Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It had been fine for nearly a year. Better than. The euphoria of the strike had sizzled all the way through autumn, driving David through the first awkward missteps as he got to know the newsies without a looming crisis; through signing the union officially into being, with Jack and David as co-presidents; and through a long, hard transitionary month as their father got back into work and David began going back to school. He was incredibly grateful for the opportunity, but he was months behind and it was increasingly hard to keep up let alone catch up with boys who had tutors, desks, and no need for a job. 

After that, winter had breezed in swift and freezing. But, though they'd gained some newsboys because of it, they hadn’t lost a soul. In fact, David and his family had managed to buy the boys a couple of chickens to cook around the secular New Year, and they'd ended up preparing them in the Lodge House kitchen. David wouldn’t admit it, but he’d watched proudly as the whole lot of them were wrapped up in his parents' warmth, cheered by Sarah's infectious smile and quiet, skillful quips. 

Spring of the new century had brought the most unadulterated playfulness David had felt in years, something Crutchie in particular seemed to take delight in- he'd taken to ambushing David with his crutch, grinning maniacally and succeeding almost every time. That was partly because what Crutchie lacked in comparative speed he more than made up for in cunning, and partly because David kept lingering at street corners and in the mouths of alleys, too caught up in the wafts of fresh air you could sometimes catch on the breeze and the play of genuine sunlight on the grimey bricks, rusted fire escapes and Grecian facades of New York city to pay much attention to anything else. 

Then, the summer came and the elephant chewing its curd messily between Jack and David became unignorable. 

****

"Look," Jack groans, shoving at David's shoulder where he leans against the back wall of Medda's theatre.

His pulse jumps; the thin fabric of his unbuttoned shirt is bunched up under Jack's broad palm and the tips of Jack's fingers press against bare skin.   

"Look, what?" David asks, barely breathing. 

The imprint of Jack's thumb burns straight through the dirt and sweat of a New York summer, so searing it will leave a welt. 

"You need to loosen up."

" Loosen ?" 

"Loosen," Jack confirms with a hearty laugh. The kind of rich, wholesome laugh you'd share around a campfire with a mug of beer, or sat at a table laden with sauce-streaked plates. 

It's like suffocating in incense. 

"If I get any looser, I'll faint," David points out, not untruthfully. They’d spent the whole morning sneaking glances at each other and snorting, giddy with their witless wit. 

Jack's hand retains position, brazen and sure. The other flicks up to his mouth, tongue darting out to whet the shaft of his thumb. Heat rushes to David's cheeks. His toes curl. 

An odd light appears in Jack's expressive eyes; suddenly, David feels very hemmed in. The leather of his satchel strap is worn to a fuzz. 

"Jack…" 

The hand falls from David's shoulder. 

" Davey ," Jack says, rolling his name ponderously, like a detective who might have just discovered a vital clue, "You ain't never had a girl before, have you?"

"No," David whispers, hoping against hope that-

"You ain't-" Jack pauses, steps back, cranes his neck to check up the steps and behind the towering backdrops, "You ain't never wanted one, neither." 

It's not a question. David could protest, lie, rail against the slander. But he can see in Jack's eyes the conclusion is already drawn and framed, just waiting to be exhibited to the world. Silently, David breathes in through his nose and out again. He braces himself against the wall and nods. 

"Right," Jack grits out. Then he winces, and clears his throat. 

Bewilderingly, he also starts to blush. 

"Right," Jack says again, looking anywhere but at David, “Hell.” 

And then he leaves. 

A few moments later, David carefully unties the laces of his left shoe and slams his heel into the brick wall. 

He isn't dreaming, and the particularly profuse curse he chooses isn't entirely about his new graze. 

**** 

He turns up for the evening edition, of course he does, but he doesn’t once look at Jack. 

He feels Jack’s gaze prick the back of his neck, and he shivers in the dry heat. 

****

David sets off to the distribution centre the next day with a noose around his neck and bracing for a punch. Les can tell something’s up, of course, but he can also tell David will either bite his head off or sob in the street if he asks so he keeps his distance, running along a ways ahead and periodically sending David frowning looks so reminiscent of their mother it makes him want to die. About halfway there, during one such look, Les trips over an uneven brick and goes sprawling. 

“ Les ,” David scolds, hustling him over to a stoop so he can assess the damage without either of them being trampled on. 

His knobbly knees are a little scraped but his indignant scowl and impatiently crossed arms suggest he’ll escape otherwise unscathed. Still, David gently tilts his head this way and that. 

“This is your fault,” Les informs him, filled with all the venom a passionate ten-year-old can muster. 

“You’re the one with two left feet,” David corrects, before Les’ words really register. He winces. A sick sort of buzzing has started up in the pit of his stomach, like a swarm of bees. For some reason he’s remembering Sarah’s face last night, eyeing him up and down when he came in pale and tense, too knowing but oddly non-judgmental. 

Two skinny arms wrap around his middle for just a second.

****

“Davey,” Jack grins, hair glowing like a halo in the sun, hale and hearty. David’s heart strains against his ribs.

“I’m gonna borrow Les and Crutchie today, if you’s alright with Race? Ya haven’t been to Sheepshead yet, have you?”

“Not sure my mother would approve of that,” David says, but he goes. 

Race scowls at the both of them and maintains a stoic silence the entire way. The buzz in David’s stomach levels out to a dead quiet. Bits of wool stick to his heel- the graze has opened up again. 

****

In the early afternoon, when they’ve sold as much as they can and are hoarse from yelling over other people yelling about the horses, Race gestures for David to follow and starts climbing the now-vacant stands. 

“Really?” David sighs, as Race proceeds to reach the top and keep going, shifting up the supports and on to the roof. 

He follows, stomach swooping even as he refuses to look down. He's been up many roofs before, what's one more? It's worth it for the view- the world is starkly beautiful up there, and the ocean winks like an eye in the distance. 

Any peace in the moment is lost when Race opens his mouth.

“So, why’s Jack pretending you don’t exist?” 

David tenses. 

“I’d’ve thought he’d tell you.” 

Race simply scowls, like David’s missing cues he didn’t know he was meant to be receiving. A stiff gust of air lightens the sweat on his brow. On the far corner of the roof, a pigeon ruffles its feathers indignantly. 

“Fine,” David sighs, scrubbing a hand over his face, sockets of his eyes aching under the pressure, “What do you think you know?” 

“More ‘an Jack intended, that’s for sure,” Race responds, fishing a cigar from his breast pocket and a lighter from his satchel. A moment later, he cants his head and points the lit end David’s way like a schoolmaster about to give a boy the cane. 

David’s not a disruptive student but he’s an inquisitive one, and savvy enough most teachers assume he must always be up to something. He knows when to quit to escape the whip.  

“Alright,” he sighs, not quite able to stop himself from hanging his head a little, “Fine. But you’ve got to listen to me-”

“-oh, I have, have I?-”

“I'd never touch any of the children. Ever. Or anyone who didn't want me touching them, regardless of age." 

The very thought makes him sick. 

The bright tip of Race’s cigar dips. 

"Well, obviously,” he says, giving David an odd look, "You's got morals."

Then he goes back to smoking, casual as anything and acting like they aren't discussing David's inversion during an afternoon of mild trespassing. 

"Right,” Dave mutters vaguely, thrown, "Good."

Surreptitiously, he scrapes his finger over a nail in the wood. It’s hot from the sun, and cuts smoothly into the textured fibre around it. David isn't having a very off dream. 

"So’ve I," Race adds, lips quirking around the end of his cigar, "Got morals, that is." 

"Yeah, I know," David frowns. 

Then it clicks. 

 " Oh . You-"

"Sure do,” Race laughs, evident foul mood cleared for a moment by his mirth, like lightning through a stormcloud.  

David’s sinuses itch. 

"Huh,” he says, "Well I never." 

Then his eyes start to smart, Race’s elbow is knocking into his, and next thing he knows every little grief he's stacked up in sixteen years- all the shame, all the fear he feels when he pokes at the curl of desire that sits in his chest and seeps out like a stench when he can't control it- is pouring out of him. 

" Shit ," David chokes, face blazing hot under the hands he shields it with.

"Y' don't say," Race murmurs, bewildered, but he loops a sturdy arm around David nonetheless, "Let it out, I guess? Not the reaction I was 'specting."

To his mortification, David only starts to cling to Race like a drowning man grasping at a log. He's probably earning himself a punch later, and he’s not entirely sure Race isn’t building up to punting him off the roof, but he can't bring himself to care. 

"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, David," Race tuts, "I ain't planning a murder. Or ta’ punch ‘ya.” 

"You wouldn't be able to reach anyway," David sobs, syllables all broken but better than admitting that he hadn't meant to say what he did out loud. 

A broad hand swats at his shoulder, but Race continues to hold him, cigar smoke curling delicately past David's ears. He appreciates Race's show of diffidence - it means he truly does care.

