Archive of Our Own ^beta

There were lots of things to be found in antique stores.

Davey had always thought of them as lost things. He knew it wasn’t strictly true, but in the ones he preferred, the small, dusty, overcrowded ones full of everyday things from days that happened so long ago they weren’t everyday anymore, that’s how it had always felt. The shelves full of old dishes chipped like they’d been used often, and the rugs with paths worn from where they’d been walked across every day for years and years, and the well-loved dolls and toys, they all felt like they were lost and waiting for their owners to pick them up again.

He liked wandering through the hole-in-the-wall shops full of things that didn’t really have much monetary value, because those were the kinds of things that felt full of history the way a well-preserved clock or chair with a little placard never could. They weren’t things that belonged in a museum, maybe. They were covered in dents and scratches, probably hadn’t ever seen the inside of a manor house or been used by anyone whose name would be in any history books, but they’d had a life. They had a story.

And now they were gathering dust in shops, usually run by families or people who were just glad to have someone stop by and didn’t care if Davey wanted to pick the items up to look at them more closely.

His favorites had always been the books, though. It didn’t even matter how antique they were, he could find just as much interest in a beat-up copy of Harry Potter from twenty years ago as he could in a printing of Pride and Prejudice from 1900. Because it wasn’t the book itself that was so interesting, it was the things that probably kept them from ever accruing much value. The notes in the margins and the dog-eared pages, the little doodles around the edges of pages.

That kind of thing just added to the feeling of the books being lost. No abandoned, or given up by long-gone people, or donated by somebody cleaning out their room, but lost. Waiting. Still holding onto the life that the previous owner or sometimes owners had breathed into the books. It was like a piece of every little girl who’d scribbled in the margins of Nancy Drew was still there, still a little girl even though she’d probably grown up a long time ago now. Like the people who’d been so invested in Sherlock Holmes that their attempts to solve the mysteries before they got to the end of the stories were captured in notes along the way.

Every time Davey ended up in a little antique shop, he ended up running his hands along the spines of all the books on offer, stopping on a few broken-down ones and looking through the obviously well-loved books to see if he could find hints of personality strewn through the pages.

That was how he’d come across the book he was currently holding.

It had looked like a journal. No title on the outside, and a few pages stuck out a little bit like they hadn’t been part of the original binding. It was old, too, the pages were the kind of yellow that only happened after sitting around for a very long time. He’d opened it expecting to find something interesting, and had still managed to be completely surprised by what was inside.

It was a sketchbook, every page full of drawing after drawing. They were beautiful, too, even the rough sketches were ten times better than anything Davey usually found doodled in any of the books.

Every page was full of life. There were little quarter-page sketches of people that couldn’t be anything other than real people. Davey could tell from the expressions on their faces, the little flaws that weren’t usually there on professional portraits, like a pimple or a little scar. There were little drawings of buildings, really old-fashioned tenements and storefronts, several of the same deli. Crowds of people walking in the city, group portraits of a lot of the same people who had their own little individual portraits going about their daily life. There were also a lot of what looked like rough drafts of political cartoons, with messily scrawled captions underneath.

Without meaning to, Davey spent almost a full half-hour looking through the sketchbook. It wasn’t signed anywhere, which kind of made sense if it was a personal sketchbook, which it obviously was. Davey wished he had a name to assign the artist.

In the very front cover, however, he did find a year. 1903.

Normally, he didn’t buy anything when he was spending a day browsing through antique stores. It was relaxing and fun and a way to while away a Sunday without having to spend money. Something about this sketchbook made him feel like he just had to have it though.

“Excuse me? How much is this?” He asked the woman working at the counter. She gave the book a glance.

“Red tag? Back wall?”

Davey nodded.

“Ten dollars.”

Davey felt like it was worth a lot more than that, so it wasn’t a hard decision to hand over ten dollars and tuck the sketchbook in his bag.

He wasn’t sure exactly what about the little book of drawings so incredibly interesting to him, but he found himself spending almost every free moment looking through it in the week after he bought it.

They reminded him of Jacob Riis photos, only they were much less depressing. Like, if Riis had captured the sad part of how the other half lived, this artist had captured the heart and joy and vibrancy that came out of the poverty.

It was obvious that the people in the book were from that side of life. There were holes in shoes and clothing, dirty faces, living conditions that seemed less than ideal, like two people to a bed and a room full of bunk beds, or what looked like a cramped living room kind of space full of broken-down looking furniture.

All of those things were the kind of things people thought of when they thought of the working class of turn-of-the-century New York City.

But people also thought of the photos of miserable people. Mothers with blank expressions and a horde of screaming children, people who looked tired and sad and overworked, people who never had any fun and didn’t know what it was like to relax. Even the kids always seemed to take some of that one, their games spoiled by dead horses in the background or how skinny and hungry they looked.

The artist of these drawings hadn’t spent time on any of that. Every single person they drew was captured in a happy moment, a smile or a laugh, a game. In the room full of beds, the people spread out on them were clearly fine with being so close, their arms around each other. Davey almost could have sworn he could understand the jokes being told from how vivid their expressions were, like a crinkled nose on a boy playfully punching the boy next to him, who was pulling off his boots. Or the gleeful face on one girl who was in the middle of a game of what looked like jacks, something flying through the air and her hand in the middle of grabbing for pebbles on the ground in front of her. A boy sitting next to her looked upset in the very familiar way somebody is when they’re been shown up. Or a rougher sketch, one that looked like maybe the artist had been capturing the moment while it happened, of a little boy and little girl fighting with toy swords.

The little girl was standing on some kind of pedestal, the statue behind her mostly out of frame, pointing her sword at the throat of the little boy triumphantly. He was clearly in the middle of moving his sword up to knock hers away, and he was laughing.

Even the ones that looked less happy, less gleeful or joyful or fun, seemed really, truly human.

And so did things like Riis’s photos and drawings. That was why his work had had such an impact, because he humanized the poor people in a way that hadn’t really been done before, but it was still mostly showing the sadness and horror of life.

In these drawings, even the ones that showed black eyes or cuts, or kids sleeping on the street, it seemed full of something other than the sad bits of it. Kids tying scraps of fabrics around other kids’ cuts, or a wincing little kid with their face scrunched up while an older kid dabbed at a cut or bruise, it was full of camaraderie. Love, even.

That was what made Davey realize that there was hardly any adults present. At all. Some of the kids looked like they might be around Davey’s age, old enough to technically be adults but definitely not grown up, late teens or early twenties, but there didn’t seem to be any adults.

There was one old man who showed up once in a while in the room full of beds or the living room, and in a few drawings that seemed to be inside some kind of restaurant another man appeared once in a while, but most of the drawings were of the same cast of kids.

There were about twenty faces that showed up over and over again. Most of them seemed to be around twelve to fourteen. Maybe five or six were older, and the same younger.

Davey felt like he could get to know them through the drawings. This one was mischievous, even when he was in the background he always looked like he was up to something. This one always had his little toy sword tucked into his belt. This one a slingshot. This one was a gambler, almost always shown with cards or dice in his hand.

It wasn’t an obsession. It wasn’t like he was spending every waking moment poring over the drawings, or like it was all he could think about. It wasn’t like he could really spare that kind of obsession when he was a full-time student with a job. He had homework to do and a paycheck to earn, after all.

He just liked the drawings, was all. They were beautiful. Comforting, almost.

And the political cartoons made him learn a lot more about turn-of-the-century New York City politics than he ever thought he would. He was an English major, history had never been something he was overly invested in, but now he had a bunch of very specific knowledge.

The sketchbook had been added to the semi-permanent contents of his bag, between his planner and his computer. When he was studying in the library, it sat on the side of his workspace next to his planner like it was a necessary study material.

That was how he spent at least two nights a week. Holed up at a table in the library with his books spread out around him, working.

“Lots to do?” An unfamiliar voice interrupted him. Davey looked up from his planner and made eye contact with the person who’d appeared across the table from him. He was leaning on the back of the chair, a crooked half-smile on his face.

He had a mess of curly black hair falling down into his face, almost obscuring his eyes, which were dark, dark brown. He was, Davey was only slightly embarrassed to notice after three seconds of looking at him, very handsome. He had a strong jaw and looked like he probably was more muscular than his clothes allowed him to appear. Very classically handsome, but in a less refined way, like he really had just woken up like that and looking the way he did didn’t take any extra effort, he just happened to look like he should be a movie star.

And his clothes were…odd. They seemed out of place. Like he was dressed up, but somehow not quite. He was wearing what looked like gray suit pants and a matching vest, but instead of the rest of a suit, he had a denim button-up under the vest. The look suited him, it was just a little bit strange. The collar on the shirt was the old fashioned kind, and the whole thing just felt almost out of time. Not quite period clothing, but like somebody’s best guess at period clothing from thrift shop finds.

“Oh, um, yeah. Essays.”

“Watcha writing about?” He had an accent. Actually, Davey was pretty sure he heard two accents. On top, a rough Brooklyn accent, and underneath, something much softer. Spanish, maybe.

“A comparison between classic and modern romantic heroes. You know, like Mr. Darcy versus Noah Calhoun.”

“Can’t say I have anything to say about those characters.” The stranger pulled out a chair across from Davey and looked at the books he had open like he was reading them upside down. “I’m Jack. Jack Kelly.”

“Davey Jacobs.”

“Nice to meetcha.” Jack smiled at him fully. He had a bright, charming smile. The kind of smile that would have won Davey’s mom over in an instant, and had her insisting that Jack was a nice young man. Honestly, it was kind of having that effect on Davey. It was just a really open smile, one that seemed…trustworthy. “You go to school here?”

“In the library?” Davey smiled at that. “No, I go to Columbia. For creative writing.”

“Wow, a real smart guy, huh?”

“Oh, um, I don’t know about that. I guess.”

“Must be, going to a school like that. You gotta lot to say about…heroes?”

“I better, or I’ll be failing this essay.”

Jack laughed.

Davey had a sudden moment of clarity that he was incredibly gay and Jack Kelly was very, very attractive.

He wasn’t really sure where the conversation went, because he kept getting distracted either by looking at the clock and realizing that he really should be working on his essay or by mentally kicking himself for definitely being all blush and bashful.

He didn’t even know this guy, and he was getting embarrassingly flustered from talking to him.

Eventually, though, Jack stuck out his hand for Davey to shake and said goodbye, leaving Davey to finish his essay alone.

Davey didn’t expect to see Jack Kelly again.

After all, he was a stranger in the library. One who’d had a pretty long conversation with Davey, but it was a public library in Manhattan. The chances of running into the same person again were pretty slim, really, unless Jack had the exact same schedule as Davey. If they did run into each other again, it would probably be the library.

So running into him at a sandwich shop was a surprise.

“Heya, Davey Jacobs.”

“Jack Kelly,” Davey smiled and pushed his books aside so Jack could sit across from him in the booth he was in. “Fancy seeing you here.”

“Haven’t been in here since…well, a really long time.” Jack sat down across from him. He looked disoriented. “Used to be…different.”

“Oh?” Davey had been coming to this little deli for a pretty long time. A very long time, in fact. There was a picture of him and Sarah hanging on the wall at their parents' house of them in a booth, sharing a milkshake when they were probably around seven or eight. The biggest difference between then and now was that milkshakes weren’t on the menu anymore. Everything else was almost exactly the same. Even the somewhat sticky, greenish vinyl covers on the booths were the same.

“More…wooden.” Jack shook his head like he was trying to clear it. “Very weird.”

Other than the wood floors that had been replaced with tile a few years ago, Davey had no memory of any more wood in the deli than there was right now.

“In here?”

“Yeah. Used to be called Jacobi’s, and it wasn’t this…fancy. Or clean, I guess. It’s probably better like this.” Jack shrugged and shook his head again, and then grinned at Davey. “Change is just weird, is all.”

“Yeah.”

The name Jacobi’s sounded familiar, though Davey wasn’t sure why. This deli was just named after the family who owned it, the Taubers. As far as Davey knew, it had always been named after them. They’d owned it his whole life, he was pretty sure back at least two generations.

Jack must have been misremembering some other deli.

“Still working on the same essay?”

“No, I turned that one in.”

“And you’re already writing another one? Sounds miserable to me.”

Davey laughed.

“There’s only a few weeks left of this semester. I only have this one and the final paper to write.”

“Two more essays in a few weeks? Sounds even more miserable to me.”

“Good thing I’m the one who has to do them then, huh?”

“You like it?”

“This is probably my least favorite class, but it isn’t terrible. I wouldn’t be a creative writing major if I hated writing.”

