which had somehow turned agriculture into a weird branch of law school where every fence post, ditch, cow, and patch of grass came with paperwork attached. Do one thing wrong, miss one form, misunderstand one rule, and congratulations: fine.
Farming was expensive these days. Farms in the south weren't doing great. Everyone knew that. Costs up. Prices down. Subsidies barely keeping things alive. You worked all year to maybe break even, assuming nothing expensive, wet, sick, broken, or bureaucratic happened.
And still, they had taken him in.
Fed him.
Put up with him when he was a kid.
And now that he was grown, Sam felt the weight of that every time he thought about them.
He owed them.
Not in some legal sense. Not in a way they would ever say out loud. But he owed them all the same. He wanted to make their lives easier. Wanted to fix things. Wanted to give something back big enough that it actually mattered.
A million would do it.
Just one million.
That would have been enough.
If only Eric could have helped a little more. The guy had money coming out of his ass and still somehow treated giving anything more than vague investing advice like an act of charity that required deep spiritual preparation.
Sam's grip tightened on the handlebars.
He understood, technically. Eric didn't owe him anything. Nobody did.
He just really hoped Eric's prediction about the market spiking next week meant more than ten percent this time.
He needed that money.
Badly.
Sam veered off the main road and onto a gravel side path running through the park. His tires crunched beneath him. To his left, a tall wildlife fence stretched alongside the highway, cars flashing beyond it in streaks of white and red. To his right, trees and bushes pressed close, swallowing the edge of the city.
Ahead, the streetlamps thinned until only a few lonely pools of light marked the road forward.
Sam rode on autopilot, his mind already at home, nearly tasting that cold milk and chocolate cereal combo in his mouth.
And the peace and warmth of his one-room rental apartment, with the little mattress on the floor that technically counted as a bed if you had low enough standards.
He needed to get home. He had work tomorrow.
Or, more accurately, in less than eight hours.
Which meant he was going to feel like absolute shit. No sleep, sore ribs, probably a swollen face, and a McDonald's shift waiting for him like punishment from a god who hated poor people.
Honestly, this was not what he'd had in mind when he moved to the city.
He didn't exactly feel like he was living the dream anymore.
Sam adjusted his grip on the handlebars, shoulders loosening slightly.
Then a woman's scream cut through the dark.
Sam braked immediately.
The bike rolled a few more feet before stopping, gravel crunching beneath his shoe as he put one foot down and turned toward the trees.
"…what the hell?"
He listened.
For a moment, there was nothing.
Then the scream came again.
Clearer this time.
Sam's eyes narrowed toward the trees on his right.
"…okay," he muttered. "That's not nothing."
For a few seconds, he just sat there.
Then he pulled out his phone, checked the time, and swore under his breath, "Oh fuck, I really don't have time for this."
He put the phone away.
Maybe it was some TikTok bullshit. Maybe some drunk girl messing around with her friends. Maybe nothing.
He wanted it to be nothing.
He was going to check anyway.
Of course he was.
Because apparently Sam was the kind of idiot who gave money to homeless guys even though he knew they were probably going to buy alcohol with it. The kind of idiot who stopped when people screamed in the woods. The kind of idiot who had never mastered the advanced life skill of minding his own damn business.
He rolled his bike off the path and shoved it deep into the bushes, far enough that it wouldn't be visible from the road.
"Stay," he muttered at it. "Don't get stolen. That'd really complete the night."
Then he turned toward the trees and moved.
Sam crossed the ditch in one step, boots landing in damp earth with a dull thud. Cold seeped through the soles almost instantly. Branches scratched against his jacket as he pushed through the undergrowth, moving toward the scream more by instinct than sight.
It didn't take long before the darkness ahead began to thin.
Faint light bled between the trunks, breaking the shadows apart. A few steps later, Sam pushed through the last of the bushes and emerged onto the rubber flooring of a playground.
He slowed, taking it in with immediate irritation.
Of course it was one of those awkward hybrid places: bright artificial flooring, slides and climbing frames on one side, pull-up bars and outdoor gym equipment on the other. As if someone had looked at two completely different public spaces and decided the obvious solution was to smash them together and call it urban planning.