And what did David do to deserve friends like that? Because he's never met another invert before but here's Race , Race who's a gentleman at heart but tough as anything, putting it out there like it's nothing. As if it's just another thing he knows about David now, and just another thing that David has found out about Race. 

“I haven’t cried in five years, I swear,” David says when he finally sits up again and gains his breath, abdomen aching like its been pummelled. 

Race rolls his eyes, slouching back onto his elbows. 

“Thanks for sharing, that’s real relevant.” 

David's lip twitches. 

Beside him, Race seems to brighten just that little bit more. As he does so his hand flaps loosely in David's general direction, like he's unspooling a strand of thought towards him. 

"Spot'll be pleased, y'know, if ya tell 'im." 

"Spot?" David echoes, scanning the area as subtly as he can. It’s not that he thinks Spot really does have eyes everywhere, it’s just that Spot is scarily competent and he wouldn’t put it past him. 

"Yeah," Race shrugs, "He looks up to you."

David laughs, "He what?”

"I said what I said," Race drawls, amused, "Don’t go looking for more compliments. Can’t handle you with an ego to match Jack’s, it’d be the end ‘a the Union." 

“Alright,” David snorts, warmed, "I don't mean to pry, but does that mean-" 

"Spot 'n I are stepping out," Race fills in, smirking slyly. 

David takes a moment to picture it. His two friends- if he can call them both friends- don't immediately go together like bread and butter but the more David reflects on it the more it fits. Race, sometimes careworn, always irreverent, and beyond that so very sincere. Spot, who puts on a front as much as Jack but slides much more naturally into the boots of a leader, steady and assured and as quick to quiet mirth as rolling anger. 

"I can see that," David concludes, smiling genuinely.

Race snorts, and says, "I hope not, we're not doing none of that for your pleasurable viewing." 

David flushes, sinking down as much as he dares on the pitched roof. A well-polished shoe- or as well polished a shoe as they can ever manage- lands good naturedly in David's ribs. 

"I meant I'm happy for you both," David groans. 

"And we're happy you's happy for us, Daves," Race responds, and that's that. 

**** 

Having Race on board doesn't solve his Jack problems, though. He can't entirely ignore David, because he has to talk to him for union business and because Les won't let him, breezing straight past any awkwardness and forcing the both of them into small talk and strained jokes. But David doesn't have to be a genius to tell there's a barrier between them. The second Les leaves to play with his friends the words dry out. When they do talk business Jack barely looks at him, offering nothing but squinted glances at a push. Even the small touches that make up a good half of Jack's interactions with others cease, and it's that that hurts the most. Jack will slap Oscar Delancey passive-aggressively on the back after yelling at him for five minutes and he won't even give David a hand up when he trips. 

The others notice. 

Race, for one, seems wholly on David's side, if you could call them sides- he keeps loudly asking him about his day and shaking his hand, glaring at the back of Jack's head as he does so. Crutchie just winces every time he comes across David and Jack interacting, and puts extra effort into being friendly with David when Jack isn't around, kind eyes intent. It's clear he knows what the root of the problem is and David suspects, given the amount of times he stumbles across Crutchie and Jack with their arms crossed and scowls on their faces, that Crutchie doesn't approve of Jack's conduct. As touched as he is, David starts avoiding areas of the Lodging House that aren't obviously occupied. 

Some of the boys react more diffidently, just ignoring that there is an issue or resolutely interacting with both Jack and David as if nothing is wrong. 

Then there are those like Blink and Romeo who don't shun David exactly, but start to act more warily, dampening their enthusiasm when they greet him, following him with watchful eyes as he moves about their space, waiting for…something. David's not sure if they know or if they're just following Jack's cue, but either way it strikes a cord inside him. 

He shrivels with shame and the shame creeps, slowly rotting him from the outside in. Every averted look is a spore quadrupling, every aborted touch another layer of mulch. 

Something has to give. 

**** 

Spot snags him by the elbow after the monthly executive meeting, which just so happens to be hosted by Brooklyn. 

“Yes?” David asks, peering down at Spot but trying not to loom. 

“Come up to the roof,” Spot commands, before vanishing into the small milling crowd. 

“I don’t know where that is,” David points out. No-one’s listening. 

Ten minutes later, he emerges from a stiff, rain-damaged door to find Spot is leaning against the outer stairwell with his thumbs looped round his braces. A small smirk plays at his lips but David is tired and the night is old. He scrubs a hand over his face. 

“Between you and your boy I’ve seen more roofs than I ever care to,” he grumbles. 

“ My boy?” Spot echoes, brow quirking, “How d’yknow I ain’t his boy?” 

“You’re both each other’s boy,” David yawns, an odd mixture of bittersweet feelings sitting heavy in his chest, “That’s how it works.” 

“Well,” Spot removes his cap with a flourish, “if you say so…” 

David shakes his head. The air is thick and cloying, but at least five storeys up it doesn’t smell entirely detestable. 

“I know a guy five blocks away,” Spot announces apropos of nothing. 

“They let you outside?” David quips. 

Spot freezes and David has just enough time to wonder if he really is going to be shoved off a roof before he snorts, sharp and pleased. Underneath all his mixed up feelings, David warms a little. 

“Barrel a’ laughs, you,” Spot teases, slightly mocking, “I’m saying I know a guy as might be willing to take your mind of your boy, if you get my drift. All your moping’s messing with Manhattan and Race’s real mad about it.” 

“My boy,” David echoes pensively. He hasn’t really got time to unpick the tangle of implications Spot’s presented him with but that one phrase catches, pricking at him. His heart flips and shivers like missing a step only to float into a down mattress. He’s always been a self-sufficient kind of a boy, but to be Jack’s in the way Jack has stolen his breath and his thoughts and the rhythm of his heart…

Spot mutters something that David barely catches. He’s too busy cartwheeling, euphoric and sick. 

"I'm in love with him," he whispers, speaking the words as they dawn on him, "I didn't realise we could do that." 

"You can be a real idiot sometimes," Spot informs him, not unkindly. 

David’s lips creep upwards; he’s in love. 

“And you should tell old Cowboy how you feel,” Spot concludes.

The smile drops from his face- but he knows Jack and he knows their friends and he knows himself. He knows Spot’s telling the truth. 

Chapter Text

Knowing, however, is not the same as doing. It takes four more days for David to screw up the courage to pull Jack aside as they return to the Lodging House, after the evening edition so they’re not distracted while trying to earn their keep. Not that David’s at top form- he feels like a coat that’s been soaked and left to dry in a big heap, disjointed and conspicuous. Though they can’t possibly know why, he’s convinced the customers can tell. 

Not to mention that when the door to the side room shuts behind them, Jack flinches like he’s been condemned. The knot of tension in David's gut tightens ever so slightly more; the steady stream of footsteps a wall away sends a twitching down the back of his neck. 

"Flushing, right?" Jack blurts, before David even gets a chance to open his mouth. 

"What?" 

"They was acting suspicious-like, weren't they?" Jack clarifies, rolling his eyes like that's obviously what David dragged him in there to talk about and to suggest that it could be about anything else would be simply ridiculous.

"I didn't notice anything," David says, the words coming out shorter than intended, "Maybe they were just nervous because they're new." 

Frowning, Jack scrubs his chapped knuckles against his chin. 

"I dunno," Jack eventually muses, "They was off somehow. So was you." 

"I've had a lot on my mind," David allows, pulse silently ramping up to the shaky rush of a carriage at full tilt, "Like you." 

"Me?" Jack laughs, pacing backwards with the movement, "What have I-" 

" I’m in love with you."  

"Oh," Jack says, abruptly blank. 

Silence weighs on them. Flakes of green wallpaper have formed a sediment around the skirting boards and dust tickles David’s nose. 

"I’m sure you suspected,” he tries. He feels like he’s stuck under the wheel of a cart.  

"I don't- I-" 

David presses his lips together, bracing himself. A shaft of sunlight cuts between them. Jack finds his words.

"I don't," he says, light as an autumn leaf. 

David’s pulse roars in his ears. 

Jack clears his throat then repeats himself, more firmly this time, brows knit together, "I don't. Love you, that is. Romantically." 

"Alright," David nods.

The little hope he'd harboured scorches as it burns to ash and nothingness. 

Apparently this is obvious. Jack blanches and starts to babble, hands fluttering,  directionless, between them, "You're- You're my friend, you always will be, as long as you'll have me around, but I just-"

"It’s alright," David huffs, forcing himself to look at Jack's face for just a moment, forcing his shoulders to unclench and his tears to stay inside his eyes, "I'm glad we’re friends. Truly.” 

"For real?" Jack presses, brows twitching slightly upwards like he's ready for either yet more shock or sudden joy.

"For real," David confirms. It's only when Jack flinches, ever so slightly, that David realises the scene they've just rehearsed. 

Jack won't be rushing off to tell anyone about it this time. Even if he was a girl, David wouldn't be much to brag about. Not like Katherine. 

David clutches his own elbows, heart thudding in his chest. 