“I like the creative part. Just probably not the writing part.”

“What kind of creative do you like, then?”

“Painting, mostly. Drawing. Not words.”

Davey noticed, at the same time, that Jack was wearing the exact same outfit he had been wearing in the library, and that sticking out from the not quite completely buttoned denim shirt was another shirt. It was striped and covered in little dots and dashes of random colors. Paint.

He also had little flecks of color on his hands, at the corner of his eye, a streak of orange that looked like it had been just missed the last time he washed his hair.

“I’m the opposite. I can’t draw to save my life, but I love writing.”

“Well, aren’t we just a dream team.”

“Are you proposing that we write a book together?”

It was Jack’s turn to laugh.

“Why not? Maybe we could earn some money.”

“Got a plot in mind, or just the vague idea of an illustrated story?”

Jack hummed thoughtfully and picked up one of Davey’s pens. He looked at it for a second, nodded, and pulled a blank sheet of paper across the table towards himself.

He started to sketch, small lines here and there, and a little person began to take shape.

“How about…hmm…kids. Standing up for themselves.”

The drawing expanded quickly. It wasn’t super detailed, and Davey was seeing it upside down, but he could tell that Jack was a talented artist. More people were added until he’d sketched out a little crowd scene of people standing with their fists raised.

When he spun it around for Davey to see, Davey noticed that the crowd of kids was all dressed like Jack. It looked much more old-fashioned when an entire group was dressed like that.

“Against what?”

“Against some chisler. Somebody who thinks he’s a big deal and don’t want ‘em to do well.” Jack frowned and added a few extra lines to the drawing that he was now seeing upside down. His accent seemed to get thicker while he was talking. “Only they stand up to him. Make him see that he needs them.”

“You’ve thought about this before, huh?”

Jack shrugged, still adding details to the drawing. Upside down.

“Some stories are forgotten. They still need to be told.”

He didn’t seem to think that was a very profound thing to say, even though Davey thought it was.

Jack flipped the paper back towards himself and started adding another drawing next to the first. Davey watched, fascinated, as line by line another crowd scene appeared. This one wasn’t as hopeful, he could tell immediately. The kids weren’t standing with their fists raised, they were shrinking back from new figures, tall and faceless. Intimidating.

And then a third drawing started to take form. The faceless figures were down below the kids, who weren’t looking hopeful like the first drawing or scared like the second. They looked angry. Angry, but triumphant. Like they’d just won, but they’d had to lose something to do it.

When the third sketch was done, Jack spun the paper back around so Davey could see it right-side up.

“Your turn,” Jack said, holding the pen out to Davey.

Davey took it. For moment, he tried to think of something to write that would add to the story already told in Jack’s little drawings.

He couldn’t.

All he did was label them. One. Two. Three.

“You don’t need my help to tell this story,” he said.

“Don’t need words to tell a story? Must be a new rule.”

“Haven’t you ever heard that a picture’s worth a thousand words? You’ve got three thousand words right there. You don’t need any of mine. That’s a good thing, you know. You’re talented.”

“It’s just a couple sketches, Davey. It ain’t the Sistine Chapel.”

“That doesn’t mean it isn’t worth a thousand words.”

Jack smiled at Davey, and Davey blushed.

“I guess you’d know better than me, with a brain like yours.”

“Brain like mine? You’ve only talked to me twice; don’t you think you should wait a while before deciding I’m some genius?”

“Nah. I can just tell. You’re smart.” Jack grinned at Davey and looked out the window. “I should probably go. I’ll see you around, Davey.”

Before Davey could ask for a phone number or something to actually make sure they would find each other again, Jack had walked away. He left his drawing on the table in front of Davey.

Davey folded it up and slid it inside the cover of his planner.

For some reason, Davey wasn’t surprised when Jack appeared in front of him in the library two weeks later.

Davey was working on his final essay, and was actually too focused on it to talk much, unlike the first time he’d met Jack. So Jack had snatched a piece of blank paper from somewhere and pilfered one of Davey’s pencils. Davey didn’t even notice him leave, but when he finally finished his draft and decided to call it quits for the night, he did notice the drawing left behind.

It was signed in messy, chicken scratch handwriting by Jack Kelly.

It was beautiful. Much more detailed than the drawings he’d done at the deli. And it was of Davey.

A portrait of Davey, sitting at the table, looking down at his laptop. The light was hitting his face from the screen, and he looked focused. He also looked a lot more…perfect than he did in real life. Not fake, exactly; in fact, the drawing was incredibly realistic. The Davey on paper just looked like he was exactly perfect for what he was doing. Like he wasn’t a stressed, exhausted student with a week left to finish this final paper he should have started working on two months ago and had only started two weeks ago, but somebody absolutely confident in what he was doing and happy to be doing it.

Without thinking about it, Davey folded that drawing up and tucked it into the last book he picked up to put away, the antique sketchbook.

Over winter break, Davey didn’t spend nearly as much time out and about in the city.

That was the nice thing about living so close to where he worked; he could walk from his apartment to the bookstore in ten minutes and so he didn’t have to really go anywhere else. He was sure some of his classmates who also lived in the city were living it up, but he’d much rather stay at home. Enjoy Chanukah, earn some money, spend time with his parents and siblings.

The apartment he shared with two of his classmates wasn’t exactly luxury, but it was fine. He had his own bedroom, Bill and Darcy mostly kept to themselves, and while rent definitely wasn’t thirty percent of his income or less, it was literally half as much for an entire year than room and board at school would be for the nine months of the school year. His freshman year he’d lived at home with his parents, but even though commuting from the suburbs had been cheap, it had taken time out of his schedule, and the freedom of living (sort of) on his own was kind of amazing. For several reasons, really. It wasn’t like he didn’t have freedom at home. His parents trusted him not to do anything stupid, and it wasn’t like they obsessively needed to know where he was at all times.

But no worrying about when he was going to be home, when he was going out, even things like being able to have friends over without prior notice, it was nice. And it wasn’t like he was bringing guys home all the time, and he didn’t have a boyfriend, but not worrying about the logistics of things like that was nice, too.

It was just generally more convenient and stress-free to live away from home. Close enough o go home to his family whenever he wanted, but in his own space.

When school was in session, he had a social life, contrary to whatever jokes Sarah liked to make. Yes, he’d rather have a few close friends than a huge group, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have friends that he spent time with.

When school was out of session, less so. About half of his close friends were from far enough away that they weren’t around at all during break, and the ones who were close enough to hang out worked just as much as Davey.

So most of the time, Davey was either at the apartment, at work, or visiting his family.

He liked his job. It paid a little bit better than minimum wage, and pretty much all he had to do was either sit behind the counter and check customers out or walk around and make sure all the shelves were in order. It was an interesting little bookstore, the kind that usually drew exclusively old people, hipsters, and people caught in the rain.

Jack Kelly didn’t really fit in any of those three categories, although he kind of had the old-soul-in-a-young-body vibe.

When he showed up in the bookstore, he looked like he felt out of place.

He was browsing a shelf when Davey found him, running his finger across spines and looking a little bit lost.

“I’m starting to think you’re stalking me, Jack Kelly.”

“What? I’m…no, I just…”

“I’m kidding, Jack. As far as I know, you have no way to figure out where I am. You just happen to find me. Are you looking for something in particular?”

“Hmm? Oh, no, just looking around, I guess. I didn’t know you worked here.”

“I do. Let me know if you need anything.” Davey smiled at Jack and went back to what he was doing.

Only four people worked at the bookstore. The owner worked half days every day, opening up, and Davey and the other two usually worked in pairs. Today, though, Davey was entirely alone.

Honestly, while he liked the other two people he shared shifts with, he preferred being alone. When nobody was in the shop, which was pretty common on a Thursday afternoon like today, he could sit behind the counter and read if he wanted to. The speakers behind the counter played quiet classical music, and the shelves dampened any outside sounds. It was peaceful.

Jack seemed to figure out that Davey was alone after a few minutes and kept up a cheerful conversation.

Not really about anything in particular. Occasionally he’d pick up a book and ask if Davey knew what it was, usually by describing the cover if he was in a different aisle. When somebody else came in and asked Davey for help with something, Jack continued wandering around on his own, humming quietly. Davey didn’t recognize the song.

“This is a nice place to work, huh?”

“I like it, yeah.”

“You worked here long?”

“Since I started school. About a two and a half years.”

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-one.”

“I’m a hundred and thirty-seven. Guess I might just be a little older than you, huh?”

Davey couldn’t see Jack’s face, but he could picture the mischievous smile on his face. Which was strange, considering they didn’t really know each other that long, but he definitely had an idea of what expression was on Jack’s face. He laughed at the joke.

“What’s a hundred and sixteen years between friends?”

Jack laughed at that one, and then he appeared at the end of the aisle Davey was in, holding another book. At first, Davey though it was one of the ones off the shelf, but he realized that it wasn’t when Jack got closer. There wasn’t any writing on it at all, and it also looked a lot more beat up than most of the books on the shelves.

“I don’t look it, huh?”

“Not at all. What book is that?”

“Huh? Oh, just my sketchbook. I dropped it.” Jack shrugged and slipped the book inside his vest. “I bent over to look at the bottom shelf.”

“Find anything you want?”

“Nah. I’m not much of a reader, really. I just like looking at the covers.”

“Really?”

“The letters don’t stay still. Reading too long gives me a headache.”

“Oh. Every try an audiobook?”

“What?”

Davey almost laughed at the expression on Jack’s face.

“An audiobook? Like a recording of a book? We have a few on CD, and you can buy them online. I listen to them all the time when I’m doing something else. No reading required.” Davey pulled his phone out of his pocket and opened his list of audiobooks, stepping closer to Jack to show him the screen. “See?”

“Wow,” Jack said. He stared at the scrolling list of book titles, his eyes wide.

“Have you…never heard of this before?”

“Never. I mean, not like that. Cassettes, I’ve heard of. Never had one, though. That’s a whole book?”

Davey did laugh at that.

“Yeah, Jack, they’re all whole books. Look.” Davey clicked on a book and let it start playing out loud.

“Chapter Nine: The Bexhill-on-Sea Murder. I still remember my awakening on the 25th of July. It must have been about seven-thirty. Poirot was standing by my bedside gently shaking me by my shoulder.”

“See? I already started that one, that’s why it’s on chapter nine.” Davey hit paused, and the British man stopped reading.

“What book is that?”

“The ABC Murders by Agatha Christie. It’s a mystery.”

Jack looked enthralled, studying the cover of the book that had popped up on the screen of Davey's phone as it played.

The bell over the door clanged, meaning somebody else was coming in.

“That’s wonderful,” Jack said sincerely.

“If you’re gonna stick around, you can listen to some more. There’s plenty of books on my phone, just don’t walk off with it.”

In what was retrospectively a fairly stupid move, Davey handed his unlocked phone to Jack. This was the fourth time they’d ever seen each other, and he just gave his phone to the guy. And his earbuds, when he realized that Jack would otherwise just be listening to a book out loud.

He plugged them in for him, assuming by how amazed Jack had been by the audiobooks in the first place and the fact that he’d said he’d never even used a cassette tape that he wouldn’t know how to do it on his own.

And then he went to find whoever had just come in to offer them his help.

It ended up being a middle-aged mom looking for a specific book from a specific series that ended up being the third book of Eragon, but that she only knew how to describe by saying “it’s yellow and it’s got an elf in it.” Which, to be fair, made a lot of sense once he’d figured it out, but it took a while to get to.

Almost an hour, in fact.

When he finally found the book and confirmed that it was, in fact, Brisingr by Christopher Paolini that she was looking for, he brought her back to the counter to check her out. Jack seemed to have left at some point, although he hadn’t heard the bell ring. Not that that meant much since he’d just spent fifty minutes trying to solve the mystery of which yellow fantasy book had the right elf in it and missing the bell ringing wasn’t that surprising.

After checking the woman out, he noticed a little tent made out of paper left at the very end of the desk. He picked it up and found his phone hidden underneath, the earbuds neatly coiled on top of them.

That solidified the trust in Jack that Davey had already for some reason had. He could have fairly easily walked off with the phone and probably never seen Davey again, and he hadn’t.

Davey put his phone and earbuds back in his pocket and flipped the folded piece of paper over. He wasn’t surprised to find another drawing but it made him laugh.

It was much less realistic than the last drawing Jack had left at the library and more detailed than the one he’d done at the diner. It was more like a caricature, but Davey instantly recognized who it was.

A short, rather round man, with a fantastic curled mustache, dressed in a fancy old fashioned suit. Hercule Poirot, as obvious as anyone ever had been.