"…brilliant," Sam muttered.
Nothing said serious workout like trying to do pull-ups while some snot-nosed little kid stood three feet away, staring at you like you were a zoo animal.
The thought almost pulled a snort out of him.
Almost.
Then he saw them.
A petite slender figure was trapped against the climbing wall, boxed in by two larger silhouettes dressed in black. One of them held up a phone, recording. The other stood too close to her, one hand tangled in her hair, gripping it like he had every right to, while his other arm kept her pinned in place.
She flinched every time he touched her.
Sam went still.
The guy leaned in, saying something too low for Sam to catch properly, but the tone was enough, too casual, sickeningly creepy.
The girl turned her face away, shoulders tight, her whole body rigid in that awful way people got when they had already learned that fighting back might only make things worse.
"No… please," she whispered. "Stop."
But her tears and pleading only made the two men laugh, cruel and low, as if her fear was the whole point.
Without further hesitation, Sam stepped into the light, just a stone's throw away from them.
"Hey!" he shouted. "Stop that! She said no!"
Both men jolted, their heads snapping toward him. Clearly, they hadn't expected anyone to be out here at this time of night.
The girl's eyes widened, glassy with tears, locking onto him for one brief second with something like hope.
Then she actually saw him.
The bicycle helmet. The puffy jacket. The fact that he was short enough to look like some school kid who had wandered into the wrong side quest.
And instantly her eyes darted past him, searching the dark behind his shoulders, as if hoping there was someone else, someone bigger perhaps.
Sam saw it all happen in real time and his manly pride evaporated on the spot.
He knew he wasn't Superman, okay, but would it kill people to at least pretend to be impressed when he was trying to do something heroic?
The men saw him too.
The taller one looked him up and down, then gave an ugly little laugh, "What the hell is this? A schoolboy came out to play hero?"
The other tilted his head, grin spreading. "Get lost, kid. This doesn't concern you."
Sam's eyes shifted to the girl.
She was absolutely terrified, just waiting for an opening, ready to run if she got even half a chance.
Sam intended to give her one.
But before he could move, the taller guy beside her wrapped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her tight against him, like she belonged there. Then he lifted the phone again, turning it toward Sam with a wide, toothy grin.
"Or hey," he said. "If you're that interested, you can join in. What do you say, little man?"
They laughed again.
The girl froze completely.
Something hot and sharp moved through Sam's chest. Rage, humiliation, disgust, all of it mixing together until he almost roared.
"No," he snapped. "Back off from her. Now!"
The laughter died.
This time, the girl looked at him properly, her tear-filled blue eyes wide and searching.
The taller one's expression hardened.
"Oh yeah?" he said. "And who the hell are you?"
Sam paused for half a second, then lifted his chin.
He really wished he had a better line ready.
"Me?" he said. "I'm Sam. I do MMA."
For a moment, there was silence.
Then the two men burst out laughing like it was the funniest thing they had heard all night.
Sam didn't laugh and behind them, neither did the girl.
That was enough.
Sam moved fast.
The taller one reacted first, lowering the phone as his free hand came up instinctively.
"Hey—what the hell do you—"
Sam shoved the taller guy aside harder than even he expected, then grabbed the shorter one by the jacket and ripped him off the girl. The man stumbled sideways, swearing, but Sam was already moving.
He caught the girl lightly by the arm and guided her clear.
"Come on."
She moved instantly without any resistance.
Sam turned with her, putting himself between her and the two men in one smooth motion as they backed away together.
"Stay behind me," he said quietly.
"…okay," she breathed.
Sam kept his hands open, palms loose, shoulders relaxed. Ready, but not tense. He backed away one careful step at a time.
"Alright," he said. "That's enough, right? No need to make this a whole thing. We all just walk away and go our separate ways."
Both men clenched their fists.
They looked pissed now.
The taller one stepped forward, jaw tight. "You think you can just walk in here and tell us what to do?"
"Hey, I'm just saying this isn't it," Sam said, keeping his voice level. "There are bars. Dating apps. A million ways to be pathetic that don't involve this."
He gave a small shrug, "You're not even half bad looking. You'll survive."
The guy stared at him, "Shut the fuck up."