“I’m going to go,” he announces, and is halfway to the door before Jack's strong fingers are gripping the back of his shirt. 

David's eyes slip closed.

"What?" he says, not really a question.

It takes a moment for Jack to respond, and when he does he sounds like he's being put through a mangle.

"We don't gotta mention this, right?" 

"I have to go," is all David can say. He won't make a promise he doesn't know he can keep. 

****

Halfway across the street, Race appears at David's side. One look at David's expression, and his face crumples in sympathy. 

"No?" he whispers.

"No," David confirms, then adds as an afterthought, "He was decent about it." 

For a long moment, Race just regards him with eyes older than they should seem. Then he sighs.

"Get home safe."

David nods, lip quaking too much to speak, and hurries on.

****

Suddenly, he's staring at his door. David barges into the silent apartment with a heaving chest and drying cheeks. Sarah sits on the chair by the bed, back to the window to catch the dying light, absorbed in careful stitches. With a flash in the pan and the abrupt fury of burning mercury David isn’t sad; he’s livid . 

"Why do you sew so much?" he barks. 

Sarah startles; a boxful of bobbins topples off her lap and across the floor in all directions. David stomps on one which bumps into his foot. Slowly, dark eyes wide and watchful like a cornered rabbit, Sarah sets aside her embroidery hoop and stands. 

"Don't step on my threads," she says, then, "Are you drunk?" 

He gapes. Somehow, she must take this for an affirmative; her brow puckers and she pins her lip under her two front teeth. 

"It's Thursday." 

David kicks the bobbin back at her forcefully, "I’m not an idiot, Sarah!" 

"Then you might want to try getting a hold of yourself," Sarah volleys, now truly scowling. 

"What," he scoffs, fighting the urge to kick the dining table, "Am I not allowed to feel ? Not all of us are impervious to negative emotions, you know. We can't all be perfect, pretty little Sarah . Some of us are- Some of us-" 

He shoves the meat of his thumb into his mouth, spinning away from his sister and her frizzing hair and the soft quilt and the neat embroidery. His stomach is sick. 

"Is this who I am now?" he whispers, tongue out of control, "Is this-"

A slight, calloused hand nestles into his hair. Blindly, a little desperately, he circles an arm around Sarah's waist.

"You're not angry at me," Sarah surmises, tone inscrutable apart from a hint of pity. 

"No," David mumbles, cringing from himself, "I’m sorry."

Sarah accepts the apology with a gracious nod. She smells of sweat, cotton, and smog. The hum of the tenement bubbles up around them, stranding them in a pocket of quiet. 

"Are you alright?" she asks in an undertone. 

"Are we alone?" he replies, peeking across at her from the corner of his eye. 

Sarah's lip twitches, wry.

"As we'll ever be." 

"Then, no," David confesses, not even bothering to question if he should, "I'm not. I don't- know who I am, I don't know what I'm doing, I don't know what it will do to all of you. I'm… disappointed and to be honest with you, Sarah, I'm scared. So I'm not doing well, actually." 

Sarah's brow wrinkles and her nose scrunches up like she's found a rotten potato at the bottom of the sack. 

“That is a conundrum.” 

David laughs. It rattles hollowly in his emptied chest. 

Wordlessly, Sarah takes David by the hand and leads him to the bed. It’s a worn old thing almost twice Sarah's age and thus not particularly comfortable, but it’s been a staple of their lives for as long as they’ve been in America and it grounds him in a way he can’t articulate.

"You may be confused but I know one thing," Sarah says, knocking into his shoulder, "And that’s that you're my favourite." 

"Sarah," David huffs, shaking his head. 

"Don't tell Les," she teases, squeezing the hand she hasn’t let go. 

"I appreciate the effort but this is serious, Sarah," he insists, not sure he can put into words how wrong-footed he's felt for going on a month now. How the world tastes different on his tongue and everything looks like it's been shifted just a little to the left. 

"I’m being serious," Sarah answers sternly, "I love you even if you're a mess. And-” 

She drops his hand and knits her own in her lap, worrying at her fingernails. 

“Well, it’s about Jack isn’t it, your mood?” 

“A lot of it, yes.” 

“Then, I, um,” Sarah stops herself again, keen gaze cautious and assessing.

David's throat goes tight.

“Tell me.” 

With a shaky exhale, Sarah steels herself. 

“I think I know how you feel, David. How you really feel." 

For a moment, David doesn't understand. Then the gauzy curtain shifts and in between the woven shadows it casts over Sarah’s pale face David suddenly sees .

" Sarah ,” he whispers, dragging her into a quick, fierce hug, “Who?" 

"It doesn't matter," she sniffs, avoiding his gaze, "She’s not interested, I’m sure.”

“You’re too good for her anyway,” David swears loyally. Privately, he’s never thought any of the boys who have briefly flirted with Sarah have been a promising match either, except maybe (and ironically) Jack. 

Blushing, Sarah swats at his shoulder.  

“Ow,” David says, for show.

“Honestly,” Sarah huffs, lip twitching.

"Needlework helps," she adds.

"What?"

"You asked so kindly why I sew so much," Sarah reminds him, amused, "That's why. It helps me think. Keeps me on an even keel." 

"That's nice," David decides, nodding.

"It is."

A comfortable quiet settles over them. David lets the conversation settle, slotting it in alongside everything else he's learnt this summer. There are still bobbins all over the floor. Jack doesn’t love him back. David has gained another reason to worry about his loved ones' safety. But, for the moment, he looks at his hands on the bedspread his mother made to keep them warm in winter and chooses not to be afraid. 

He grins.

"'Least Les seems like he's normal."

"Woe is us," Sarah jokes, eyes dancing, "Did he ever tell you how his little date went? He won’t say a word to me, he keeps insisting it’s," her hands go to her hips and she deepens her voice, " men’s business. "

David flops down onto his back and throws his arms over his face, snorting like a pig. 

"Well, then I can't possibly betray his confidence, can I? Although someone whose name may or may not rhyme with 'mace' did let slip that Les was quite shocked at the price of tickets to the magic lantern show." 

****

In the days following David's confession, or more accurately Jack's rejection, the tension starts to ebb away. At first Jack’s smile still collapses every other time he says hello, and the cinch in David's chest remains like an overwelcome guest, but by the time the summer holiday has dwindled to its last dregs it almost feels like they’ve got their rhythm back, pushing and pulling, teasing and reassuring. And it's not just Jack. Like some signal has been made, the dance begins again across Manhattan. Staccato backslaps, an allegro stretch into David's space, melodies and countermelodies as he's once more drawn into the others' conversations and jokes. Blink tosses him a bread roll one morning with an embarrassed scowl which begs him not to mention it, and Romeo flicks a piece of gravel at a messenger boy who shoulder checks David on their way towards the square. Gratitude presses forcefully against David's ribs, and he quashes with equal vigour the bitter thought that they might not make peace so easily if they knew exactly what kind of conflict Jack and David had put to bed. 

Tentatively, David's broken heart starts scabbing over. 

****

But of course peace doesn't last for very long. 

Chapter Text

The first blow comes in a manila envelope. It arrives in the evening post and David only opens it after dinner, when Les is supposed to be sleeping and the rest of the family are lingering around the table together. The moment the ‘v’ of paper keeping the missive inside pops open, David sort of regrets that he ever touched it.

It's a request to meet the principal of his school- the coming morning. 

David recites the letter’s contents into an uncomfortable quiet. 

"What if we'd had plans?" his father asks, twiddling his moustache irritably.

David scoffs.

"We don't get to have plans. And it's not us - just me." 

"I don't like that," his mother mutters, brow pinched.

"He's a big boy," Papa says, though his fingers drum on the chipped tabletop. 

Mama nods and shuffles her chair closer to David’s so she can peck him on the cheek. He accepts the indignity with his usual aplomb (and perhaps a little gratitude). 

"Yes, and very capable, but-"

"It's alright," David sighs, squeezing her forearm, "I can go. Just have to miss a morning's selling."

He twists in his chair, which creaks in protest. 

"Hey, Les!" 

" David," Papa scolds. 

Les' face appears around the bedroom door, "Whadda ya want?"

David rolls his eyes.

"Tell the others something's come up tomorrow. I can't sell in the morning." 

"What?" Mama startles, swatting at David lightly, "David, you have to go with him, he can't-"

"He can manage, Mama," Sarah interjects, sharing a brief look with David. Mama has what she calls bouts sometimes, and when she’s in the throws of one she can fret for America. Nothing really stops them when they’ve started until Mama comes out the other end, but they’ve found quiet logic sometimes helps. 

"It's only a few streets, and his friends will look after him,” Sarah continues, “He’s used to selling by now, and there isn’t even a strike on." 

Mama shakes her head.

“I know,” she admits, begrudgingly, “But he’s had David before.”

The bedroom door slams; Les barrels into the room, whipped up in indignation. 

“I sell just fine! Jack says so! And Race!” 