“Figured out how to restart the sound. Sorry if I messed it up. Find you later. Jack.”

Jack’s handwriting was messy, scrawled at the bottom underneath the little floating Poirot.

Davey slipped that drawing in the bag he had with him, too.

If Jack kept leaving Davey a drawing every time they met, Davey would end up with a collection. Well, if they kept meeting. Which, really, it was strange that they’d met as many times as they had, so maybe they wouldn’t ever see each other again.

But, of course, they did.

The next time, it was raining. Pouring, in fact, the kind of rain that came down in sheets driven sideways by the wind and soaked you to the skin no matter if you were holding an umbrella or not. Davey ran into Jack, literally, two blocks away from his apartment on his way home from work.

It was, Davey thought in a moment of rain-soaked delirium brought on by an eight-block walk in this monsoon and the sight of Jack’s curly hair plastered almost straight to his face and his ever-present denim shirt clinging to his arms, very close to a scene from the Notebook. If one of them was going to give a speech and pick the other up to kiss him in the downpour.

“Hello, Davey Jacobs.”

“Hello, Jack Kelly.”

“You’re a little bit wet.”

“Just a little, yeah. So are you.”

“I think I walked through a sprinkler a few blocks back.” Jack grinned, water running in little rivulets down his face. He wasn’t carrying an umbrella, or even wearing any kind of jacket. It was cold enough out that he seemed like he should have been wearing at least a light jacket, especially with the rain.

“Where are you even going without an umbrella in rain like this?”

“Home. It’s a nice walk when it’s nice out.”

“Not so much in weather like this.”

Jack shrugged. Davey stepped sideways so he was standing under the awning of the restaurant they were standing next to. Jack joined him. It wasn’t much more shelter from the rain than Davey’s polka-dot umbrella, but it was a little bit.

“I don’t mind the rain.”

“You’ll catch your death.” Davey winced as soon as he said that. He sounded exactly like his Bubbe. “How far do you have to go?”

Jack made a non-committal noise that made Davey think he had a pretty long way to go.

“Tell me you’re at least taking the subway part of the way. Or a bus. An Uber?” Davey could see on Jack’s face that the answer was no. “I live two blocks from here. Come wait out the rain.”

“Davey, I can’t-“

“You’ll get sick, Jack. It can’t rain forever.”

Jack looked like he wanted to say no, but thunder boomed overhead as if on cue and he nodded.

Davey’s umbrella wasn’t big enough to cover both of them, and while he didn’t feel like it was helping much, the amount of water running off of Jack in the apartment building’s lobby was a testament to how hard the little umbrella had actually been working.

The other people in the lobby were similarly drenched, or else looking out at the rain looking like they were considering not going out after seeing how wet everybody coming in was.

Jack was looking around the lobby like he was taking it all in. Davey led him to his apartment, and Jack looked around the living room with the same expression of not quite disbelief, but something similar.

“You got a nice place, Davey.”

“Yeah. Two roommates, but I have my own room, and the rent isn’t bad since there’s three of us paying it.”

“Roommates?”

“Uh-huh. Bill and Darcy. They’re off visiting Darcy’s parents for Christmas, they’ll be back sometime next week. Do you want some dry clothes? We don’t have a dryer or anything but you could hang yours over the heater and they’ll be at least a little better by the time the rain stops.”

“I don’t…I mean, these are all I have.”

“I’m sure I have sweatpants or something that’ll fit you. And a sweatshirt. And then you could, you know, sit somewhere without running our couch.” Davey went to his room and quickly changed himself into dry clothes, and then pulled some comfy clothes out of the closet to give to Jack. “Here. You can change in the bathroom if you want.”

Jack somewhat reluctantly took the clothes Davey offered him.

“Bathroom’s right through there.” Davey pointed, and Jack disappeared into the bathroom. “Where do you live, Jack?”

“Duane Street,” Jack called after a pause. “Lower east side.”

“Really?”

“No, I’m lying. Yeah, really. Why?”

“It’s far from here, is all. Do you walk everywhere?” Davey asked, and Jack laughed.

“It’s good for a guy, you know?”

“Until it’s forty degrees and pouring.”

“Eh. I personally think the benefits outweigh the disadvantages. Plus it’s a lot harder to be followed when you walk everywhere.”

“Should I be threatened by the fact that you’ve found me so many times, then?”

“Nah.” Jack grinned at Davey. “The universe just keeps throwing us together. I just like to wander around up here, see the sights. People watch. It’s a nice place to come to sketch, the Upper East Side.”

“You spend a lot of time sketching, huh?”

“That’s my job. I’m an artist.”

“Really? Like, commissions?”

“I do cartoons. One a week for the paper.”

“Really? That’s super cool. What paper?”

“Oh, um…the World.”

That threw Davey for a loop.

Most of what Jack had just revealed made perfect sense. Living downtown, having adopted siblings, even being a cartoonist made sense with what he knew of him. But Davey knew the World newspaper. Obviously. Anybody who knew anything about the history of newspapers, or even anybody who had taken APUSH, knew the World. It was one of the newspapers that had given rise to yellow journalism, owned by Joseph Pulitzer of the Pulitzer Prize, it had been a really big part of the history of newspapers.

Keywords there, though, were “had been.” Since it had stopped being printed a long, long time ago. Like, probably close to a hundred years ago. Unless he was talking about a different World, but Davey had never heard of any other.

“It’s not a big paper, just for our group,” Jack said, seemingly noticing that Davey wasn’t quite sure what to think about his last statement. “It’s, um…like a newsletter, I guess?”

“Oh. That’s…cool.”

“Yeah. It’s not a big deal, you know, just for a few people. Maybe one day I’ll be drawing for something bigger.” Jack shrugged, and Davey felt like that bit of conversation was over.

Something about it was off.

It kind of was giving Davey Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt vibes, like if he pressed Jack would end up revealing that the newsletter he drew cartoons for went out to members of a doomsday cult who all lived together on Duane Street.

It wasn’t really his business, though, was it? Jack seemed happy with it, anyway, and he had the freedom to wander around the city, so it wasn’t like he was being forced to live in an underground bunker with no knowledge of the outside world. So it wasn’t Davey’s job to do anything about any weird vibe he got from Jack’s job.

“Do you want something to eat?” Davey asked, deciding to just move on from the awkward conversation entirely and never bring it up again unless Jack decided he wanted to.

“I couldn’t-“

“I’m going to make myself dinner anyway, Jack, if you’re hungry I’ll just make a little extra.”

“What are you making?”

Davey shrugged.

“Whatever I have. Probably pasta.” Davey opened the cabinet over the sink that served as the apartment’s shared pantry and sure enough, the most abundant food there was pasta. Several types of pasta, to the credit of whoever had gone shopping last, but still pasta. If he had been totally alone, he might have just had a bowl of cereal, but he felt like it would be rude to offer Jack dinner and then just hand him a bowl of cold cereal.

So he turned on the stove to boil the water and stepped back out to where Jack could see him.

The apartment he shared with Bill and Darcy wasn’t big. If he remembered right from the lease they’d signed when they’d moved in, it was just under seven hundred square feet, which wasn’t that many per person when three people were living together, but it was plenty for three fairly quiet people to share. The kitchen was small, but there was a full stovetop and oven and room for a full-sized fridge. It was tucked away to the right of the door, pretty much invisible from the couch where Jack was still sitting.

“You a good cook?” Jack asked conversationally when Davey was back in the living room.

“I mean, I’m not going to poison you. I’m not opening any restaurants, though.”

Jack laughed at that.

“Probably be better than anything I could make, anyway.”

“You’re not much of a cook?”

“Never had much chance. Not since I was little, anyway, and that was just throwing whatever my mama gave me into the pan. Haven’t lived any place with much of a kitchen. Plus I like street food just fine, and it’s cheap.”

“Well, if you want to stretch your cooking wings your more than welcome to help.”

“I can’t tell if that’s a request or not, but I feel like I can’t say no.” Jack smiled at Davey, clearly not upset even if he wasn’t joking.

“We could even listen to some more of the book you didn’t get to finish, if you want.”

Jack’s face lit up, so visibly that Davey had to laugh. He found a bluetooth speaker that he was pretty sure belonged to Darcy and let the ABC Murders play while he made dinner for two. Jack leaned against the counter, seemingly enraptured by the story, staring at the boiling water at the stove.

“You didn’t go back to your place in the story?”

“I know this book pretty well. I didn’t really need to finish it or anything, and I had a feeling you’d be back eventually. You’re inevitable.”

“Maybe it’s destiny.”

“We’re fated to keep running into each other until the end of time.”

“Forever?”

“Maybe it’ll just be until we fall in love.”

“Fall in love?”

“You know, the red string of fate. Pulling us together until we finally realize we’re meant to be a couple.” Davey smiled at Jack, trying to show that he was joking.

Which, he was. Kind of. It was a Schrödinger’s joke, both a joke and not a joke depending on how Jack took it. Because, like, Davey thought Jack was ridiculously attractive and he trusted him enough that if Jack were to kiss him right now, the pasta would be left to burn without a second thought. But also if Jack wanted to take it as a joke and laugh it, Davey would move on and pretend like it had been a one hundred percent joke the entire time.

Sarah would probably tell him he was being stupid, that he hadn’t known Jack nearly long enough or well enough to be hinting at wanting any kind of further relationship with him right now.

Bill and Darcy would definitely cheerfully tell him to “get it” and use it as an excuse to use Bill’s father’s credit card to go on a fancy date. They liked to have an excuse to do that. Bill said it was fighting homophobia because they were funding gay dates with a homophobe’s money without him even knowing it.

And if Sarah’s probable advice represented Davey’s rational side, and Bill and Darcy’s probable advice represented Davey’s heedlessly gay side, the heedlessly gay side was definitely going to win this one. And that, Davey reasoned, was fine, because if Jack was going to try anything he’d had ample opportunity. He could have stolen Davey’s unlocked phone, he could have done pretty much anything in the time he’d been alone with Davey in the apartment, and he hadn’t. He was a little strange, a little mysterious, but he was hot and trustworthy enough that Davey didn’t feel like he was in danger.

Davey didn’t hear Jack’s response because of the rabbit hole his thoughts went down as soon as he made his “joke,” so he just smiled at Jack again and stirred the pasta. When he looked back up from the pot, Jack was leaning against the fridge, doodling on the notepad that normally had the shopping list on it.

“Where’d you learn to draw, Jack?” Davey asked, watching the lines come together to form a little scene that he was pretty sure was being pulled from the book still playing in the background.

“Hmm? Oh, taught myself, I guess. Practice makes perfect and all of that.”

“Really? You’re really good.”

Jack shrugged. He switched the pen to his other hand and kept drawing, not looking up when he responded.

“It’s just something I do. You know? I don’t think about it much, usually. When I’m just doodling, anyway.”

As the story kept going in the background and Davey kept an eye on the pasta, Jack’s doodle slowly turned into a detailed scene. It was cute, realistic in the way comic books were, and now that it was more finished he was very sure it had been pulled from the story. Hercule Poirot was a very distinctive figure, after all, especially the way Jack drew him. He looked just like he had in the drawing Jack had left behind at the bookstore.

Jack was silent, even when he finished the drawing and went back to leaning against the counter. He was completely absorbed in the book, which made Davey smile to himself as he drained the pasta. It was fun to look at him as the plot happened and see his reaction.

“Do you want sauce?”

“What?”

“Sauce. On your pasta.”

“Oh, um, sure.”

Jack ate his plate of bowtie pasta and marinara sauce from a jar like it was a meal from a five-star restaurant. He must have complimented Davey on it at least ten times.

And he did the dishes. As soon as Davey was done eating, he took both plates and washed them and the pot in the sink. And then he looked out of the living room window, saw that it had stopped raining, and said goodbye. He changed back into his still damp clothes, left the borrowed clothes folded neatly on top of the toilet, and left.

Davey didn’t see him again until after classes had started again.

When Bill and Darcy had gotten home from visiting Darcy’s family, Bill had noticed the drawing on the fridge almost immediately, and they had the exact reaction Davey had predicted they would.

Bill had laughed and literally said “get it, Davey,” when Davey explained Jack.

Well, explained Jack as best as he could. A rather strange guy who appeared once in a while, was very attractive and just as mysterious, and was a very talented artist.

But Davey had absolutely no way to contact him. Like, at all. He knew Jack lived on Duane Street, and that was it.

So, when he saw Jack again, it was as much of a surprise as it had been every single time thus far.

