Work Text:
Wrong.
As soon as Crutchie Morris first directed his beaming, dimpled smile at him, something in Jack Kelly knew that he was a goner.
From the first fluttering in his chest, the tightness in his throat, the sweat gathering in the groves of his palm, it was over.
And Jack Kelly was terrified.
Because he was wrong.
It's in the soft, quiet moments of the creeping night that he lets himself, if only a little, think about what that might mean.
Love, as his father used to say, was something to be coveted, cherished. The sweet yearning and subtle glances as you worked up the nerves to act on it. All Jack Kelly knew of love was pure and gentle, and so, realistically, that meant what he felt around Crutchie couldn't be love.
And thank God for that, because if he was wrong, Crutchie could never be wrong, so he'd just be wrong alone.
Of course, he reasoned with himself, love shouldn't hurt like this. Love shouldn't need to be hidden or shameful, obviously that can't be love.
It's in the loud, boisterous moments of the roaring newsies that he doesn't let himself think about what it means when his gaze instinctively searches for Crutchie every time a joke is made, desperate to soak up his laughter, locked, lingering on the shine of his eyes for a second too long.
Before he remembers it's wrong.
Before the nagging dread settles in the pit of his stomach and, suddenly, whatever it was wasn't so funny after all. Crutchie's grin morphs into one of concern as Jack's slips somber. And the moment passes.
Hundreds of minutes, pass, passed, passing as Jack tries desperately to make sense of both who he is and how Crutchie fits into that.
He never does manage it, not really.
But it's in the comfortable silence they share, the wordless exchange of comfort as Jack holds Crutchie close to his chest.
In that quick kiss to his blond hair, swiftly ruffled playfully as if that could mask how much it meant to both boys.
It's in the unspoken safety of interlocked, calloused hands, that Jack Kelly feels Right.