Papa bites his lip, turning away slightly to hide his mirth. An answering smile swells up in David’s chest, only amplified by the sight of Les being quietly scolded.

"Boys younger than Les manage all on their own," Papa points out, when he’s got his voice in order.

"They shouldn't have to," Mama retorts, straightening up. 

"No-one's saying they should," David corrects gently, trying not to be irked, "But they do. And the boys all keep an eye out for each other. Les has sold without me before." 

"And I'm really nearly ten this time!" Les adds, not necessarily helping his case. 

Both Sarah and David snort. 

"I am ," Les pouts. 

Mama almost looks convinced, or at least willing to admit defeat. 

David delivers the final blow: "You let Sarah and I walk two miles to school through dark fields when I was Les' age."

"Fields," Mama sniffs, but concedes, "I suppose he does know the streets. And the other boys can help him if he gets in trouble." 

"That’s very true," Sarah giggles, "We hadn't thought of that."

Mama swats at her lightly, too.  

****

It feels odd to be donning his uniform again. The cap doesn’t sit quite right, well-worn but not moulded by time to the contours of his head as his usual one is, and the starched collar is faintly musty from its storage box. David catches himself in the mottled mirror, which was shoved up against the wall beside the dresser to make room one day several years ago and never moved since, and winces.  

“You know, your school may be fancier than mine,” Les observes, pulling on his own jacket, “But you look ridiculous.”

David flicks Les in the head, and then they’re off. Les spends the entirety of their shared walk speculating over what dire punishment (piranhas) or great reward (a secret medal and a hundred dollars’ worth of penny candies) the morning might have in store. David spends the entirety of their shared walk quiet, dread rising up in him like smoke. He has an inkling, and he has been struggling of late. 

The brothers come to a stop in front of the school gates, David because it would be fruitless to dally any longer, and Les because David snags the strap of his satchel and drags him back. 

“What?” Les squarks. 

When he looks up, Les’ brows pucker. 

“What?” Les repeats, hushed. Not for the first time, David thinks to himself that eventually Les will be as good at reading people as Jack. 

“I might not be able to go back to school after this meeting,” David says. There’s no point beating about the bush, and David doesn’t feel quite right letting Les trot off with no grasp of the severity of the situation. 

Les frowns belligerently, but lets David continue.  

“I’m not sure what will change if that happens, but we’ll work something out. It’ll be alright,” David reiterates, catching Les’ eye, “I just thought you should know in case for some reason I miss the evening edition- I don’t want you to get home to everyone upset with no warning.” 

“I’m not a baby ,” Les scoffs, flushing. 

“Neither am I,” David agrees, rolling his eyes; teach him to be nice, “You can prove you aren’t by getting to the square on time, and then not telling the others what I’m doing.” 

And with that, Les scampers off. 

“ Children ,” David huffs. 

He reaches for the gate; as if the city itself is echoing the feeling in his chest, a cascade of tin lids and bottles thunders out of the opposite alley. Jerking like he’s been stabbed by a hot poker, David whips around. Whichever stray cat caused the ruckus is gone, and an old woman in a ratty straw hat is tottering over to pick it all up. Wincing, pocket-watch burning in his palm, David pushes the school gate open and walks inside. 

****

His fears are founded. A lot of his fears seem to be founded, lately. 

"I am sorry," the principal says, and he even sounds it, "But I must retire and the school cannot be seen to foster libertines and radicals."

David winces a beat too late. He's watching from outside himself: the principal, wizened enough David could believe he'd witnessed the first ships land in Jamestown, delivering the news with his hands folded and his shoulders stooped; the desk, varnish reflecting little pools of morning light, placid amidst the upheaval around it; and David, limp against the spindly back of the opposite chair, wan as his hopes are crushed for the second time in as many months. 

Broiling underneath the shock is smouldering indignation. 

"It's been a year," David points out neutrally, "And you're only mentioning it now. Sir."

"Yes," the principal sighs, "Some of your masters did advocate to allow you to complete your advanced diploma, and as I said, I would not renege on my sponsorship of you as long as you maintained an admirable academic record and I remained in my post."

David nods. The scholarship offer had been exceptionally generous, and it's the only way David could ever have managed to get so much schooling. Especially so much good schooling. 

"You have maintained a good record, and you're to be especially commended on it given your circumstances, but in the recent summer examinations your results were not as exceptional as we have come to expect and your notoriety in your… occupation appears only to be increasing. There seems to the board to be no reason not to confer your standard diploma prior to the start of the new academic year, and in fact many felt that waiving the requirement for contiguous study could only be beneficial to both parties.”

In other words, David thinks, in a voice suspiciously reminiscent of Jack’s, take the diploma if you insist, and just go. 

“Of course,” the principal continues, full of professorial bluster, “We will provide all of the standard references and records to your future employer, but you must understand that our relationship with you was conditional. Leadership and proactivity are assets we encourage in our students on the whole, but we cannot be seen to be politically motivated or to be encouraging an… activity which we as an institution do not endorse." 

“I’m being kicked out because I’m in a union,” David summarises dully.

He curls his hands over his knees to keep still.  

“Not in quite those terms,” the principal demures, though his nostrils flare. 

“It isn’t because of your religious persuasion, either, for the record.” 

The fabric of David’s trousers resists his nails valiantly. 

“ Thanks ,” he bites. 

The principal’s cane hits the side of his desk like a gavel, and David presses his lips together to stem the kind of torrent he’s become comfortable unleashing.

Something sparks in the principal’s gaze, eyes keen under the ashy forests of his eyebrows. David is uncomfortably reminded of Joseph Pulitzer's office, though the principal is not nearly as grand a man nor as invested in David's defeat. In fact, David is inclined to think that the principal is genuinely saddened by the turn of events. After all, David was only ever given a place at the school because Papa sent letters of enquiry to every institution their side of the river enquiring if they had room for a promising boy, and the principal took a gamble on that promise. 

"Your exit was contentious,” the principal informs David, censorious and significant in equal measure, “Many felt you could be better helped by keeping you on. Not to mention that your situation is, albeit not without precedent, highly irregular in its specifics. Discussions were prolonged past the usual point. The legality and legitimacy of the decision were roundly debated." 

"They wanted to keep you on," the principal reiterates, "Ponder that. You are dismissed." 

For all that the summer has acquainted David with the intimacies of emotions he didn’t know existed before, it would be fruitless for him to even attempt to light on one singular reaction to that. 

He leaves, shedding his school cap the second he’s out of the gate.

****

As he wends his way towards the square, idly keeping an eye out for Les, David bumps into Boots. Literally. 

“Sorry,” David huffs, bending to help Boots gather up his fallen papers before they get trampled on. 

“So long as you’re not stealing them,” the younger boy teases, grinning easily, “School stuff going on?”

“Pardon?” 

Tongue poking out cheekily, Boots gestures to David’s breast pocket, where the cap with its embroidered insignia pokes out. 

“Oh,” David laughs faintly, “Something like that.” 

With a click of his tongue, Boots says, “Well, don’t you go forgetting us when you’re gone.”

David isn’t actually entirely sure if he’s joking or not. It’s hard to tell sometimes, not only with Boots but with the others too, especially in mid-morning when the stubborn papers refuse to shift and the prospect of the unscalable wall known as the rest of the day blurs the line between sincerity and insanity. 

Just as David is about to open his mouth, Boots frowns and darts sideways, lifting up onto the balls of his feet.

“What?” David demands, whipping around.

“I thought I —” 

Boots frowns, then shakes his head. 

“Nah, forget it. Musta’ just been some guy.”

David grinds his teeth. 

“Boots, if someone’s bo-” 

“It’s fine,” Boots interrupts sharply, settling back into his selling spot between a fire hydrant and a lampost, “You’re worse than Jack.” 

“But what did you-”

With a long-suffering sigh which seems to have been drawn up all the way from his toes, Boots explains, “Thought I saw someone who shouldn’t be around these parts. Reckon I was wrong though. Don't need to go all mama bear.” 

“Alright,” David concedes, not really believing it’s nothing but too taut to labour the point if Boots isn’t letting David in. 

Somewhere far off a clock chimes the half hour. David forages in his pocket for a coin.

 “Sell me a pape before I go?” 

“If you insist,” Boots smirks, annoyance forgotten. 

David flips the coin into the air. Boots catches it easily and slips it into the leather pouch under his armpit.

He nods at the paper as David takes it, “Plumber’s got a piece on page six.” 

David flips through to it as he walks. Katherine’s piece isn’t long, but it’s something, and it’s about real news- a policeman who’d been storing witness statements in a wooden box by the station fire and burnt five cases’ worth of valuable evidence because of it.

David doesn't take charity. But perhaps, he thinks, tracing Katherine's byline on the page, asking for a friend to point him in the right direction isn't such a crime. Hadn't Boots just done that very same thing, albeit inadvertently? 

Silently voting in agreement, David's feet take him over to The Sun. 