This time, it was at the library again. That seemed to be the place Jack was most likely to appear, sitting down across from Davey with a smile on his face, ready to distract.

This time, Davey was already distracted. He hadn’t even opened his school bag over break other than to take his old binders out and put the new ones in, and so immediately after sitting down to start on his first homework of the new semester he’d gotten distracted by organizing his bag. And then gotten distracted from that by the rediscovery of the sketchbook he’d bought at the antique store.

He hadn’t exactly forgotten about it, but it had been a while since he’d flipped through it.

It was just as captivating now as it had been when he’d first found it. Maybe even more, now that he knew the drawings well enough to pay attention to the tiny details.

So rather than working on his homework, he slowly flipped through the drawings. He paused on one that caught his eye. He wasn’t exactly sure what about made him look at it for longer than the others. It was one of the drawings of a person.

He was fairly young, though he was probably one of the oldest boys in the sketchbook. He was in a few drawings, but this one was of only him, sitting in a chair tipped back so the front legs weren’t touching the ground, holding a hand of cards. He had a thick cigar tucked behind one ear, and a very mischievous smile on his face. He was looking off to one side and his mouth was open like he was saying something to somebody just out of frame, and the drawing was lifelike enough that Davey felt like he should have been able to hear what was happening.

“Heya, Davey Jacobs.”

Somehow, Davey wasn’t surprised by Jack’s sudden appearance.

“Hi, Jack Kelly. What a surprise to see you here.”

“You don’t sound too surprised.”

“I’m getting kind of used to you popping up just when I have work to do.”

“Am I interrupting? Because I’ll go. Leave you to your work in peace and quiet.” Jack was grinning, his eyes were sparkling, and Davey could tell Jack knew he had no intention of making him go away.

“No, I was distracted anyway. What brings you to the library today?”

Jack pulled out a chair across from Davey and spun it around to sit on it backward, his arms resting on the back. He shrugged.

“Just wandered in. Whatcha up to today?”

“Trying to get homework done, but I can’t seem to focus.”

“It’s my charm, obviously.”

Davey laughed.

“I think it’s actually the fact that I don’t want to do homework so I’m letting myself get distracted by anything and everything.”

“Aw, but that’s barely half the fun.”

“Sorry to disappoint, your royal cockiness.”

Jack laughed then, and rested his head on his arms. Davey saw his eyes flick down to the sketchbook that was still open to the drawing of the mysteriously familiar boy, and a strange expression briefly crossed his face, gone before Davey could really identify it.

“You know what, though, I could use a lunch break. You’re welcome to come, if you wanted.”

“Well, if a gentleman insists on taking me to lunch, who am I to refuse?”

On the way out of the library, Jack offered Davey his arm, like a victorian gentleman walking into a ball. Davey laughed and took it, feeling like he should be dressed in something other than a puffy winter coat and khakis.

Like he always seemed to, Jack managed to keep an easy conversation going while Davey walked them towards the same deli he’d seen Jack at before.

“You like this place, huh?”

“It’s cheap and the food is good. You have another idea?”

“Not at all.”

The hostess smiled at Davey a little too knowingly when he asked for a table for two, and he didn’t miss the fact that they got seated in a mostly empty section at a corner table by the window. Maybe he was reading too much into it because of the way Jack had already kind of made it sound like a date, but it seemed like they were being treated like they were on a date.

“Just a water, thanks,” Davey said when the server came over.

“Same for me,” Jack said. “So, back to writing essays?”

“Not essays yet. It’s the first week of classes so it’s mostly get to know you kind of stuff, like writing two hundred words about what makes me, me.”

“Tell me in two hundred words what makes you, you,” Jack said, a wide grin appearing on his face.

“Right now?”

“Right now. Go.”

Davey laughed.

“I haven’t written that one yet.”

“Well, you have to start sometime, don’t you? Is two hundred words a lot?”

“No, not at all. But I’m a writer, not a speaker.”

“Say the words you would have written.”

“I’ll do it if you go first.”

“Davey, I can’t count to two hundred,” Jack said with a completely straight face, making Davey laugh again.

“I’ll tell you when you hit it.”

“Hmm. My name is Jack Kelly, as far as anyone knows.”

“That’s ten. As far as anyone knows?”

“I used to have a different name, but that was a long time ago. Francis Sullivan, before you ask, and I changed it because I was on the run from the law.”

“Forty-two. On the run from the law?”

“Aw, you wouldn’t believe the story if I told it. Nobody ever does.”

“Try me.”

“You gotta just listen, no questions till the end, yeah?” Jack said seriously.

“Sure.”

“I’m not from…here. I mean, I’m from New York, but not this New York. I mean…” Jack paused and huffed out a frustrated sigh. “I’m not from now. I was born in 1882.” He looked at Davey like he was studying his reaction, seeing where he could go from there. “And I probably died at some point.”

“So you’re trying to tell me you’re a ghost?”

“Nah. Not a ghost. Maybe a memory. I dunno, I’m no expert.”

Jack was absolutely serious, Davey could tell. He didn’t have that mischievous little spark in his eye like he did when he was joking, and he looked genuinely worried that Davey wouldn’t believe him.

Which he didn’t.

Right?

“What does that mean?”

“You have a sketchbook in your bag. I saw it. It’s mine.”

“The sketchbook I bought at an antique store, months ago.”

“June seventh, 1903. That’s when I finished it, and I wrote it on the inside front cover.”

That made Davey pause, because that was the right year, and as far as he knew, Jack had never seen the inside front cover of the sketchbook. He knew it had been sitting out on the table when he was in the library, but it had either been closed completely or else open to a drawing. And when he wasn’t in the library, it was safely tucked away in his bag, and he didn’t think Jack had ever gone through his bag.

He opened his bag and pulled out the sketchbook, turning it around in his hands.

“I could tell you the names of every face in that book, and every place. Check the cover.”

Davey opened the cover to where the date was. The year, 1903, was still very visible against the yellowed paper, but now as he was looking more closely than he had, he could actually see the rest of the date.

June seventh. 1903.

“The picture you were looking at in the library was my brother Race.”

Davey flipped to that page again, staring at the face that was so detailed, drawn with so much love, that he looked like he was alive.

“Ready to order?” She said cheerfully.

“Oh, um, I’ll…I’ll just have a, um, sandwich. Turkey?”

“Sure thing, hon. Deli-style?”

“Um, yeah.”

“And you?” She turned to Jack, who suddenly looked flustered.

“Oh, I’m not…I don’t…just the water for me.”

“You sure?”

“I, um, forgot my…money?”

“He’ll have the same as me,” Davey said without thinking too hard about it.

“No, I-“

“I got it, Jack.”

Their server smiled at him and walked away.

“Davey, you can’t-“

“It’s like six dollars, Jack, it’s not a big deal.”

“Six dollars!”

“This isn’t the eighteen hundreds, Jack, even if that is where you came from. And I still don’t believe that’s where you came from.” Davey felt the need to specify that he still didn’t believe Jack. Because he didn’t. That was impossible.

“Six dollars is a month of savings,” Jack said quietly. “For most of my life, anyway, a perfect month when nobody gets sick, or hurt, or anything. Not how much to spend on a sandwich.”

“What…what did you do? For work, I mean.”

“Told you. I’m…I was, I guess, a cartoonist. For the World. I made better money then, but that was only a few years. ‘Fore that I sold the World.”

“Like…extra, extra, read all about it?”

“When there was an extra to sell, sure. More like, baby born with two heads. Fire on Ellis Island. Trolley strike drags on.”

“One of those is not like the others,” Davey said dryly, and Jack laughed.

“Guess which one was easiest to sell.”

“That’s not what got in trouble with the law, though, that’s what I asked about.”

“First time I got arrested was for loitering, which was a fancy way of saying sleeping on the street ‘cause I couldn’t afford a bed. Then they let me go.”

“And you changed your name.”

“No, I changed my name after I escaped, the second time they put me in the Refuge. For stealing. Food and clothes.”

“Why would you do that if you got let out?”

“Because I was poor, Davey, and the kids in the Refuge….” Jack trailed off. His eyes looked slightly glazed over, like he was staring at something from the distant past he remembered. Supposedly remembered.

“What’s the Refuge?”

“Where they sent kids. Worst place on Earth.” Jack’s voice had dropped to almost a whisper. “Least, it was when I was there. I don’t even wanna think about it, I close my eyes and that’s what I see and hear, that’s what I dream about, it almost killed me. Once I got out, I couldn’t leave those kids there alone. No blankets, no food, nobody who cared where they were or what happened to them. The guy who ran the place, Snyder the spider, just lined his own pockets, didn’t give anything to kids he was supposed to take care of. So I stole for them. Climbed up to the windows and passed things through whenever I could, ‘till I got caught and they threw me back in.” Jack shuddered and folded his arms across his chest like he was suddenly cold. “When I escaped, that’s when I changed my name.”

“You escaped jail?”

“On the back of Teddy Roosevelt’s carriage. Sort of. The underneath, so nobody would see me, and then I changed my name so they couldn’t come looking. And I’ve been Jack Kelly ever since.”

“For a hundred and twenty years.”

“Since I was fifteen.”

“How…old are you?”

“Well, I was twenty-one when I finished that sketchbook, so I guess that’s how old I am now. I don’t remember anything else, I never got any older.”

“But you’ve been wandering around for more than a hundred years since then.”

“No.”

“What?”

“I just kinda…pop in and out, I guess. You’re the fourth person who’s had my sketchbook and cared enough about it to see me, or conjure me, or whatever this is. I am. At least, I think that’s what it is. You liked the drawings, didn’t you?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I really like them.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s how it works, people find the book and like it a lot. I appear somewhere close to them, and I can always tell who they are.”

“So, you are kind of stalking me.”

“Not on purpose. I think it’s when you’re thinking about the sketchbook.”

“So I think about some old drawings, and you magically appear close enough to find me.”

“Yeah. I think.”

Davey shook his head, and flipped to the next page of the sketchbook.

“That’s the lodging house. Number nine Duane street, six cents a night unless you want your own bed. Then it’s ten cents.” A ghost of a smile appeared on Jack’s face, and he tugged the sketchbook closer to himself. “Home.”

“You paid every night?”

“Uh-huh. To Kloppman, that’s him.” Jack pointed to the old man sitting behind the counter on the next page. “He ran the place.”

“Was he mean?”

“Kloppman? Nah, he treated us like his kids ‘cept he made us pay rent. Woke us up if we slept in, made sure we ate, even let us stay a night for free here or there if we had a bad day selling.”

Jack’s accent was getting impossibly thicker as he reminisced on the drawings. He turned to the next page and fully smiled.

“I ain’t actually gone through this book in a long time. These are my brothers. Race, he was like my right-hand man. Crutchie, he’s probably who I was closest to out of anyone in the world. Specs, he could get in and out of anywhere. Helped me get back into the Refuge when I needed to for years.”

“You went back again?”

“I don’t abandon my kids. They get in trouble, I make sure they’re okay. And that’s Romeo, biggest flirt on the planet. And Buttons. He had a collection of buttons. Barney Peanuts, that’s his real name. Unfortunately. And Blink, bet you can guess why that’s his name.” Jack tapped the boy wearing an eyepatch and laughed a little.

“What happened to his eye?”

Davey’s resolve to not believe Jack was failing as he talked. Something about the way Jack was jumping around from face to face, the look in his eyes, he wasn’t paying attention to Davey, really, or focusing on making up stories and names. He was remembering. Really and truly remembering.

“He never told. Had a different story every time anybody asked, usually something funny. Prolly got in a fight with the wrong person, I’d bet. This is Skittery, fastest runner I ever met, and Mush is next to him, never was really sure why we called him Mush but that’s his name so that’s what we called him.”

“And they’re all your brothers.”

“Much as I ever had brothers. We lived together and worked together and fought together. Starved together, sometimes. If that don’t make us family, nothing does.”

“How’d you end up living in a lodging house anyway?”

“Same as anybody, bad luck, and a few pennies. My mama died when I was little, my dad got arrested when I was a little older, and I ended up on my own.” Jack shrugged like it was no big deal. He’d been obviously more affected by his memories of the Refuge than by the loss of his parents, which made Davey sad. How horrible did a place have to be to top losing your family and being on your own on the streets as a kid?

And apparently Davey believed Jack more than he was willing to admit, if that was his first thought.

When their sandwiches were set down in front of them, Jack stared at the plate with wide eyes.

“So much food,” he said like he hadn’t quite meant to say it out loud.

“Good food, too.”

Jack didn’t talk while he was eating. It seemed like he barely breathed.