Then he lunged.
There was no skill in it. No setup, no balance, no thought. Just anger. He threw a big right hand straight at Sam's face, swinging from the shoulder like he expected size and rage to do all the work for him.
Sam saw it coming before the punch was even halfway there.
He dipped under it, letting the fist cut through the air above his cheek, and stepped in close. His left hand drove hard into the man's stomach, short and compact.
The guy folded around the impact with a broken grunt. His whole upper body pitched forward, and for one useful second, his height stopped being a problem.
Sam used it.
His right hook came up fast and heavy, cracking across the man's jaw. The blow snapped his head sideways. Before the guy could stagger back, Sam followed with a left hook from the other side.
The second punch landed clean.
The tall man's eyes went empty.
For a moment, his body stayed upright by habit alone. Then his knees gave out, and he dropped onto the rubber flooring like someone had cut his strings.
The playground went silent.
Sam looked down at him, breathing steady while adrenaline hummed low in his veins.
"…oh," he said. "Yeah. That landed clean."
"YOU LITTLE FUCK—!" The shorter man roared as he rushed him.
He came in hard, all panic and rage, and threw a straight kick at Sam's stomach. It was quick enough to be dangerous, but badly placed and easy to read.
Sam caught the leg against his side before it could land. Then he yanked it toward himself.
The man hopped forward, balance gone, arms flailing as he tried not to fall. He swung at Sam's head, wild and desperate, but there was no technique in it. No plan. Just fear turning into anger because anger was easier.
Sam caught the incoming arm by the wrist, stepped in under it, and turned his back into the man's chest.
The shorter guy realized what was happening too late.
Sam pulled the trapped arm forward, dropped his weight, and rolled him over his shoulder. The man's feet left the ground. For one brief second, he hung there in the air, completely helpless.
Then he hit the rubber flooring hard enough to drive the breath out of him in a dry, choking gasp.
Behind Sam, the girl screamed.
Then came the sound of footsteps.
Running.
Sam looked up, just for a second.
Some stupid part of him expected to see her standing there, staring at him with wide, impressed eyes like this was a movie. Like he had done the heroic thing and now came the part where she looked at him like he was something special.
Instead, she was already running.
She was halfway across the street, heading toward the city lights without looking back once.
No thank you.
No name.
No grateful, trembling smile.
Not even an offer to call the police.
Just a small figure running away.
Sam stared after her for a moment. Then he let out a quiet breath.
"…yeah," he muttered. "That's real life, huh."
No fairy-tale reward. No beautiful stranger looking at him like he had changed her world. Of course not. Sam had learned that lesson a long time ago. Most of the time, when you did something stupid and dangerous for someone else, you got nothing back. You just did it because it was the right thing to do.
And if you were lucky, nobody tried to get you into trouble afterward.
The shorter guy groaned beneath him and twisted, trying to scramble up.
Sam looked down again, sighed, and stepped away from him.
"…right," he muttered. "So what am I supposed to do with you guys?"
He stood there, looking between the two men.
Both of them probably had bruises or worse, which made Sam's stomach tighten. Because now that the girl was gone, there were no witnesses.
Which meant the whole thing looked bad from the outside.
Really bad.
A trained MMA guy had just beaten two idiots half-unconscious in a playground at night. That probably wasn't going to sound great in court. Or to his boss at the bar. Bouncer jobs paid well, and he really couldn't afford to lose his.
The taller one groaned and shifted weakly.
Sam let out a relieved breath.
"You guys breathing? Good. Great." He rubbed the back of his head awkwardly. "So, what do you say we leave this here? No need to escalate things with police or anything, right? We all just walk away and pretend this night never happened."
The taller one groaned again and pushed himself up onto one elbow.
Then his hand slipped into his pocket. Sam's eyes tracked the movement, metal flashed, it was a knife and not the kind made for buttering sandwiches.
"…ah," Sam said softly. "Of course."
The shorter one stirred too, dragging himself upright with rage still burning through the daze. His hand went into his own pocket, and a second blade appeared in the dull playground light.
Even longer and meaner looking than the first, much worse for Sam's immediate plans.
"Fuck you," the taller one rasped, the knife shaking in his hand. "I'll cut you for that."