****

Katherine grins the second she sees him lurking outside the building’s main door, and the tension in David’s shoulders eases just a little. He’d been wary of her at first, he’d admit, not quite trusting her intentions, but she’s more than proved herself since. Skirts swinging in a parade of wide stripes and flashes of fine petticoat, Katherine hurries over. The little exclamation mark in his heart as she kisses his cheek in greeting is testimony enough to how far their relationship has come. 

“My second-favourite Jacobs, come to visit me,” she teases, blushing as David returns her greeting. 

David huffs, offering a crooked arm.

“Second favourite? I lose out to my little brother?” 

“No,” Katherine corrects, sending a waft of lavender David’s way as she accepts his arm, “To your sister.” 

David gapes.

“So far as I remember you’ve only met Sarah five times!” 

“And what an impression she made,” Katherine replies, smiling softly. 

Perhaps too softly. A second later her mouth widens to an ‘o’ and her stride falters, though she soon recovers an affable mask. 

“To what do I owe the pleasure?” she asks, gaze sweeping over David assessingly, “I thought you would’ve been selling today. Making the most of it before school.” 

“Well, that’s just it,” David explains, thanking his lucky stars Katherine has a reporter’s bluntness, “I’m not going.” 

“Oh!” Katherine exclaims, hand going to her mouth and tugging David’s arm with it. He stumbles into her and they totter for a moment, apparently much to the amusement of a passing businessman if the half-muffled snickers floating down the street are anything to go by. 

“Could you be shocked with the other hand,” David grouses, although he can’t suppress an embarrassed smile himself. 

“Sorry,” Katherine snickers, “I just- Well, am .”

“As am I,” David agrees grimly. 

They start walking again, Katherine leading now. David is glad because he doesn’t know these well-appointed streets lined with bookshops and cafes; they’re Specs’ and Albert’s selling ground. 

“I just found out this morning,” he continues, “Had a meeting with the principal. He said they made the decision late because it was a hard one, but…” 

“It’s disrespectful,” Katherine frowns. 

“Yeah.” 

“And if they’d agreed to- That’s to say if they wanted,” Katherine lowers her voice awkwardly, glancing around like she’s about to confess to a murder, “Money, or-” 

“No,” David flushes, “It wasn’t the money. Or, not entirely. I mean he said I hadn’t been excelling enough to continue with the scholarship, which-”

“Is a load of trash if I’ve ever heard it!” Katherine interjects indignantly, “You caught up with everything you missed!” 

“Yes, but I didn’t overtake, did I?” David points out dryly, though Katherine’s righteousness on his behalf is fortifying. 

“No, it was the union.” 

“The union ,” Katherine hisses, “They expelled you because you were-” 

“A libertine and a radical, I believe,” David supplies, unable to entirely tame his seething sarcasm. 

“And you want me to run a piece on it,” Katherine nods, expression blazing. She’s squeezing David’s arm hard enough to bruise. 

“No,” David replies on instinct, “No, it’ll make things worse. Or, maybe. But not now. Now, I- I need advice,” he admits. 

“Advice?” Katherine echoes. 

David winces. He’d been hoping irrationally that Katherine would just get it, that he wouldn’t have to voice the unfortunate truth underpinning the trajectory of his life, but it seems he’ll be forced to submit to the discomfort. With a gentle tap on Katherine’s forearm, David directs them to the mouth of an alley, out of the way of the stream of lunchtime traffic. 

“Promise you won’t think badly of them,” David asks, dropping Katherine’s arm so they can face each other. 

A small pucker appears in between Katherine’s brows, but nonetheless she nods. 

“My family have bet a lot on me,” he explains, “A lot on my intelligence, anyway. Part of the reason we moved here in the first place was that Papa heard anyone could make it if they were smart. Sarah’s smart, but she’s a woman and we’re not rich enough to get her an education that she only might be able to use.”  

Katherine winces. David grimaces sympathetically but he can’t really afford to stop to allay Katherine’s guilt. David’s skin is crawling, laying out their circumstances as he is, even to a dear friend.

“Les is smart, but he’s people-smart and no academic. We don't expect him to be in school past fourteen, as much as we’d like him to be, unless…” David trailed off significantly, gesturing to the air. 

“You,” Katherine summarises, a little lost and a lot pained. 

“I can still get a better job than Papa, I reckon. Definitely better than his new job. He used to be a foreman,” David adds by way of explanation, “I can certainly do better than Sarah, being a man and all. Unfortunately. But-” 

David stumbles, unwilling to speak into reality what he knows to be true. Ultimately, though, he has to face it. 

“University is definitely a dead dream now, if it ever was alive. And if any of the teachers mention radicalism in my references, then that’s clerical work gone too. So either I need someone willing to see the diploma and ignore the rest, or I’m into a factory and the moment Papa’s arm gives in again my parents are destitute and Les’ opportunities are lost too. And I can’t do that to them,” David stresses, scraping his nails through his hair, “I can’t. I need options. And my family won’t care if I tell them I’m out and I have no idea what to do, but I will. I can’t do that to them. Because sometimes I think only Sarah and I know how the world really works and I —”

The starched fabric rounding out Katherine’s chest crinkles as she drags him into a surprisingly strong hug. Tide of anxieties stemmed for a moment, David breathes. The alley doesn’t exactly smell like a rose garden but the action calms him slightly.  

“You can count on me,” Katherine vows as she releases him, looking for all the world like she’s about to command an army. 

“You don’t have to make anything happen,” David hastens to say, panic of another kind seizing him, “I don’t want you to give me any unfair advantage. I couldn’t look the boys in the eye if you did.” 

In a lapse of her usual dignity which David would be much more amused by in another circumstance, Katherine makes a noise like an affronted horse, the modest smattering of flowers on her hat wagging with the movement of her head. 

“I’m not giving anyone an unfair advantage. I’m helping an opportunity reach someone worthy of it.” 

“If it’s only me, then-” 

“Do you want help or not?” Katherine demands. 

David shuts his mouth and nods tightly. 

“Then I’m going to help you,” Katherine declares, catching David’s hand in hers briefly, “And any of the boys who need it. Does Jack have plans?” 

“Jack?” David echoes.

“If anyone, he’d have told you,” Katherine insists, only a faint tint of regret in her tone, “Or perhaps Crutchie.” 

For his part, David’s voice is a little strangled when he says, “Not me.” 

Surprise flickers over Katherine’s features like a candle guttering in a draft. David’s getting déjà vu .

“Race,” he blurts.

“Oh?” 

“He’s good with numbers,” David explains, “If you know anyone looking for that.”

Katherine bites her lip, nodding pensively. She drifts up against the wall, then jerks back when, David can only assume, something slimy touches her back. David covers his mouth with his hand, but the joke’s on him because he nearly gets run over the second they turn out of the alley. 

“C’mon,” he sighs, turning to escort Katherine back to the office.

****

Les’ shoulders slump the second he clocks David’s approach, though he does an admirable job controlling his reaction otherwise. Even so, Jack’s eyes linger on David when he thinks he doesn’t notice. A tiny voice in some dark crevice of David’s heart wonders if Jack would still care if he knew David was no longer anything special, but he quashes it fiercely. 

“Union meeting tomorrow,” Jack calls later, lingering on the Lodging House steps as the Jacobs turn for home. 

“Woodside,” David confirms, lance in his heart.

More painful still is the dignity with which his parents and Sarah accept the news that he won’t be returning to school on Monday. The less said of that the better. 

Chapter Text

The lodgings’ door swings closed with a muted, reproachful thud . 

Quiet reigns. Jack’s heavy heart continues its slow march somewhere inside his chest. The seconds tick endlessly on. And not one thing seems any less complicated than it was before. 

“What now?” 

Jack opens his eyes — not that he noticed he’d closed them — to confirm that it’s Crutchie speaking, leaning heavily on his good leg at the foot of the stairs and frowning more in annoyance than concern.

“Nothin’.”

“ Nothin’ ,” Crutchie echoes, unimpressed. 

Jack rolls his shoulders, a futile manoeuvre against the vice of tension at the base of his neck. 

“‘M worried. ‘Bout Davey and them,” Jack clarifies, “He don’t miss selling for no reason, ‘specially with school coming up.” 

Crutchie frowns pensively, brows scrunched together slightly unevenly. Jack’s fairly certain it’s a quirk he’s picked up from Race, which probably suggests they all need to spend less time together. Jack isn’t sure how to feel about that.

Deliberate gait pricking at the soft corners of Jack’s heart, Crutchie moves further into the room. 

“Les didn’t seem too worried this morning.” 

“Yeah,” Jack admits, moving to meet him in the middle as subtly as he can, “But he was this evenin’. There was — I dunno, there was somethin’ in his face when Davey came back. And Davey, he —” 

Jack cuts himself off as the door opens behind him and Finch strolls in, whistling merrily. 

Jack glares at him. Finch scowls back and whistles harder, gliding into a two-step across the flagstones. Sadly, he’s turned the corner before Jack thinks to give him the finger. 