When he finished, he sat back in the booth and just watched Davey, who was eating at a much more reasonable pace.

“Who else found your sketchbook?”

“What?”

“You said I’m the fourth, right? So who else found it.”

“I only know one of their names. There was a man in 1947, I only saw him once. Then Lisa Abbott, 1964. She was more like you, kept the sketchbook for a while, so I got to know her a little. And then a woman in 1993, but she didn’t want to talk to me any of the times I was there. And then you.”

“What was different about Lisa Abbott? Why do you know her name?”

“Same reason I know yours. She talked to me when I talked to her. Only twice, though, not as much as you.”

“How do you know? Who has it, I mean.”

“You just had it sitting on the table in front of you, so that was easy. The others…I dunno. I can just tell. It’s always…not very many people get that interested in old drawings of nothing in particular. Always the type of person I…I dunno. I can just tell.” Jack shrugged uncomfortably. “You believe me, right?”

Davey had to think about that.

Because the thing was.

The thing was, no, he didn’t. Right? Because Jack couldn’t be a ghost, or a memory, or whatever he was claiming to be. Jack was real, solid, Jack had just eaten a sandwich, Davey had walked here holding onto his arm, he was real. And ghosts….weren’t. Or if they were, they didn’t eat and sit and exist the way Jack did.

But also, Jack was very convincing. He clearly believed in everything he was saying, he didn’t seem to be joking even a little bit.

“I don’t know,” he finally said.

“I guess that’s fair. You haven’t called me crazy yet, though.”

“I don’t think you’re crazy. Just…I don’t know if I believe everything you said.”

“That’s better than I got last time I tried to tell someone, anyway.” Jack half-smiled. “Least you aren’t running away calling me crazy. Or threatening to burn the sketchbook.”

“I wouldn’t do that even if your immortal soul wasn’t tied to it. It’s too beautiful to destroy.”

“No?”

“No.”

“Good to know.”

“Do you want dessert?”

“What?” Jack looked confused at the change of subject.

“They have really good chocolate cake here. I never eat a whole piece if you want to split one.” Davey could tell Jack wanted to refuse, but after a second of what looked like pretty intense internal conflict, he nodded.

The rest of their lunch, the conversation stayed away from turn of the century New York and went back to their normal topic of nothing in particular.

That was normal. Nice. Davey didn’t have to think about whether or not he believed in ghosts or Jack’s impossible story. They could just bounce from meaningless topic to meaningless topic. Jack could laugh in the way that made Davey have to take a breath before he spoke again. Just like every other conversation they’d had.

And when lunch was over, Davey started walking back towards the library, and halfway there realized Jack was gone again.

Disappeared back in time, maybe.

Or maybe just gone in a different direction to try and convince somebody else that he was a memory from the past.

Davey couldn’t decide which he was more willing to believe.

His table had been taken by somebody else when he got back to the library.

Which wasn’t unfair or unexpected, but it did mean he had to wander further back into the library to find a new table to sit at, and then he got distracted, because his new table was right next to a section labeled “Newspaper Archive.”

Not something that generally would have interested him unless he was looking for something specific for a paper, but maybe he kind of was looking for something specific when he started looking.

He tried to pretend at first that he was just glancing through the old newspapers randomly, but it wasn’t really worth it.

This section of the library was populated with binders upon binders of scanned pages of newspapers, and a pretty good chunk of it was labeled “The New York World.”

It was interesting in and of itself that the library hadn’t moved the scans online, considering how much space they took up, but it was more satisfying to pull down a binder labeled “The New York World: July-December 1900” and hear the heavy thunk, and to flip through it.

At first, there didn’t seem to be much of anything that interesting. Or, at least, there weren’t any political cartoons for Davey to look at and compare to what he knew of Jack’s art.

And then there was. It was one of the types of cartoons he’d seen plenty of in history classes, especially APUSH in high school, a caricature of a gigantic rich man blocking off a crowd of normal people from a feast, clearly saying something about the wealth gap. Davey wasn’t really looking into the meaning or historical context, though, he was too interested in how similar the drawing’s style look to the little cartoon Jack had left on the fridge.

There was a messy signature scrawled in the corner, almost hidden by the scan quality and shading of the cartoon.

He had a few drawings Jack had done tucked into his bag, though, and when he pulled one out to compare it, even with the fuzzy picture it was pretty unmistakably the same signature.

He could have spent hours going through the binders, and probably even longer trying to rationalize why it was possible that Jack was somehow faking it. Maybe he’d found these and was playing some kind of elaborate joke on Davey, even going to far as to learn how to fake a signature and copy this random old artist’s style.

He didn’t have to, though, because the next binder he picked up had something even more convincing than a messy signature on a cartoon.

It was in the binder labeled New York Sun, July-August of 1899. He’d started flipping through like he had the first binder, just scanning for cartoons to see if they were also signed by Jack. Instead, he found an entire front page photograph full of familiar faces. And front and center was Jack’s. He was even wearing the same or at least a very similar outfit, with the addition of a hat keeping his curls out of his face. Surrounding him was every kid who filled the pages of the sketchbook.

They were standing together defiantly, looking at the camera proudly, and a bold headline above the picture informed Davey that they were newsboys on strike. And the article right below that informed him that the strike was led by Jack Kelly.

Same name, same face, same art, same signature, same clothes, same people.

Davey suddenly had a headache.

He closed the binder and decided he wasn’t going to get any of his homework done today.

He’d probably just spend the rest of the night trying to reconcile himself with the fact he’d definitely befriended a ghost. And kind of gotten a crush on him. The ghost. The ghost from over a hundred years ago.

He needed a large cup of tea, a bad rom-com, and to not think about anything other than his large cup of tea and a bad rom-com.

He didn’t see Jack again for a week.

Which was probably a good thing, since every time he thought of him he got more confused.

Because he liked Jack. As a person, Jack was funny, he was sweet, he was easy to talk to.

But he was also, apparently and evidently, a person from over a hundred years ago who had somehow ended up now, which was…

Well, it was confusing is what it was, because did that change things? It made Jack different, somehow, because was he really alive? Or was he a ghost?

He’d called himself a memory, attached to the sketchbook that Davey still found himself flipping through. Appearing because Davey cared enough to want him to, or something like that.

But he was real. Solid. For some reason that was what Davey kept getting stuck on, the fact that Jack had a physical presence, that Davey could touch him. That he couldn’t walk through walls, he could eat and drink and hold a pencil to draw with.

He existed.

But he’d also existed in 1899, real and solid enough to have his picture taken and printed in a paper next to his name. The leader of a strike.

When Davey googled the newsboys strike of 1899, Jack’s name was there, too, listed next to Kid Blink, the kid with one eye, and Racetrack Higgins.

He couldn’t be avoided forever, though, which wasn’t a surprise considering Jack had said he showed up when somebody thought a lot about him or his sketchbook, and Davey had definitely spent a lot of time thinking about both. Flipping through the sketchbook and trying to reconcile the Jack he knew with the Jack who’d lovingly drawn pictures of these boys so long ago.

When Jack did pop up again, for the first time it happened when somebody else was around. Bill and Darcy, specifically, who were actively trying to convince Davey to come out with them tonight and couldn’t be more delighted to meet Jack, whose drawing was still up on their fridge and who they very much loved teasing Davey about.

He hadn’t told them about the entire situation. He wasn’t exactly sure they wouldn’t think he was crazy.

“Hey, you know the guy you keep teasing me about? Yeah, he’s kind of a ghost, more like a memory, from the turn of the century. Like, late eighteen hundreds into nineteen hundreds, not 2000.”

Probably not the best thing to tell them. He liked his roommates and wanted to keep them believing that he was sane and stable. Not somebody who was convinced that he was friends with a ghost.

So when Jack was suddenly right there with them on the street, he wasn’t exactly thrilled. He was happy to see Jack, because he’d decided that he did like Jack even if he was some kind of ghost, and even if it was absolutely stupid to have any kind of attraction to him, he could at least be friends with the guy.

The hundred and forty-year-old ghost guy. Memory guy.

Who was still absolutely unfairly attractive, especially with his hat tucked into his pocket and his curls falling dramatically in front of his eyes and the warm, fading daylight casting shadows that made his already impossibly strong jawline look ever stronger.

Quite frankly, fuck this.

“Heya, Dave,” Jack said.

“Hi, Jack.”

He managed to keep from tripping over his feet or choking on his words, which he was proud of himself for. It was absolutely unfair how well sunset suited Jack.

“This must be the ever-mysterious Jack!” Bill said, and Davey could tell he was about to shift into what Darcy affectionately called his “gay aristocrat” mode. He’d probably be quoting Oscar Wilde or spouting poetics about one thing or another.

And if he was ready to start acting like that now, he was going to be absolutely insufferable when he got drunk. Davey really did love both of his roommates dearly, but when either one of them got going they were kind of unbearable to be around.

“Yeah, um, Jack, Bill and Darcy. Bill and Darcy, Jack,” Davey said awkwardly.

“Nice to meetcha,” Jack said, tilting his head and giving a charming smile.

“You, too.” Darcy stuck out his hand and Jack shook it.

“Do you have plans tonight, Jack?” Bill asked. Jack shook his head, and Davey knew where this was going, but before he could say anything, Bill was already talking again. “We’re going out tonight, and we’re trying to convince Davey to join us. You should come too. My treat.”

“Bill-“

“Sounds like fun,” Jack said, grinning at Davey. “Where are we going?”

And that was how, twenty minutes later, Bill was looking through his and Darcy’s closet to see if he had anything Jack could wear clubbing, and Darcy was trying to convince Davey to change into something.

This was an awful idea.

What was going to happen was Jack was going to walk out of the bathroom in five minutes dressed in some insane outfit that somehow looked good on him and Davey would have to pretend once again that he wasn’t attracted to him. And Darcy would win this fight and get Davey into pants that were too tight and a shirt that was too small, and he’d feel ridiculous. And then all four of them would go to some club full of people, Billy and Darcy would disappear into the crowd and make out until they went home, and Davey would be left supervising Jack.

And there was absolutely no way Jack would have any idea what was happening. Half the time Davey went out with Bill and Darcy, he had no idea what was happening, and he’d been born into this time, not the eighteen hundreds.

God, did Jack even know that Bill and Darcy were a couple? Did he know that they were almost definitely going to a gay bar? He’d kind of seemed to be flirting a couple of times, and he hadn’t had any negative reaction when Davey had made jokes before, but did he understand that he was about to go out with three of the gayest men in the city of New York?

He couldn’t stop it, though. He knew Bill well enough to know that resistance was futile, especially if he didn’t have Darcy on his side, and he definitely didn’t.

Maybe if he got drunk enough he’d stop thinking about Jack and Jack would disappear back to wherever he went when he wasn’t around Davey.

Except probably not, since Davey was, as every single one of his friends loved to point out, a very handsy drunk. Which was not what he wanted tonight. At all. Because if he lost his filter he was definitely going to say something stupid to Jack.

Who was a ghost! No matter how attractive he was, Jack was a memory. Trapped in a sketchbook like some kind of goddamn Disney movie. Not exactly a viable romantic prospect.

Even if he was annoyingly Davey’s type. Funny and charming and attractive and-

“Dude. Stop overthinking, you’re going to combust.” Darcy snapped Davey out of it with a poke to the side while handing him a pile of clothes.

“Did you just call me dude?”

“You’re experiencing so much gay panic right now that you’ve made me straight. Relax. We’ll have fun.”

Like he was on autopilot, Davey took the outfit Darcy handed him and put it on. Like he expected, pants that were slightly too tight and a shirt that was slightly too small, but definitely not as bad as it could have been. If it had been a normal night out, maybe he would have even felt pretty hot.

If Jack had never told him that he was from the eighteen hundreds, maybe Davey would be less psyched out right now. Maybe he’d be planning on some smooth way to hit on Jack.

Or maybe not. Maybe he’d be making up some other excuse for why it was stupid to try anything. Probably that’s what he’d be doing because the only times he’d ever gotten anywhere with a guy was when they’d met and Davey had been just tipsy enough to stop overthinking and still sober enough to have a little bit of a filter. A delicate balance, admittedly, but one that apparently worked for him, or at least had.

So maybe he should take a breath and listen to Darcy and have a couple of drinks and calm down and stop worrying about the fact that the guy he was interested in was a memory.

When Jack finally appeared in the living room, laughing over his shoulder at something Bill was saying, Davey was pretty sure he was having a heart attack.

He was a simple soul, okay? He was a simple, gay soul and Jack was way more ripped than he’d seemed in a long-sleeved shirt and looked far to good with glitter on his cheekbones and holy motherfucking shit, Davey was incredibly gay.

