A/N: Hello, hello! Welcome to Stars Uncrossed! It's been a while since I've written on this site, but I'm trying to get back into it, so I hope this first attempt is enjoyable to read! I'll keep this short so you can get to the story, but just a note, this story does take place in the same universe (and in fact, shortly after the events of) one of my other Newsies fics, By Words the Mind is Winged. You don't have to read that to understand this (especially because I wrote it a while ago and a lot of the writing makes me cringe now lol), but it's there if you want more insight into my OC Cassie, who will be in a lot of this story. I hope you enjoy the first chapter of Stars Uncrossed!

Chapter One: in fair manhattan, where we lay our scene

This one's different, Romeo thought every time he decided he'd fallen in love with whatever pretty girl happened to buy a pape from him that week. Last week, for example, he'd flirted with a girl and gotten a dime in the sale. Now, this was by no means the first instance in which someone had given him more money than they needed to – but those kinds of sales were usually made out of pity, and by weaponizing his youthful face and irresistible charm, along with just a bit of truth-improvement if the situation called for it. Never had he gotten a dime for flirting! Thus, the dime had obviously meant that she was in love with him! So naturally, the girl would find some way to inconspicuously make her way back to Romeo's selling spot – Oh, is this where you normally sell? I hadn't noticed! -and he would ask her on a date, which of course she'd accept, and she'd buy another pape for another dime, and they'd live happily ever after.

That would have been what happened, if he'd ever seen her again.

So maybe she wasn't so different after all.

Except this one – the beautiful girl Romeo had met just that evening - really was different, probably! Their meeting must have been destiny, like the couples in those romance books Cassie was always reading.

She had bought his last pape, then hurried off into the cool November evening, not even realizing she'd dropped her locket on the ground in the transaction! This is a travesty, Romeo had thought, because what if this necklace completes her favorite outfit, and she can never be completely satisfied with what she wears again? That just wouldn't do, especially for someone so pretty, and he had no more papers to sell, so he raced after her through the people leaving work or going on walks or heading to stores, not stopping until she did – and she was a fast walker, as he was slightly winded by the time he was able to pause.

"Miss!" he exclaimed, holding up the chain. "You dropped this!"

The girl's hand had flown to her neck, almost instinctively, and she took the necklace with a grateful smile. "Oh, Adorable Newsboy, you're my hero! How can I ever repay you?" (Okay, maybe that wasn't verbatim what she'd said, but Romeo figured that was the gist.)

"It's really no problem," he'd said, grinning. "A pretty necklace for a pretty girl, Miss, uh..."

"Rosaline."

"Miss Rosaline." Wink. She smiled again, so he had certainly won her over. Smitten was written all over her face.

"Thank you again!" she had called as he had turned to walk away.

Romeo thought about it now, as he made his way back to the lodge. Of course, he wasn't that conceited to think that every girl he came across was madly, head-over-heels in love with him. But it was a nice fantasy, wasn't it? He enjoyed imagining himself as some handsome hero, a knight in shining armor come to whisk someone away into a perfect world. He supposed that would be hard to do anyway, being a newsie with no family and hardly a nickel to his name, but a boy could dream.

He strode into the lodge in a good mood, as he tended to do when the papers moved well that day. Amidst the typical chaos of the lodging house in the evenings (when most everyone had just got back from selling), hardly anyone noticed his arrival. He lay on his bunk with his hands behind his head and closed his eyes with an easygoing smile on his face. However, his moment was interrupted by the distinct sensation of eyes on him. He opened his eyes to find, in fact, two pairs of eyes staring back at him – eyes that belonged to Cassie and Mush.

"So, who is she?" Mush asked.

"I dunno what you're talkin' about. Which she are you referrin' to?"

"Come on, Romeo, we've been your friends for years. We know when you start liking someone. You had this exact face last week with that one girl – the one with the dime?" Cassie replied.

"I really thought Dime Girl and me had a chance," Romeo said mock-glumly, sitting up. Mush and Cassie sat beside him.

"So... who is she?" Mush repeated.

Romeo feigned innocence for one more second before breaking out into a grin. "Her name's Rosaline."

"Oh, she's got a name this time! That's a step up from the past – how many? All of 'em? That's a step up from all of 'em!"

This kind of teasing was customary amongst the newsies, but it didn't bother Romeo in the slightest. He'd even go so far as to say it was endearing. If the others weren't teasing each other for something, there was probably something wrong. And if you asked Romeo, he had it pretty easy in this regard – if anyone else had come home with a lovesick expression on their face, they'd never hear the end of it. Romeo's crushes being close to weekly meant no one went on some hunt to find out who he liked or teased the girl in his presence, they just made fun of him for being the hopeless romantic he was. And besides, everyone else was doing their own thing right now – if there were two people Romeo could definitely take teasing from, it was his two best friends.

"Rosaline was Romeo's first love in Romeo and Juliet," Cassie began thoughtfully.

"See, and how'd that work out for him?"

"She had no interest in him and then Romeo went and fell in love with another girl within minutes of meeting her."

"Oh," said Mush and Romeo at the same time.

"Well, me and Rosie ain't like that! We's star-crossed lovers!"

"Romeo, that means your relationship is doomed to fail."

"Then we's star-uncrossed lovers and we's meant to be!"