“Maybe we should take this t’ the courtyard,” Crutchie suggests, giving Jack a pointed look. 

Jack bristles, but moves for the door at the back of the foyer. ‘Courtyard’ is a grandiose term for the scrubby rectangle of gravel between their humble abode and the milliners next-door but somehow the name has stuck. 

A few paces away from the foyer door is the kitchen door. Technically they’re not allowed in there, but Klopman can’t have eyes everywhere; Jack darts past the bins and peers through the keyhole to confirm it’s empty. Satisfied, and breathing shallowly from the ripe stench, Jack turns to find Crutchie dragging a broken washtub against next door’s wall. He lowers himself down slowly. Jack almost offers him a hand, but by now he’s learnt to recognise the slant of Crutchie’s lips which screams don’t even try it clearer than words can say. 

Still, as he settles down on the ground beside him, Jack mutters a token, “Ain’t a crime to need a hand.”

“Shut it,” Crutchie retorts shortly, “We’s talking ‘bout you, here.” 

“Thought we was talking ‘bout Davey ,” Jack grumbles, digging his chin into the palm of his hand. 

It's not that Crutchie hasn't been short with him before. Hell, Crutchie's been short with all of them. God knows not even a saint could live a newsie’s life without a few off days, let alone the life of a newsie made to bear on top of everything else the blunt, unpredictable pain polio dealt to Charlie Morris. So Jack understands — Crutchie has little patience left for Jack’s strange moods of late but is trying to find some anyway. He appreciates it more than he can put into words. But it doesn’t make Crutchie's displeasure feel any less like falling off the Brooklyn Bridge.

“Yeah," Crutchie says, "We're talking 'bout Davey. But we ain’t gonna get nowhere if we don’t talk about you and Davey, right?” 

“Maybe,” Jack mutters, "Jeez, what d’ya want me to say?” 

“Oh, I don’t know,” Crutchie muses, hands pushing roughly through his hair so it sticks on end in exactly the way Jack knows he hates, “Maybe start with the truth.”

Jack’s stomach clenches. 

“You ain’t gonna like the truth,” he bargains.  

“Jack,” Crutchie groans, “ Please .”

Jack almost resists. Almost actually succeeds for once in doing what he knows is good for him. Yet…

“Fine! Fine, you wanna know the truth about Davey? I'll tell you." 

He pauses. 

In all the time it takes Jack to inhale, Crutchie is shoving at him.

"Go on!"

"Jesus," Jack huffs, “I'm getting there."

"Then-"

"I regret I ever met him!" 

It bursts out of him like a cannonball. There’s a beat of silence. For a brief sliver of time Jack’s convinced Crutchie’s simply going to nod sympathetically, or give him some sort of reassuring platitude, or even agree. 

Instead, he fairly cackles. 

“Davey? You — you — regret you met Davey ?” 

"That’s what I said, ain’t it?" Jack snaps, heels reflexively digging into the cool gravel under the sun-warmed surface, "Things was different before."

"Things was worse ," Crutchie counters, appalled. 

Jack scowls so hard his forehead hurts.

"I'm telling ya, they was better ." 

"I-" Jack stutters, searching the bricks for clarity, "I knew who Jack damn Kelly was for one."

Like a scene from some anxious nightmare, Crutchie’s lip curls in disdain. 

“Yeah, well as much as you’s acting like it, you ain’t the centre of the universe. We wouldn’t’a lasted five minutes in the strike without Davey and you know it.”

"Now that ain't true. We had the right idea right from the start." 

Crutchie’s shaking his head before Jack’s finished speaking. 

" You did. And you didn't have the words to say it. Davey told you that himself, and you ain't never said a thing against it before. Without Davey we woulda put up a good fight, but we wouldn't'a won. 'Cos it was him that got through your thick skull when you stopped listenin' to us ." 

A piece of skin is loose at the base of Jack’s thumb. He worries it.

Crutchie's accent always comes out stronger when he's upset. 

"As for you knowing Jack Kelly," Crutchie continues, forcefully, “In retrospect I ain't so sure you ever did."

" Retrospect ," Jack scoffs, lip wobbling,"You's picking up words from him."

"I knew that from before. 'Pape's got a whole feature with the title. Christ O'Reily ,” Crutchie half-growls, “For a man who's pretty smart you're as stupid as I am lame." 

"You ain't lame. You's got one leg working."

A beat later, Jack realises what he’s said.

“Crutch, I —”

" Gee ,” Crutchie spits, burning through Jack like acid, “Thanks. A whole leg ." 

And he moves to leave. And he moves to leave with a white-knuckled grip on his crutch Jack’s only seen maybe four times before. 

Jack’s up on his knees in a second, stumbling over himself, “ I didn’t mean nothing by it, I’m sorry, don’t —!”

Leave , Jack doesn’t finish. As the panic ebbs the shame rolls in, cold and stiff as a breeze. He’s a shit friend, is Jack Kelly, when it really matters. He sinks back to the ground.

For a torturous moment, his brother simply sneers at him. Then Crutchie's lip wobbles, and he clenches his jaw, and his nostrils flare, and he looks away for a heartbeat, then another, and another, and another until finally he turns back to Jack with something closer to pity than disgust in his eyes. 

“Have a little faith,” he says curtly.

Nonetheless, he resumes his seat on the old washtub and releases a little of the pressure on Jack’s heart. 

“I’m sorry,” Jack whispers to his knees, “I don’t…” 

A hand settles on Jack's shoulder, silencing him.

"I know. You were shooting from the hip. Mighta been funny in different circumstances, if I was in the mood for it. Doesn’t mean it weren’t hurtful today.”

Silent incase he screams, Jack nods.

“I love you."

Jack startles. 

"I know we don't say that," Crutchie concedes, a little rueful, "But it's true. You're my brother. I don't wanna watch you suffer. I trust you. And I'm saying what you're doing -- hell, what you and Davey are doing -- it’s gotta stop. And you gotta be honest with yourself. And…and it ain't just you that your lying's hurting, but you didn't hear that from me." 

"Ain't just me?" Jack echoes, muted, after the meaning has settled in, " Lyin' ?"

Crutchie ducks down to catch Jack's eye and squeezes his shoulder, just the same as he did when they stumbled into the Lodging House all those years ago, on the day fate bound them together. 

Back when Crutchie towered over him. Back when Jack thought his dad was coming to get him, soon. Back when they were just two lost kids who didn't yet fit in.

They fit in now. Maybe that's the most terrifying thought: that the untravelled path will burrow straight through the centre of Jack's foundations and bring it all crashing down. Just when he's really admitted to himself that he does, after all, have quite a lot to lose.

"If I was… lying , you'd think a' me differently."

 “Never," Crutchie swears, so sure of himself. 

"You would," Jack sniffs, "You wouldn't be able to help it."

"I could " Crutchie swears, jostling Jack, "I would. I don't think of Dave differently at all." 

“Davey?”

Crutchie nods. Jack’s teeth grind.

"I told him we ain't gotta mention it."

"He agree t’ that?"

Jack feels himself pale, like paint pouring out of a can. 

Crutchie sighs, retracting his hand — but not before mussing up Jack’s hair.

"Look, he ain't said a word to me. But I've got eyes. I knew before you came back from selling that day suddenly acting like Davey don't exist, and I knew before you confirmed it all by being 'bout as cryptic as a billboard ." 

Jack blinks.

"Oh. You knew even then?"

" Yes ," Crutchie groans, burying his face in his hands, "Jackie, you're killing me. D'ya even listen when I talk?" 

"I do ," Jack protests, flushing, "I listen! It's just-"

"The mere thought of Davey gets you lobotomised." 

" Hey ." 

Entirely unrepentant, Crutchie shrugs.

Jack groans, scraping his nails through his hair like he can dig out his feelings along with the dandruff and soot. 

"Look, will you just leave it alone? You’s got eyes, and you clocked Davey from a mile off. It just proves there ain't a way in the world to, to hide that for good. Look what happened to that Wilde guy, and he had real money. Real connections and all that shit. No, " Jack huffs, dissipating the last of their levity with the force of it, "It ain't worth it." 

Out of the corner of his eye, Jack catches Crutchie's hand clenching and unclenching in his lap.

"Not even for Davey?" Crutchie presses quietly, leaning in, "He makes you happy, don't he?"

Jack screws his eyes closed so tightly he sees spots. He exhales, blinks the world back from blaze of light to setting dusk. 

"Yeah. Dave's a real good guy. A real friend. And what’s that matter? Gonna make me a happy corpse when I get my head bashed in?" 

"Sorry," Jack continues, trying to soothe Crutchie's stricken expression, "I ain't a fool, I've learned my lesson, I ain't gonna be saying farewell to Davey any time soon. But I ain't gonna be in- I'll find a girl. This'll all blow over. You'll see." 

Crutchie just shakes his head, despairing. A frayed silence stretches between them, and Jack's on the verge of fleeing to the roof when Crutchie breaks it: "I wouldn't think you were…y'know. If I didn't know you. It's not all lost. It doesn't have to be." 