And it wasn’t even like it was that insane of an outfit, it was closer to Davey’s than the mesh shirt Bill was wearing, he’d just never seen Jack in anything other than his denim shirt or Davey’s too big sweatpants and sweatshirt, and Jack could really pull off the tight clothing.

Davey didn’t trust himself to talk pretty much the entire way to the bar Bill had picked.

Jack got along with Bill and Darcy just fine, but he spent the entire walk there with an arm slung around Davey’s shoulder. He was laughing, tilting his head back, the glitter on his face catching the light. He’d tied the top of his hair back in a tiny ponytail to keep it out of his face.

Davey was pretty well fucked on the subject of being attracted to him. It seemed that simply deciding not to be didn’t work. At all.

He had a brief moment of panic at the door, worried that they’d be carded and who knew what kind of ID Jack had, but the bouncer checked Bill’s and seemed satisfied that if one of them was twenty-one, they should all be fine. Which, while technically correct, probably wasn’t the best way to determine who should be allowed in? But whatever. All four of them got through the door.

Contrary to what Sarah seemed to believe, or at least liked to tease him about, Davey was fairly social. It wasn’t like he was out drinking every weekend, or like he went to every party he heard about on campus, but he’d been to his fair share. He’d been out with Bill and Darcy plenty, too, and even if Jack hadn’t wanted to come Davey probably would have anyway.

He’d been to this bar before, and it was one of the better ones. There were definitely places he didn’t feel comfortable looking away from his drink, and places that were just too much. This one was loud enough that he didn’t feel self-conscious, quiet enough that he didn’t get overwhelmed. Pretty fun, generally speaking.

Bill and Darcy didn’t waste time going up to the bar and ordering, so Davey found a table, and Jack followed him there. Davey found a booth that looked fairly clean and was far enough in the corner that they wouldn’t be in the middle of all the action in the center of the room.

Jack was looking around with wide eyes at the people all around them.

“Guess you’ve never been to a place quite like this before, huh?” Davey said, sliding into the booth and gesturing for Jack to follow.

“Not exactly.”

“You don’t have to stay if you don’t want to.”

“No, I…it’s kinda cool. Just…different.” Jack shook his head like he was clearing it and the grinned at Davey. “And who am I to refuse the invitation of such upstanding gentlemen?”

“You didn’t have to let him dress you up like that, you know.”

“It’s kinda fun. I keep going cross-eyed, though,” Jack laughed. “I look pretty good dressed like this though, huh?”

Davey laughed because if he didn’t he definitely would have said something incredibly stupid.

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

Davey was saved from actually having to answer by Bill and Darcy sliding in across from him and Jack and pushing drinks towards them.

“Starting out the night with hard liquor, I see,” Davey said, making both of his roommates laugh.

“Nothing wrong with a strawberry daiquiri, is there?” Darcy said cheerfully, already drinking his.

“We’re a group of flaming homosexuals out on the town, we don’t have to pretend to like whiskey on the rocks,” Bill said.

Jack, who had been in the middle of taking a sip, choked violently. When he recovered, he was laughing almost hysterically, and Davey couldn’t tell if the tears in his eyes were from coughing or laughter.

“At least somebody appreciates my wit.”

Bill wasn’t even drunk yet and he was approaching insufferable. Davey met Darcy’s eyes across the table and both of them suppressed a smile, knowing exactly the direction Bill was headed this evening. In two or three more drinks, he’d be unwilling to let go of Darcy and waxing poetic about the color of his eyes and the brightness of his smile. And he’d probably manage to quote at least ten classic romance novels and poems by gay poets in as many minutes.

It would be cute for a little while, and just excessive after that. To Davey, anyway. Darcy would find it adorable no matter how long it went on.

It was kind of funny how easily Jack settled into conversation with the three of them. Obviously, he knew Davey. Pretty well, really, all things considered. But he’d just met Bill and Darcy an hour and a half ago. Maybe it was the alcohol, though Jack would have to be an extreme lightweight to be feeling it before Davey, and for some reason, Davey had a feeling that he could hold his liquor pretty well.

And, for that matter, did alcohol even affect him? He had some kind of a physical body and was capable of eating and drinking, but who was to say if it actually had any effect on him?

That was a question to ponder until their third round of fruity cocktails, a different one each time thanks to Darcy and his father’s credit card but all equally sweet, when Davey could tell that he was buzzed. And when he looked over at Jack, he could see the same flush he felt on his own face rising in Jack’s cheeks, and see in how he was moving and talking that he was feeling the alcohol, too.

Bill was talking with all the energy of somebody who should have been born as a gay noble from the 1600s who would try to seduce the king, and Darcy was leaning into his side, looking up at him like it was the cutest thing he’d ever seen, watching his boyfriend go on yet another tangent about Oscar Wilde.

Jack could not have more clearly had no idea what Bill was talking about, but he still seemed enraptured. It wasn’t just Bill’s words, though, Davey could tell, it was like Jack was soaking up the energy of the entire room.

After a little while, Bill and Darcy got up to go dancing, leaving Davey and Jack alone at the table again. Davey was just sober enough to still have his head on his shoulders, and just buzzed enough to be very, very close to telling Jack how pretty he looked. With the glitter on his cheekbones flashing in the weird bar lighting and his eyes sparkling while he looked around the room continually and his hair falling in annoyingly perfect curls around his face, the tiny ponytail sticking up on top of his head.

Davey was staring, and he knew it.

What. What? What. Was a person supposed to do when he was sitting six inches away from the most attractive person in the room? And he was slightly buzzed and when Jack turned around to look at the people behind them he put his arm up on the back of the booth, practically around Davey’s shoulders, and then he looked at Davey, his eyes still sparkling and a small smile on his lips, and how was Davey supposed to react to that?

“This is amazing,” Jack said very sincerely, just loud enough to be heard over the music. Which was probably pretty loud, but it felt quiet. “You know?”

His accent sounded different now. Davey had picked up on something underneath the Brooklyn accent before, the softer edges to certain words, and that was even more obvious now. A Spanish accent, much clearer now, peeking out from his usual accent. Not just on certain words, like the Brooklyn accent was a choice he’d made to cover up the Spanish and it was slipping now that he was slightly drunk.

“What’d you mean?” Davey asked, maybe using the noise around them as an excuse to lean in a little bit closer than he really had to.

“All of it. This place.” Jack shook his head and looked around again. He hadn’t moved his arm from the back of the seat. “I mean…I wanted to kiss a boy I hadda get two locked doors and a flight of stairs between us and the rest of the world. And everyone here’s just…”

Somehow, in all of Davey’s overthinking about every outcome he could imagine, he’d never even considered this. That if Jack was gay, or any kind of not straight, that this must be the best kind of overwhelming, like the feeling Davey had the first time he’d gone to pride but probably a million times more intense. Because Davey had grown up in a world where things weren’t perfect by a long shot, but at least he could be out. He could have a little pride flag in his twitter bio and sticking out of his potted plant, he could defend himself when people said things, he could live his life as himself. And yeah there were assholes, but it was plenty possible to surround himself with people who weren’t, and he had.

But Jack wouldn’t have had that. At all. The world had changed a lot in the last hundred and twenty years. He would never have had that kind of freedom to just…be.

“Things are different,” Davey said. “From…when you’re from.”

“I know. I guess I figured when you said we could be a couple. I didn’t…couldn’t say something like that without being scared of getting killed. It’s just…everyone here. Dancing and kissing and sitting together…never thought about that before. ‘Cept that’s what’s everyone here just…is. I guess…” Jack trailed off and ducked his head. “I mean, we’re in public. Out in the open. And I could kiss you right now, and nobody would care? No hiding.”

Davey almost laughed.

It was funny, how much he took for granted.

“That’s what a gay bar is for, Jacky. Nobody would look twice.”

He wasn’t sure if that was a hypothetical or an actual statement of interest. Either way, Davey decided, he didn’t care if Jack was a memory or not right now. He was real. He was solid. Davey could feel the heat from his arm where it rested along the seat. If Jack wanted to kiss him, Davey would not be complaining. He’d be doing the opposite of complaining.

Two more drinks were set down in front of them, and when Davey looked towards the bar, Darcy winked at him.

Thank god for Bill and his so-rich-he-didn’t-look-at-credit-card-statements father.

Jack just watched the people around them, and Davey watched him. Watched the emotion he couldn’t name but he knew he’d felt fill Jack’s eyes. Watched the light reflect off the glitter on his face. Watched him take sips of his drink.

The fourth drink was the one that shut off his overthinking. He still wasn’t completely drunk, just past the point of tipsy, but he wasn’t thinking about what could go wrong. Just how beautiful Jack looked and how much he wanted to show him that nobody would care if they kissed. He wanted to kiss Jack and get that glitter on his own face. And find out if his hair was as soft as it looked. And maybe take that tiny ponytail out so it would fall around his face.

“You could kiss me if you wanted,” Davey said, surprising himself. And Jack, judging by the look on his face. “I wouldn’t mind.”

So his filter was gone.

For a second, it looked like Jack was frozen. Almost panicked. He met Davey’s eyes, still turned towards Davey with his arm on the back of the booth.

And then the corner of his mouth lifted in a small smile, and he tilted his head. The glitter flashed with the movement.

Davey wasn’t a poet, that was more Bill’s area of expertise, but he could have written a thousand sonnets about the way Jack looked at that moment. The indescribable feeling in his eyes, the lights and shadows and dancing reflections of the glitter, his collarbones casting shadows, his hair framing his face in those perfect little curls. The way his eyes flicked down to Davey’s mouth and then back up.

A million words wouldn’t be enough to capture the image at that moment.

If Davey believed in soulmates, he would have thought that this was the moment he’d found his. It was like they were suspended, just for a second, in their own tiny little bubble, the music muted like it couldn’t quite pierce through, Jack’s tiny smile, Davey’s quick breath.

The hand that had been resting behind Davey’s back came and brushed his face.

“You…want me to? Kiss you?”

Davey nodded. He wanted Jack to kiss him so badly.

Jack’s hand settled on his face more decisively, and he leaned in even closer. Davey wasn’t sure if he wanted to close his eyes or keep them open. He went cross-eyed as Jack got closer. The glitter reflected up into his eyes.

And then Jack was kissing him.

Davey could take the sweet cocktails.

He was a good kisser, too. Davey shifted to be fully facing him in the booth, one leg underneath himself, and Jack’s other hand went to Davey’s knee. Everything was warm, and Davey wasn’t sure if it was from drinking or the bar being warm or just from kissing Jack, but it was definitely pleasant.

When Jack pulled back, his eyes were closed. He had, Davey noticed, really long, fluffy eyelashes.

He was so ridiculously pretty.

“Wow,” Jack said, so quietly Davey more felt it in his breath than heard it.

“Oh?” Davey pulled further away, catching Jack’s hand in his own as it dropped from his face.

“Wow,” he said, louder and more firmly.

Davey laughed.

He was tipsy and cheerful and he’d just kissed the hottest person in the entire bar and his response had been, “wow.”

He definitely owed Bill and Darcy a solid thank you for convincing him to come out, and for inviting Jack.

Jack opened his eyes and stared at Davey. He had a little smile on his face, and he squeezed Davey’s hand. He looked like he was going to say something, but he didn’t. He just nodded.

“You could do that again if you wanted,” Davey offered, and when Jack did, he could tell they were both smiling.

It wasn’t like they just sat in the booth making out for the rest of the night.

But it definitely was like they couldn’t keep their hands off each other. Jack refused to let go of Davey’s hand, and by the time Bill and Darcy reappeared at the table, Davey was sitting with his back against the wall and his legs across Jack’s lap.

And when they were leaving, Davey couldn’t even blame the alcohol anymore because he hadn’t had a drink in at least an hour and he still didn’t want to let go of Jack. It was like once the line had been crossed, all of Davey’s overthinking went out the window. Most of his thinking, in general, went out of the window.

He didn’t care that Jack was a memory, a ghost, whatever. He didn’t care one bit. What he cared about was that Jack was hot, and sweet, and a really good kisser, and that he was laughing and he kept kissing the corner of Davey’s mouth and his hair was, in fact, just as soft as it looked.

He couldn’t blame the alcohol and didn’t want to blame the alcohol and was glad to be so sure that he’d remember every second, because it was intoxicating in an entirely different way from any drink he could have.

He definitely hadn’t been planning on hooking up with Jack Kelly.

He also definitely wasn’t upset when that was what happened.