"That's the spirit! Keep talkin' like that and maybe you'll actually see her again!" Mush gave his younger friend a playful nudge. Cassie rolled her eyes, but there was a smile on her face.

Romeo went to bed that night in the same good mood he'd entered the lodging house in, and his dreams were full of pretty girls and best friends.

Rosaline was starting to regret her decision to write a romance.

Her own feelings on love aside, she didn't even know quite how it worked. Because romantic love was different than platonic or familial love, wasn't it? What did it mean when two people loved one another? That they made each other happy, and the body responded to that with an accelerated heartbeat, clammy palms, and a flushed face? "Love" sounded a lot like some sickness to Rosaline, and she certainly did not want the latter, so how was she supposed to portray the former?

She supposed she needed a change in perspective – it wasn't that she didn't believe in love, but that nearly every example of it she'd seen in books and plays and among her peers seemed so...shallow. But she knew she was being cynical. How was she to know what was "shallow" if she could only see the surface of it? Maybe she wouldn't understand romantic love until she'd experienced it – but that wasn't something she'd planned on doing, either.

There was also the matter of the fact that she was writing a play. Or trying to.

So, she couldn't simply write about how lovingly her characters gazed at each other or how enamored they were feeling. She had to show it through exclusively words and actions. And the more she thought about the blank page before her, the more daunting this task seemed.

However, Rosaline Thomas was not the kind of writer to back down from a challenge, and romance was the only genre she'd not yet written, so she sat, pencil and paper in hand, willing the words to spill out of her as they had so many times before.

Nothing.

She absentmindedly toyed with her locket, a habit she'd taken up since that newsboy had returned it to her a couple days before, as if she was subconsciously checking to make sure it was still there. It was quite important to her, and if she saw that newsie again, she'd have to give him more for a paper.

Rosaline turned her focus once more to her page. This was not getting her anywhere. Deciding a walk might help clear her head and perhaps give her some inspiration, she stepped outside and took a deep breath.

It was a beautiful, sunny Saturday, with an autumn breeze blowing through the trees. It was the perfect weather for a walk, or a picnic if Rosaline had planned ahead. She figured she'd walk to the library, as it was a good distance from her house, but not so far that she'd get tired or bored and defeat the purpose of the outing.

The sunshine improved her mood considerably, and soon she was no longer fretting about how to begin (and write and end) her play, but simply enjoying the weather. She even bought a paper from a newsie - though unfortunately not the one she'd met the other evening – and was pleasantly surprised to see her friend, Adelaide, seemingly on a stroll of her own. Rosaline was reminded of why she'd come out here in the first place; Addie was usually one of the first people Rosaline would go to in these situations and she was surprised now that the thought hadn't come to her sooner. She quickened her pace to reach her friend.

The two were a curious pair, both being so quiet and self-effacing on their own that one could hardly imagine how they'd come to be so close. Neither of them was the kind to simply strike up a conversation just because, and yet they were now thick as thieves, near perfect compliments of each other. In many ways, Addie was the heart to Rosaline's head: she reminded Rosaline to step back and take breaks every now and then, when her passion for writing became a stressor. And Rosaline was the sensibility to Addie's perpetual anxiety, always ready to supply logical and objective advice (alongside a listening ear, of course) for whatever dilemma the nervous but well-intentioned girl was facing.

"Good afternoon," Rosaline said when she was almost next to her.

"Oh! Hello," Addie smiled.

"I was wondering if I could ask your advice on something."

Addie nodded, so Rosaline explained her plight as the other girl listened intently. "I was hoping perhaps a walk would inspire me, but nothing. I have it all planned out, I just... don't know where to go from here." She sighed. It wasn't as though she'd never had trouble writing before, but that didn't make it any less frustrating.

"Maybe take a break?" Addie suggested, ever helpful.

"That's what I'm doing, Addie," Rosaline groaned.

"No, I mean – I think you're thinking too hard about this." Her brows were furrowed in thought. "You're only 'taking a break' because you think it may help speed along the process. But have you tried taking a break simply because...you need one?"

"That doesn't make any sense!"

Addie shrugged. "It does to me. But if it doesn't to you, that's alright," she said patiently. "I'm sure there's something that will inspire you." She turned her head to Rosaline, suddenly smirking, and when she spoke again, her tone had a bit more of a teasing edge to it. "Have you met any potential suitors lately? Perhaps you could draw from that in your writing."

Rosaline rolled her eyes good-naturedly, beginning to object, when she remembered the newsboy from a few days ago. "Actually, I might have."

Addie raised her eyebrows, clearly intrigued. "Oh? You?"

"Well, not exactly," Rosaline clarified – a newsie was hardly a suitor, and she had no interest in the one she'd met, but their encounter had been like something straight out of a romance, in retrospect. "But I did meet someone who may just have given me an idea. I suppose I just never thought about it as a beginning."

"There you go!" Addie encouraged. "I knew you'd find your inspiration somewhere! Now, what do you say we stop for celebratory sodas?"

Rosaline liked that idea very much.

A/N: I hope you liked this chapter! I apologize if these first few chapters are short, slow, and/or clunky - I'm still kind of getting into the groove of things haha. I'd love if you could let me know what you thought in a review, though of course, there's no obligation. Thank you for reading!

- Mouse