Sam stepped back, hands raised with his palms out.
"Hey," he said carefully. "Can't we talk about this?"
The shorter guy snorted. "Yeah. Give us all your money and maybe we spare you."
Sam didn't like that idea, so he instantly looked to the trees at the side. Then back at the knives.
He was a good fighter. He knew that.
He also knew that taking on two angry idiots with blades was a great way to become a tragic story people discussed over coffee.
"…yeah," Sam said. "Nope."
He turned and ran.
The two men gave chase as he left the playground and plunged into the darkness of the narrow treeline. Branches snapped against his jacket as he cut through the bushes in a straight line, no style and no dignity, just movement. Behind him, the men shouted and stumbled after him, crashing through the undergrowth with more anger than coordination.
Sam cleared the ditch, landed hard, and spotted his bike exactly where he had left it.
"Still here," he breathed.
He grabbed it, swung onto the saddle, and pushed off.
The men burst out of the trees behind him just as he hit the gravel path.
"Get back here!"
Sam did not get back there.
He pedaled hard, gravel spitting beneath his tires. His lungs dragged in cold air that felt like glass, and his bruised ribs screamed with every breath.
He really wished he had an electric bike.
Sadly, this was all he had, so he pushed harder.
For a few seconds, he expected the men to keep chasing. Instead, they slowed, cursed after him, then turned and darted back toward the playground as if they were going to grab something.
Sam glanced over his shoulder, saw them disappear into the shadows, and immediately decided he had no interest in finding out what that something was.
He kept going.
Soon the gravel path gave way to sidewalk, and the world grew brighter with streetlights and the sight of beautiful little houses with dark windows. Normal things. Safe-feeling things.
His legs burned. His heart hammered. The bike wobbled slightly beneath him, but he forced himself to breathe.
"Alright," he panted. "I did it. Good job, Sam. Hero moment complete. Great. Fantastic."
He swallowed, tasted blood, and kept pedaling.
"Next mission: eat, shower, sleep, then work."
He tried to tell himself that was it. That the whole thing could be brushed aside and forgotten. Just another ugly little incident in a city full of them.
Ahead, the neighborhood opened up around him, with more small houses with dark windows and just beyond the little homes, he could see the cluster of apartment buildings in the distance.
Almost home.
His shoulders loosened.
"Yeah," he murmured. "That's more like it."
Then the calm broke.
At first, it was only an engine somewhere behind him. Low, ugly, and far too loud for a quiet residential street. Not the soft hum of some tired family car crawling home at night, but a modified growl that cracked and popped between revs like gunshots. The kind of car that announced itself before it arrived. The kind of car that made normal people look out through their curtains and wonder what idiot was trying to die before morning.
Sam frowned and glanced back.
A black sports car came around the corner too fast, its tinted windows swallowing the streetlights as it tore down the road behind him. This was a thirty-kilometer zone, the kind of neighborhood where kids rode scooters and old people walked dogs during the day, but the car was already moving twice that and climbing.
For one stupid second, Sam only felt annoyance.
Then the headlights hit him.
He squinted through the glare and saw movement inside. Two shapes. One tall. One shorter. Faces twisted with rage, teeth bared, arms pointing straight at him through the windshield.
Recognition struck cold and instant.
"No way," Sam whispered. "You've gotta be kidding me."
The engine screamed.
The car surged forward, the exhaust cracking behind it as if the whole thing had been built to sound angry. Sam pushed down hard on the pedals, but it was pointless. He was on a normal bike, not an electric one, boxed in by fences on his left and the road on his right, already tired, already bruised, already moving too slowly.
The car went from fast to terrifying in less than a breath.
"Oh, come on!" Sam snapped, pedaling harder even though some part of him already knew it wouldn't matter. "I didn't even hit you that hard!"
The black car swerved.
Its front wheel jumped the curb first. Then the whole thing lurched onto the sidewalk without hesitation, engine screaming, headlights swallowing everything in front of him.
Sam had just enough time to see the hood rising toward his legs.
Then it hit.
The impact erased the world.