Or when he woke up in the morning and Jack was still in bed with him. It was a surprise, a little bit, but definitely a nice one.

Jack was a cuddler. He was half on top of Davey, an arm flung over Davey’s chest and their legs tangled together. When Davey woke up and shifted slightly, Jack shifted with him, burying his face in Davey’s neck.

Just after sunrise was the prettiest time of day in Davey’s room. He wasn’t usually awake for it, but the way the light filtered in and made everything look so soft was beautiful. After Pride last year he’d pinned the full-sized pride flag he’d come home with over the window like a curtain, coloring the light that came through it and making everything almost pastel.

When Jack rolled over, eyes still closed but clearly starting to wake up, Davey decided that this lighting suited him almost as well as sunset.

“Good morning,” Davey said quietly.

“Mornin’,” Jack said, just as quietly. His accent was back to normal, rough and tumble, and his voice was scratchy.

“Sleep well?”

“Ain’t never slept in a bed this nice.” Jack rolled again so he was on his side facing Davey, head propped up on his hand. “Don’t think I’ve slept in a hundred years or so, neither.”

“Really?”

“Never had to. Always gone ‘fore nighttime, and anyway, don’t usually get tired. I am now, though. Guess you wore me out.” Jack smiled. Reached out and touched Davey’s face. Like he was trying to reassure himself Davey was real.

“It’s probably good for you to sleep.”

“Prolly. Feels pretty good.”

“I’m surprised you’re still here. Figured you’d probably disappear back to wherever it is you end up when you’re not around while I was sleeping.”

“You believe me now,” Jack said, like he was just realizing it.

“I found your picture in the newspaper in the library. From 1899.”

“Really?”

“You and all the kids from the sketchbook. On strike.”

“Only time I ever had my mug in the papes and it almost got me killed, believe that?” Jack laughed. “Almost got me sent back to the Refuge.”

“What happened?”

“We went on strike ‘cause the papers wouldn’t drop their prices back down when the war ended. Ten cents extra for fifty is fine when you’re movin’ a hundred twenty a day with war headlines, but when the most exciting thing happening is a trolley strike that’s been happening for three weeks, ten cents is the difference between eating or starving, or a bed and the streets. So we went on strike, just like the trolley guys. Gave old man Pulitzer a good enough scare that he got the Spider after me soon as that picture was in the papes, ‘cause ‘till then he hadn’t figured out my new name.”

“And he got you?”

“Sure did. Me and a buncha my boys. We had one reporter on our side, and he paid the bail for my boys, ‘cause they just got tossed in for fighting the cops, but I was an escapee, so he couldn’t do that for me. Pulitzer got me out and paid me to scab, threatened to get my kids back in the Refuge if I refused.”

“Joseph Pulitzer? The owner of the New York World.”

“Yeah, he’s a real asshole. Was. Guess he’s probably dead now, huh?”

“Yeah. And, like, super famous.”

“Bastard. I only took the money ‘cause he woulda hurt my kids, y’know? I ain’t a scab, and I wouldn’t of betrayed them if I didn’t have to. And it didn’t matter, anyway, ‘cause he sent his goons after my boys anyway and once he did that, I gave up tryin’ to cooperate. Nothing feels better than punching an asshole in the face when he deserves it, and you can quote me on that. Wish I coulda’ punched Pulitzer, but I never got a good enough opportunity.”

The way Jack said that made Davey laugh.

“Did you win the strike?”

“Kinda. They didn’t drop the prices, but they agreed to buy back papes we couldn’t sell, so we weren’t losing money. The governor showed up and made Pulitzer play nice.”

“The governor of New York?”

“Uh-huh. Teddy Roosevelt himself, riding into the city. He arrested Snyder, too. He’s what really won the strike. Mama Medda got him to come in.”

“So you’re telling me that not only are you a ghost-slash-memory from the late eighteen hundreds, but you’ve personally met Joseph Pulitzer and Theodore Roosevelt.”

“Uh-huh.” Jack grinned at the look on Davey’s face. “Guess you think that’s pretty cool, huh?”

“Joseph Pulitzer is one of the most influential people in the history of journalism, and Teddy Roosevelt was a super famous president. That’s insane, Jack.”

“I had a pretty crazy coupla years. I told you it was Roosevelt’s carriage I took outta the Refuge when I escaped, didn’t I?”

“I don’t think I was focusing on names when you were telling me your whole…deal for the first time.”

“Well, guess you shoulda.”

Davey laughed again. It was his turn to reach out and touch Jack’s face, to brush a few remaining flecks of glitter away.

“You hungry?”

“I don’t really get hungry. I’ll eat if you’re cooking, though.”

Jack hung around the apartment until it was time for Davey to go to work, and then he followed Davey to the bookstore. He sat down in one of the big comfy chairs and pulled his sketchbook out of his vest pocket and a pencil from somewhere and started drawing.

Davey wasn’t complaining. It was a quiet day, and Jack’s quiet presence was nice. When he finished his busy work for the day, which was pretty much just making sure everything was as neat as it ever was, he sat in the chair opposite Jack and read while Jack was drawing.

“Jack?” He said after a while.

“Hmm?” Jack didn’t look up from his sketchbook.

“If I asked you out, would you be able to go on a date with me?”

“I’d like that.” Jack glanced up at him and smiled before focusing again.

“No, I mean, if I like, made reservations. Would you be there?”

“Oh.” That seemed to make Jack pause. “I dunno. Probably, I guess, if you were thinking about it.”

“But you don’t show up every time I think about you.”

“Oh, no? You think about me a lot when I’m no around?”

“Maybe.” Davey blushed and Jack lightly kicked him in the shins.

“You’d just have to think extra hard about me. Summon me. Or maybe just start with no reservations and see if that works.”

“Dinner tomorrow, then. At the diner we’ve been to before.”

“It’s a date.”

At some point, somebody came into the shop and needed Davey’s help finding something. Jack had disappeared when Davey made his way back to the front.

Now the question was whether or not he would show up for their date.

The logistics of the whole memory ghost thing were a mystery, clearly even to Jack. He had no idea if Jack was going to show up at the diner tomorrow night or not.

Kind of like the last date he was supposed to go on, only if he got stood up this time it wouldn’t be because the guy was an asshole, it would be because Jack had absolutely no control over when he appeared and when he didn’t.

Falling for Jack was a bad idea, wasn’t it? An awful idea.

Falling in love with a memory ghost, with somebody who had been alive a hundred and twenty years ago, who popped in and out of the world randomly, whose existence was tied to a sketchbook…

That was stupid. Really stupid.

If he paused to think about it, the logistics of it, the emotions of it, how it would work, he knew it was stupid. He was setting himself up to break his own heart, whether it was through Jack one day just not showing up or Jack never aging past twenty-one or some other thing he couldn’t think of right now. It didn’t matter, though, it was stupid.

The thing was, it didn’t matter if he thought it was stupid, he was already attached to Jack.

Kind of stupidly attached, in fact, especially considering they’d only met six times. Barely off of one hand’s worth of fingers, and yet Davey couldn’t stop thinking about him.

Maybe it was just his stupid, romantic soul, but he and Jack had clicked. They fit. There weren’t many people Davey knew who he’d been so comfortable around so quickly, and that had to mean something, right? And Jack clearly felt something, too, or he would have kissed Davey or slept with Davey or said yes to going on a date with Davey, right?

Anyway.

Whatever.

Everything had happened the way it happened and it would continue to happen, and frankly, Davey was tired of overthinking. He liked Jack, and Jack liked him, and they’d figure out the rest when it came up.

This was the first time he’d been able to say that and mean it, too, which also meant something. Probably.

When he told Bill and Darcy that he was going out, they seemed almost too excited for him. They really liked Jack. Bill was delighted to find somebody other than Darcy who actually thought almost all of his jokes were funny.

He was distracted all day in class, wondering if he was going on a date tonight or if he’d be sitting in the diner doing homework alone. He wasn’t nervous, though, which was honestly a first before a date.

He wasn’t surprised that Jack wasn’t there when he got there, and he wasn’t disappointed to order a drink and start doing homework for a while before ordering any food.

He was almost surprised when Jack did appear and slid into the seat across from Davey.

He looked confused.

“Hey.”

“Hiya.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I had to walk. Almost twenty-five blocks. That hasn’t happened before.”

Davey’s instinct was to ask why he hadn’t called. Obviously, not very applicable to Jack.

“Usually,” Jack continued. “When I appear it’s close by. So I figured I was early, but there wasn’t anywhere around where I thought you might be, so I came here. And here you are.”

He smiled at Davey, but he was obviously still bothered by it.

“Maybe you’re like…glitching or something. Because you’ve been out and about so much. You know, like whatever magic or whatever that makes you appear isn’t working right.”

“I don’t feel any different. Just…I dunno. Guess I shouldn’t worry about it too much, I can’t get any more…not real.” Jack shrugged and wiggled like he was physically shaking the bother off of himself. “Anyway. We’re on a date.”

“Yeah. We are.” Davey smiled at Jack.

Like always, it was inexplicably easy to talk to Jack. It was a really nice date, from the first drink to the shared dessert at the end.

Jack was just good at keeping a conversation going. He was sweet, and funny, and adorably awkward, which Davey hadn’t really noticed before. He’d always projected complete confidence, and suddenly he was ducking his head and blushing and he had a positively adorable nervous giggle.

When they were leaving, Jack took Davey’s hand and wouldn’t let go. He squeezed it every few seconds like he couldn’t quite believe he was really holding Davey’s hand. He walked Davey all the way back to his apartment and kissed him like a scene out of a rom-com at the door.

Davey couldn’t wipe the smile off his face.

Dating Jack, as it turned out, was easy. Easy and wonderful. Davey had never had so much fun going on dates before, and never, ever been as enamored with a person as he was with Jack. The more time he spent with him, the more he liked him, and the easier it was to completely ignore the fact that he was a memory.

Jack seemed to forget it, too.

He said that he was around almost every day now, even on days when he didn’t see Davey at all. It clearly confused him, but he just kept shrugging it off like he had on their first date. He spent his days just wandering around the city. Every time he saw Davey, he had some new sight he’d just discovered to talk about like it was the most amazing thing in the world.

Somehow, Davey didn’t think of bringing Jack to a museum for almost two months.

He thought Jack was going to cry while they walked through the MOMA together. For the first time, he didn’t seem to have anything to say. He stared at the paintings and sculptures with a kind of wonder that took over his entire face.

They spent almost four hours there, taking their time in every room. Every once in a while, Jack produced his sketchbook from his vest pocket and sat down to draw something. At first, Davey assumed he was copying the art, but when he sat down next to Jack and watched over his shoulder, he realized he was drawing everything around them. The people looking at the art, the art itself, the building, the way the sunlight came in through the windows by the stairs, the line of people at the door.

Davey's favorite was of a little girl standing in front of a painting, copying the pose she was looking at.

When they finally hit the last room, Davey was surprised when Jack stopped suddenly. For the first time in their entire visit, he was frowning.

“What’s wrong?”

“I…that’s my painting.”

“What?”

Jack dragged him over towards a painting in the corner of the room.

It was beautiful, like most of the artwork they’d seen, a scene full of faces Davey recognized. He still couldn’t put a name to every face in the sketchbook he’d found in the antique store, but he knew them by sight.

There were four kids in the painting, all pretty young, three boys and a girl. They were sitting on a curb, playing a game of jacks. The painting was full of everything that had drawn Davey to the sketchbook in the first place, and now he was positive it was love. Jack loved these kids so much, and every single brush stroke showed it.

The painting didn’t try to pretend that these kids were anything other than poor, anything other than living on the streets. Their clothes were worn, they had smudges of dirt on their faces and scabs on their knees, one of the little boys had a cut lip and another a black eye. But they were smiling. The girl was scooping up the jacks with an expression so vivid Davey could practically hear her taunts about winning. The boys were laughing, the joy of such a simple game taking over their faces completely.

Even if it hadn’t been painted by Jack, by the person standing next to him holding his hand, Davey would have liked the painting. It was just so…human. So real. It didn’t look like a staged scene, it was so obviously a story, one that the artist cared a lot about.

The little plaque next to it gave it a name and a tiny little description.

“That’s my painting.”

The expression on Jack’s face was indescribable. For a second, he reached out like he was going to touch the painting, but seemed to think better of it at the last second. He looked equal parts amazed and insulted.

“They made up that name. Break-time Games. That’s a stupid name.”

“What’s it called, then?”

“I dunno, but that’s a stupid name. I’d call it after Snipes, probably. She won that game.”

“It’s really beautiful, Jacky.”