" Crutch . I ain't like that."

"You-"

"I ain't like that. And,” Jack adds, heart flying like the bulls are bearing down on him right that very second, “And even if I was it's not like he ain’t got no better options, so there would be no point doing nothing about it anyway. So…there."

But Crutchie’s determined, sensing Jack's strange disequilibrium and seizing on it like a dog sinking its jaws into a rabbit's neck.  

"Davey wants you,” he insists, “Even after all the shit you've put him through. If that ain't true love, then —"

" True love ? He ain't never had a proper friend before 's all. He’s - he's confused. He don't know what he's feeling."

Blood swells to Jack's cheeks, red hot, and his insides feel like tracks rattling under an express train.

In a move which he definitely learnt from Jack, Crutchie doesn’t dignify his poor excuse with a response.  

Pressing a palm to his flying heart, Jack admits defeat. 

" Okay. He is. ‘Least he sure seemed to think so when he told me."

Crutchie's brows shoot up. Jack's hand drops from his chest to swat the air.

"And I ain't treated him right, fine. I dunno what the goddam else I was supposed to do, but fine. I regret it," he winces, " I do. It don't exactly feel good, hurting him. But he changed things. And they're all messed up now. And he won't tell me what's wrong. And I can't help him if he don't tell me what's wrong." 

Jack does not appreciate the shrewd look Crutchie shoots his way. Guilt nips at him, like the cousin of hunger pangs.

"Yeah, I'm hearing it when I'm saying it." 

"Do-" 

The kitchen door slams open. They both jump, and Jack's hands are halfway to his face before he regains control and shoves them between his thighs. JoJo stands in the doorway staring at them for a solid ten seconds before he turns on his heel and stomps back in again, calling into the depths of the Lodge House as he goes, "They're fucking in the courtyard!"

"Say, Jack," Crutchie muses, "You think someone might be looking for us?" 

Jack sighs deeply, and stands. Crutchie catches his arm. 

"What do you think's wrong with Davey?"

Jack had almost forgotten that's what they originally came out there to talk about. 

"I dunno, but it's something…"

Bad , Jack fears to say.

He wrings his hands out, jittery. 

"He looked all shaken. Like he'd just got some real bad news, or something." 

"Like his father got laid off again?"

"Don't say that!"

"It's just an idea, speaking it don't make it real."

"You'd think," Jack glowers. 

"Yeah, alright," Crutchie scoffs, "Does he trust you?"

"Does he-" Jack crosses his arms, "Whaddaya mean? 'Course he does."

Davey's trust is one of Jack's most prized possessions, and he's well aware he's broken it before. He'd rather cut off his tight hand than lose it completely. 

"Sure, but enough to tell you what's wrong if it's personal? After you gave him the cold shoulder half the summer?"

Jack's heart aches. 

The sound of footsteps rattles closer; JoJo again, no doubt.

Crutchie rolls his eyes, then frowns at Jack severely. 

"Make sure he knows, and help him. It don't have to be complicated like you're making it." 

"And gimme a hand up."

Jack does what he's told. 

****

"Heya, Daves!" Race calls, before Jack even notices him approaching, "Last pape before school?"

Jack takes a moment to grit his teeth, quashing a spurt of irritation. Race has been doing that a lot lately, calling Davey Daves and paying him particular attention, disappearing with him after the day's selling and coming back with a smile on his face. 

It shouldn't feel like a threat, but it does, and the fact that it does preys on him.

Jack turns.  

Davey has always been striking, self-possessed. He swung into Jack's life, ploughed through his walls, and demanded to be listened to. But today…today he's standing like a paper doll, rigid and so very fragile all at once. 

"What?" Jack demands. Clearly he's right — whatever was plaguing Davey yesterday hasn't been shifted with a night's sleep. 

Davey smiles brittly, not meeting Jack's eyes.

"Nothing."

"It ain't nothing," Les pipes up, popping out from behind his brother. 

" Le s," David scolds, slapping him gently upside the head.

"What? He's gotta find out anyway. May as well tell 'em now." 

"May as well let me do it at my own pace ," Davey gripes, crossing his arms. 

Les simply kicks at Davey's foot. 

Before he's really thought about it, Jack is grabbing Davey by the lapel and gently dragging him over to the gates, away from the others. Race follows, and so does Les. That doesn't exactly stop Jack's stomach flipping. 

"So?" he asks. 

Davey glances down at Jack's fingers around his waistcoat; Jack drops his hand like it's burned. Davey's lip twists. It's chapped, even though it isn’t particularly cold outside. 

"Nevermind," Davey whispers, apropos of nothing.

Then, "I don't..." 

"You can trust me," Jack swears, grasping Davey's forearms, "Trust me." 

He doesn't need to look to know Crutchie's watching on from the steps, and hopefully keeping the other guys from interrupting too. 

Clumsily, Davey clasps Jack's arms back. Like a shaft of sunlight on a cloudy day, his expression clears for a moment. 

"I do. I do. I told you what I told you a couple of weeks back, didn't I?"

Jack's eyes widen, but neither Race nor Les seem to react. 

"I just -- I don't know how to say this." 

"With words," Race suggests. He's rolling a cigar between two fingers, hip cocked against the wall. 

Jack flaps a hand at him, takes a second to note Les' furrowed brows, then refocuses on Davey.

"Is your folks okay?" 

"They're fine," Davey rushes to assure him, frowning, "They're fine. It's me this time. I —”

He glances over Jack’s shoulder, lowers his voice. 

“I can't go back to school." 

Jack laughs, "What?" 

"Why?" Race adds, straightening. 

To Jack's dismay, Davey clamps up and paces back, feet pointed towards the streets. 

Les gets a grip on Davey’s satchel and ploughs ahead, "'Cos they kicked him out." 

"They what ? Davey? Outta school? But he's -- But you're Davey ." 

"Yeah, well I'm not that special," Davey snaps, pivoting back around; the bag rips out of Les’ grasp. 

"Sorry to disappoint." 

Race whistles shrilly, " Woof. No need to get so defensive. It's a lotta understand, 's all." 

Les nods emphatically. With a slight clumsiness which suggests he’s guided more by instinct than sight, Race ruffles his hair. 

Furtively, Davey rolls his shoulders and exhales. 

"Sorry. It's… y'know."

"No," Race points out, deadpan. 

He pulls a match out of his breast pocket and strikes it carelessly against the wall. By the time the smell of sulphur has flared and dissipated, Race’s cigar is lit and Les is cradling the flame. 

As one, both Jack and Davey warn Les to watch that. Race snorts, but Jack can’t be too mad about it — the tobacco has soothed some of the frizzing tension from Race’s posture, and David’s too distracted to just run away.

"Why?" Jack asks again.

“I got behind last year and it’s been a struggle to get ahead again. But mostly it’s the union.” Davey admits, a slight scoff to the words, “Turns out they don’t much like it when people stand up for themselves”

In a flash, Jack is cold. Then, just as quickly, the flames of a familiar rage lick up the walls of his chest. 

“Bastards,” Jack seethes, “And idiots too. Don’t know what’s good for ‘em, missing out on the likes of you. Bet my dinner you’re smarter than ten of your classmates combined, and you’re a better man than anyone at that school will ever be, I know that for a fact. If they think they can go ‘round acting like you’re nothing, then—”

“They’d be right,” Race cuts in, cigar clamped between his teeth. He pulls it out and presents his hand to Davey with a flourish. 

“Hey there, Davey. Welcome to nothing. It’s a fine life, and the company’s alright.” 

" Ow ," he adds, when Jack's fist lands on his shoulder. 

Jack rolls his eyes; it wasn't a hard punch by any means. 

Nevertheless, maybe there is something to Crutchie's teasing, because Race has charted the course of the interaction more smoothly than Jack -- Davey snorts and takes Race's hand.

"Hey there, Race. It's not exactly nice to be here, but it's not as bad as I thought." 

"Fine words," Race laughs. 

The bell rings, shrill and insistent. A flicker of resignation passes over David's features, but in the end he rolls his eyes and leads their little group towards the distribution hatch. Jack meets Race's gaze and quirks a brow as they go.

****

After shifting the last of the evening edition, Davey sends Les on his way home and follows Jack across the Brooklyn Bridge, the two of them munching bagels as they go. It's nice and easy; everything feels lighter up there in the sky, the wind cool and fresh, the possibilities endless. Davey teases Jack mercilessly for somehow managing to eat some of the wrapper along with the bread, and Jack rags on David’s little scrap of notes in turn. Simply put, Jack enjoys his company.

Just as the two of them reach the poky meeting room, Race, Spot, and Hotshot emerge from the fading sun — Race because it's Davey's turn to chair and months ago the executive had decided that the chair didn't get to vote, Spot and Hotshot as Brooklyn's representatives. The door sticks as they enter, only bouncing free after Hotshot jams her shoulder into it. 