His bike folded beneath him with a scream of metal, crushed sideways under the car as if it were made of paper. The force tore Sam from the saddle and threw him backward into the windshield. His helmet struck first, then his shoulders, then his back, and the glass cracked around him in a violent white web.
For one impossible second, he was plastered there against the broken windshield.
Then he went over the roof.
Weightless.
Spinning.
Streetlights and black sky twisted together above him, bright and dark and bright again. His body felt distant, like something that belonged to someone else. Pain had not arrived yet. Not properly. There was only cold air, broken light, and that strange floating silence before everything caught up.
Then he saw his phone tumbling beside him.
The cracked screen flashed once as it spun through the air.
Sam reached for it without thinking.
"No—my money!"
His fingers closed on nothing.
The phone spun away into the cold autumn dark, and with it went the closest thing to a future he had ever managed to build. His bank account. His portfolio. His crypto. Years of shifts, bruises, late nights, stupid risks, and every desperate little plan he had stacked on top of those glowing numbers.
Then gravity took him.
Sam hit the asphalt hard enough to turn the world white.
The cheap bicycle helmet split against the road with a sharp crack. Something inside him broke too, deeper and uglier than bone should have sounded, and all the air left his lungs in a thin, useless gasp.
For a moment, there was no pain.
Then there was too much.
It flooded in all at once, hot and bright and impossible to understand. His limbs stopped listening. His chest would not fill properly. Warmth spread beneath him into the cold pavement, and some distant, fading part of him knew that warmth should not have been there.
He lay on his side, blinking through blood and blur.
The black car had stopped farther down the sidewalk. Its brake lights painted the street red. For one wild second, Sam thought they might get out. Maybe panic. Maybe realize what they had done.
Instead, the car reversed.
Sam's eyes drifted to his phone.
It had landed on the road a few meters away, the screen still glowing faintly in the dark like it was trying to be useful.
He tried to reach for it.
Nothing moved.
The car turned. One tire rolled over the phone with a small, final crack. The device caught under the wheel for a moment, dragged along the asphalt, then vanished beneath the car as it sped off into the night.
Sam stared after it, watching his hard work disappear under someone else's tire.
A weak sound escaped him.
"…ah."
Of course.
Of course that had just happened.
He had tried to do the right thing. Tried to be useful. Tried to become something. And apparently the reward for all that effort was getting run over by two idiots in a drug-dealer-looking sports car while his entire future got carried away under a wheel.
That felt about right.
His thoughts loosened, slipping apart at the edges. The cold road pressed against his cheek. Somewhere far away, blood moved where it was not supposed to. His body felt heavy now.
Too heavy.
Sam would have laughed at his own fate if he'd had the strength.
Instead, one stupid thought drifted up through the haze.
What if I'd been born a girl?
It floated through him, strange and ridiculous and completely out of place.
Maybe I'd be the one getting saved.
Another breath scraped weakly through his chest.
Would've been easier, maybe.
Less fighting. Less bullshit. Or at least he could have skipped the whole girlfriend problem.
Hell, he could have just been his own girlfriend.
Save time.
Save money.
A soft, broken huff of laughter escaped him, barely more than air.
Yeah.
That would actually be pretty efficient.
Eric would hate it too. Eric didn't fight girls. Didn't spar with them. He gave them free things, opened car doors for them, let them sit in his lap and called it being a gentleman.
Maybe then he would've given Sam that ride.
Maybe then Sam wouldn't be lying in the road, bleeding into the asphalt because two morons couldn't handle getting embarrassed.
For some reason, that made it funnier.
He could almost see Eric's stupid perfect face, sitting behind the wheel of that stupid expensive car, trying to come up with some bullshit excuse and finding none.
"Yeah…" Sam whispered, lips barely moving. "Fuck you, Eric…"
It came out almost fond.
Almost joking.
Almost.
The darkness thickened at the edges of his vision. The streetlights blurred into pale halos above him. The cold settled deeper, heavy and calm now, wrapping around him like sleep.
Another thought drifted in, slower than the rest.
Wait.
What am I even thinking?
For a second, Sam felt embarrassed.
Then even that became too much work.
His eyes half-closed. His breath shuddered once, shallow and weak.
"…I'm such an idiot…"
The world faded.
Then there was nothing.