“It’s not supposed to be here. I gave it to the kids when it was done. Buttons and Romeo were so excited, ‘cause they were almost grown up and this way they’d still be in the lodging house when they left. And Snipes made me write on the back that she won the game; that was the game that won her Rome’s slingshot and she never let him forget it. It was for her birthday.” Jack shook his head, memories obviously welling to the surface. “How come it’s here?”

“Donated by the New York City Historical Society, recovered from the number nine Duane Street Newsboys Lodging House.”

“I always wished I could get into a museum someday. Didn’t think I actually did it.”

Now Jack looked completely overwhelmed. Davey couldn’t name all of the emotions crossing Jack’s face in rapid succession. A few of them, maybe. Pride, excitement, sadness, confusion.

It wasn’t exactly something Davey could understand. For one, he had no idea how it would feel to have something he created end up in a museum. He could see how proud Jack was that he’d created something good enough to end up in a museum.

But something else was also there, and Davey had no idea what it was.

“I died somewhere, Davey,” Jack said quietly after a few more minutes of staring at his painting. “And so did they. I finished living my life, and I don’t remember any of it. I don’t know what happened to any of my kids. I dunno how my life went, or what I did, or if people paid attention to me and my art when I was alive. I don’t know anything about how my life turned out, but it did. It ended. And it doesn’t feel like I’m not me. I’m Jack. I remember growing up and living and my kids and everything up until signing that sketchbook, but some other Jack finished living life. I’m probably buried somewhere, Dave. I can’t…I’m me. And I’m here. So who was the person who finished living my life?”

Jack squeezed Davey’s hand so tight it almost hurt, like he was trying to reassure himself that he was really there, still solid. Davey squeezed back.

“You wanna go, Jacky?” He wasn’t really sure what to say. It wasn’t like Jack was having any kind of normal existential crisis, a kind of moment that Davey could reassure him through.

“Yeah. I think.”

Jack was really quiet on the walk back to Davey’s apartment. The gears turning in his head were practically audible. He kissed Davey like he always did, but Davey could tell that he was still thinking.

“I’ll see you soon, Davey,” he said, squeezing Davey’s hand one more time before walking away.

It took Davey a while to fall asleep. He was worried about Jack. Until the way he’d reacted at the museum, Davey had kind of assumed that he’d made his peace with being whatever it was exactly that he was. And maybe he had been, at least kind of, until such a physical reminder of the life he’d been pulled out of for no reason had been right in front of them.

Davey hadn’t really thought too much about that part of it. When he thought about when Jack was from, it had always been in the context of what that meant now. He’d never really thought about what that meant for Jack’s past. Jack had been cheated out of a life, and seeing him process that in the museum was the first time Davey had really thought too much about it.

Jack was, physically and mentally, anyway, only twenty-one. The same age as Davey. Twenty-one wasn’t long enough to live an entire life, not long enough at all.

When he did fall asleep, he was woken up by knocking on the door to the apartment. He thought he imagined it at first, and once he was awake enough to be sure he’d really heard something, he stayed in bed for a few seconds hoping Bill or Darcy would also hear and one of them would be the one to get up and get the door. They didn’t, though, so Davey was the one who climbed out of bed and blinked his eyes into adjusting to the kitchen light to get the door.

“Jack?”

“Uh…hi. Sorry, I just…I, um, I’m still here, and I don’t really have anywhere else to go…and I didn’t want to keep wandering around, and-“

“Don’t worry about it, Jacky, it’s better to be here than out there.”

“I’ve never…I dunno what’s going on, Davey. Sorry to wake you up.”

“Don’t worry about it, Jacky. Just sleep over.”

Jack seemed embarrassed, wordlessly pulling on the pajama pants Davey gave him and taking off his shirts, and he apologized again when he climbed into bed.

“Jack. I’d rather have you sleep here than walk around the city all night. Don’t worry about it, okay?”

“Okay.”

Davey snuggled into Jack’s side and felt him relax. Like every other time he’d stayed the night, Jack proved to be very cuddly. Once he relaxed, he was wrapped around Davey almost completely.

It was surprisingly comfortable. Jack laughed a little when Davey pushed even closer.

“You really don’t mind me staying, huh?”

“Not one bit.”

“I kept expecting to blink and it be daytime. The next time we were going out or whatever. But I just kept walking.”

“That’s how it works? You just blink and it’s…later?”

“Pretty much. I dunno why it didn’t happen this time.”

“Well. It doesn’t really matter. I’m perfectly happy to have you here.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah.” Davey pressed a kiss onto Jack’s bare shoulder. “I like having you around, you know. I’m not pretending.”

“I know that, I just…I don’t like to feel like I’m…I dunno. Accepting help has never been my strong suit, I guess.”

“I’m glad you came here.”

Jack kissed the top of Davey’s head, and Davey could practically feel the small smile he knew was on Jack’s face.

“Me, too.”

Jack was quiet enough for long enough that Davey started drifting back to sleep.

“Davey?”

“Hmm?”

“I’m glad you found my sketchbook. I’m glad that I’m here. That I’m…now.”

“Me, too, Jacky.”

“I…I love you, Davey.” Jack sounded nervous, like he was scared Davey would react badly.

As if.

“Love you too, Jacky.”

Jack shifted and wrapped his arms tightly around Davey. He sighed and relaxed even more.

Davey woke up with Jack almost completely on top of him. He couldn’t really move with the way Jack was positioned, but he wasn’t exactly mad about it. It was slightly uncomfortable, but that was pretty effectively outweighed by the fact that he was waking up with a sleepy Jack Kelly in his bed.

He’d learned that when Jack was waking up, his Spanish accent came out stronger than usual and he got very affectionate. It was adorable, and Davey’s favorite part of Jack staying over.

He’d learned, when he asked about the accent, that Jack’s parents had been from Mexico, and Spanish was his first language. He put on the Brooklyn accent when he started selling newspapers, trying to match the kids around him, and it had genuinely stuck, but Spanish was what he naturally went back to.

“G’morning, Davey darling,” Jack said slowly.

“Morning, Jacky.”

“Sorry m’ on top of you.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’m pretty comfy.”

“You’re lying.”

Davey laughed, and Jack rolled off of him.

“Only a little.”

Jack laughed and propped his head up on his hand.

Then, without warning, he made a face that looked like he was in sudden pain, and let out a groan.

“What’s wrong? Jack? Are you okay?”

“I’m…I’m starving, Davey, I feel like I’m about to pass out.”

“Let me get you something to eat, then, Jacky, are you sure that’s it?”

“I know what it feels like to be hungry, Davey. Haven’t felt it in a long time, but I know what it feels like, and I’m starving.”

So Davey went to the kitchen and grabbed an entire loaf of bread and a box of Cheerios. And a glass of water, to be considerate.

Bill and Darcy, who were eating breakfast on the couch, gave him a very strange look, and Davey realized they probably hadn’t realized that Jack was here and it just looked like he was having a very strange breakfast alone in his room.

Jack ate like he hadn’t seen food in weeks. He made it through the entire loaf of bread, and probably the equivalent of three bowls of cereal. He didn’t talk until he was done, and then he flopped back onto the bed and stared at the ceiling.

“I haven’t been hungry since 1903. Not once. I’ve eaten, but I’ve never been hungry ‘till now. And I kinda hafta pee, too. I think. Don’t have as clear of a memory of what that feels like, but I’m pretty sure I hafta pee. How come my body is suddenly working right?”

“I dunno, Jack.” Davey sat down next to him and ran his fingers through Jack’s hair. “Something must be changing.”

“But why?”

“Maybe you’re spending so much time here that you’re…sticking.”

“I wanna stay here,” Jack said decisively. “If I could choose, I would stay here. With you.”

“Maybe that’s what’s happening. Why you’ve been showing up when you didn’t expect to and didn’t disappear last night, and why you’re hungry.”

“Don’t forget having to pee.”

“And having to pee. Which you can do at any time, you know where the bathroom is.”

Jack laughed.

“How do we figure out if I…stuck. Landed.”

“I like that way of saying it. Landed.”

“Crashed into your library table and can’t find my way back.”

“Good thing you did.”

Jack closed his eyes like he was going to fall back asleep. After a few minutes, he took a breath like he was going to say something. He looked so concentrated that Davey expected him to say something heartfelt and meaningful like he had at the museum.

“I definitely have to pee.”

Davey pushed at his shoulder, laughing again.

“Then get up and go pee, Jack, don’t wait until you wet the bed.”

Jack sat up, catching Davey’s hand and kissing his palm as he stood.

Davey followed him out of the bedroom, bringing the food back to the kitchen.

“It’s a little bit reassuring to see Jack here. We thought you were just having a breakdown or something when you took all of that food into your room.”

“Breakfast in bed, how romantic.”

“It was very romantic. Nothing like bread and dry cereal to start the day,” Jack said conversationally when he came out of the bathroom.

“Wow, Davey, you need to up your game.”

“Last time Bill made me breakfast in bed it was a four-course meal.”

“Yeah, I remember, because he paid me twenty bucks to clean up after him.”

“And you did it?”

“I used it to buy myself lunch since you two were making so much noise I couldn’t stand to be here anymore.”

Both and Bill and Darcy kind of lost it at that.

Davey had a moment of extreme clarity and realized that he had never been as happy with where his life was than he was at that moment. With Jack as his boyfriend and Bill and Darcy as his best friends, and his family close by, and ready to be done with his junior of college, everything was just where it should be and just where he wanted it to be.

When he looked at Jack, it looked like he was having the same kind of moment. He smiled at Davey and disappeared back to the bedroom to put on a shirt, and when he came back out he pulled Davey over to sit on the couch with him.

There was something decidedly different about him, and Davey couldn’t pinpoint exactly what it was. It wasn’t like he’d ever seemed like a ghost, he’d always been physically solid. He’d always seemed like a normal person.

It was a lazy, cheerful morning. At some point, Darcy started Parks and Rec playing in the background. Both couples were practically sitting in each other’s laps, the small-ish couch giving them the perfect excuse.

Eventually, Bill and Darcy left for a lunch date with some other couple from school, and Jack splayed out across the entire couch, his head in Davey’s lap. He seemed like he’d very quickly gotten invested in Parks and Rec, while Davey was pretty invested in trying to figure out what exactly had changed about Jack that was so obvious but not apparent at all.

After watching Jack laugh at a cold open so hard Davey almost paused the episode to let him process it, it finally clicked.

“Jack?”

“Hmm?”

“Kind of a weird question.”

“What?”

“Have you always…breathed?”

“What?” Jack’s focus shifted from the TV to Davey. “I think…I guess…I have no idea. Have I?”

“I don’t think so. I think that just started.”

“Oh.”

“Jacky, I think you’ve landed. For real. I think you’re stuck.”

“Feels like it. I feel…I feel more…here. Like I fit, now. I dunno, exactly, but something changed last night. When…I think it was when you said you loved me. And then this morning, when we woke up.”

“What does it feel like?”

“I’m not sure. Just…right. Like I’m really solid here, not about to go away.”

Davey pressed his palm into Jack’s chest, feeling the rise and fall of breath that he hadn’t noticed missing before.

“Not about to go away,” he repeated.

“Nah.” Jack suddenly grinned, a familiar spark of humor lighting up his eyes. “I think you’re officially stuck with me, now. Can’t burn the book to get rid of a demon once he’s permanent.”

“Oh, so you’re a demon now?”

“Been waiting for this moment to steal your soul this whole time. Just hadda get you totally in love with me first.”

“And now you steal my soul.”

“Uh-huh.” Jack sat up and pulled Davey towards him by the shirt. “Just like this,” he whispered, and he kissed Davey hard.

Davey laughed, and Jack managed to hold his straight face for a second before laughing, too.

“Soul, gone. You’re all mine, now.”

“And to think I would have been all yours without all that work.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“It didn’t take that much for me to fall in love with you, Jacky.”

“Oh, no?”

“Nope. Pretty sure you got me the first time you kissed me. Maybe even before.”

“Crazy.” Jack smiled. “I didn’t know you had such terrible taste in romance, Davey.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Jack, I have excellent taste in men.”

Jack kissed him again, still smiling.

“If I landed, I need a place to stay. And a job, prolly.”

“Maybe we should take that one step at a time. You know, since the last record of you as a person is from a hundred and twenty years ago. You definitely don’t have a social security number.”

“I don’t even know what that is.”

“Exactly. So just stay here for now. And we’ll figure out the rest. Together.”

“That,” Jack said. “Sounds like a good way to finally get to live the rest of my life. Together.”