The Woodside reps have arranged several beaten up trestle tables in a small square. It's all very professional, with Davey facing the door and Woodside opposite him, Jack and Race to  Davey's right and the other neighbourhoods filling out the sides. Only Flushing is there already, the oldest and meanest of the two leaning back in his chair and stretching his legs into Davey's space. Jack’s pretty sure he’s called Lout, which seems fitting, and the twitchy one next to him is Tripper. 

Davey shoots Jack an amused look behind his back, which Jack returns. He’s more genuinely concerned than Davey is, but not enough to raise a stink about it. Showboating, they can take. 

The rest of the reps arrive in a rush and Davey transforms. Back straight, shoulders back, words steady, David Jacobs in full swing is a marvel to behold. When he stands, he pulls their focus and holds it, no stiff arms or jittering like at the rally last year. He’s even letting his gaze linger on the assembled from time to time instead of letting his eyes dart rapidly around the four corners of the room, just like Jack told him to. His chest warms in pride. 

Five minutes later, the warmth turns cold and sinks to the bottom of Jack’s stomach. Davey tenses, arm no longer draped over his little sheet of notes but stood taught against it. The steady flow of his speech stutters and restarts like pistons on a frosty morning. He starts staring at the table between sentences, like his gaze can bore a hole right through it. The planes of his cheeks turn white, and his eyes glint with an anger which cannot be caused by the question of whether to collect weekly or monthly fees.

Finally, Davey cuts himself off and looks Lout straight in the eyes.

"Do it, or not," he says, deliberate and tight, “Don’t leave us all in suspense.” 

Lout sneers. With a gesture to the assembled like a magician doing a trick, he raises his arm to reveal a dark black gun. 

Cymbals crash in Jack's chest. He feels himself stiffen like a hunting dog, straining towards them. David's eyes in profile are bright with fear and indignation but his chest moves steadily, stubbornly lifting up and down. Jack hopes to God it carries on that way. 

"Don't be an idiot," Spot spits. 

Like almost everyone else, he’s backed away, but he’s glaring mutinously at the Flushing rep. Race stands close by him, silent for once. 

"We was gonna rough him up," Tripper protests, looking queasy, "Not-" 

"I know where your mother lives," Lout threatens casually, not glancing away from his quarry, "And she owes my uncle money.”

“Besides," Lout laughs, eyes dissecting Davey in a way Jack really doesn’t like, "Piece of shit don't deserve just roughing up. Ingrate probably likes it." 

Someone inhales sharply. 

"If you don't mind," Davey puts in disdainfully,  "Why are you pointing a gun at me?" 

"More like what gang's he doing it for," Spot amends. 

Lout rubs his nose with the back of his free hand.

"You ain't gonna get no freedom without breakin' a few chains, that's what the book says, right?"

Davey’s brows pinch delicately at the crude summary, "Roughly." 

"Well here I am," Lout concludes, gesturing with his gun, "Breakin' 'em." 

"Naturally," Davey half-scoffs. 

If he could, Jack would slap him over the head to get him to shut his stupid mouth, but the best that he can do is grab Lout’s attention. 

"And how's our Davey a chain, then?" 

" Your Davey ," Lout mocks, voice going high like a piccolo, "Is a traitor and a fool." 

"Yeah, how's that?" Spot huffs, sharing a quick look with Jack he can't decipher. 

"He ain't one of us. Him and his education. Flirting with the enemy. He's gonna ride that old horse outta here and sell the rest've us as he goes. And ain't that just like his kind." 

David jerks in fury and before Jack can leap up, before he can even blink, the muzzle of the gun is jammed into the delicate skin under David's jaw. 

" Fucker ," Race hisses.

Jack turns to him on instinct. His fingers are embedded like claws in the fabric of Spot's shirt. 

“Have you been following me?” Davey asks. At least that’s what Jack thinks Davey asks. His pulse is thudding in his ears and Davey’s words come out mushed and half-bitten because he can’t open his jaw. 

“All damn day yesterday,” Lout confirms, smiling cruelly, “You’s lucky I never got to finding where you lay your dirty head to rest, you know. I might’a chosen you to hit for my very own pleasure, but wouldn’t no-one hold it against me if I picked different.”

Davey snarls. 

Slowly, heart pumping so hard he feels lightheaded, Jack stands. 

" Kelly ," Spot warns, low.

Jack ignores him.

When he speaks, he's speaking to Lout but all he can see is David's head tilted back, David's eyes damp with rapidly doubling fear, desperately tracking him. 

"You ain't gonna shoot him. You ain't gonna shoot no-one. Not with all these people watching." 

"Oh, I ain't, ain't I?" the boy mocks, swaggering forwards until he's practically between David's legs, forcing his head back so much he winces. 

Mary from the Bronx exclaims quietly. 

The gun cocks. Davey sneers. And Jack thinks, no . 

He can't outrun a bullet. He can't land a punch from here. There's not one thing he can say that will stop this happening. 

But he can’t possibly live if he doesn't try. 

Just as Jack starts to lunge, a pebble whizzes through the air and slams into the side of Lout’s head. The retort echoes. Lout stumbles; Davey tips back; and the Flushing boy goes flying when Jack collides with him. Both of them slam into the wall and in the second Jack is winded the Flushing boy is up, grabbing the gun. 

"Hey!" Jack yells, startling him enough for the muzzle to waver.

Jack takes the chance, surging to his feet and forcing the gun upwards as he goes. Blood rushing hard enough to fight a lion and win, Jack grapples for the weapon. A second later, a broken length of chair leg presses into the boy's neck. Spot appears behind it, teeth bared. Lout drops the gun to grapple at the bar and Jack spares a moment to kick the thing as far away from anyone as possible. The heel of Tripper’s boot slams into Jack’s calf as he flees. When Lout finally slumps, unconscious, Jack turns. 

Davey lies on the floor, propped up against the broken chair and Race's torso, bleeding profusely from his forehead and alive . For now, at least. 

Jack's knees hit the floor before he's even thought to move. Not a little desperately, he presses his fingers to Davey's neck. He couldn't tell David's pulse from the rush in his own veins if he tried but the skin is warm and supple. A bead of blood drops into his hand. 

"Dave?" 

"The bullet, it. It touched me," Davey manages, spitting out blood around the words, "I got. I nearly got shot. I —" 

And Jack drags David out of Race's arms and into his own and — kisses him. 

It's brief. Very brief. Jack recoils barely a second after it's done, when his brain catches up to his heart, but that doesn't erase the fact that the kiss has happened. 

Davey stares at him, not even blinking when he falls back against the chair. Jack screams silently back. He's got David's blood on his face, a sticky brand from the bridge of his nose to the stubborn hairs regrowing on his upper lip. He's tasting salt. He's tasting iron. 

"Well, that's one way to shock the sense back into him," Race comments, a shaky echo of his usual biting self, "'Rest 'a you see that?" 

"What?" Mary says. 

Jack whips his head around like a dog backed into a cage — it's just her, her co-rep, the boy from Woodstock poking his head around the corner, and Brooklyn. 

Brooklyn including Spot Conlon, standing not two paces away. 

"He headbutted him," Race scoffs, "The brains of this guy."

"Jesus, the man of the hour was gunnin' for the wrong president," Spot scoffs. 

"Will he be alright?" Mary asks tentatively, peering over the table at David. 

Race nods solicitously. 

"I reckon he will. Hit his head but that ain't nothing a compress and some rest won't fix."

"Good," Mary nods, backing away quicksharp.

And everyone vanishes. Everyone but Spot, who stalks forwards to crouch at Davey's feet, and Hotshot, who places a boot calmly over the Flushing boy's throat. 

"Mouth still working, Mouth?" Spot quips. His hands are interlinked, knuckles white. 

"Y-yeah," Davey exhales, "I'll be fine." 

With as much tenderness as Jack has ever seen from him, Spot pats David's foot.

"I'll believe it when I see it." 

"As for you," his sharp eyes turn to Jack; Jack straightens in challenge, stepping easily into the old familiar dance, "What the fuck?"

Jack's gaze darts to Hotshot.

"I've heard worse," she reassures him. 

“So?” Spot prompts, arms crossed. Jack is very aware of the chair leg in easy reach. 

"You didn't see anything." 

"No shit, but I trust Race here when he says you headbutted a patient." 

Something in the way he says it —something Jack wouldn't have picked up on, if he hadn't known him for so long — suggests that Spot is very much aware that Jack did no such thing. 

Jack laughs, then shoves his fist into his mouth and bites down, hard. He can't break down yet. Not here. Not with people needing him. 

"Jesus," Race mutters, though Jack thinks he's hardly one to talk. For all that his Italian complexion is still tanned from the summer sun, he's deathly pale. 

And Davey, Jack notes at the tip of a fresh jolt of panic, is shaking perceptibly. 

"Up," Jack grunts, rising himself. 

A beat later Race follows, and the two of them stoop down to haul Davey to his feet. 

"Where's everyone gone?" he asks, swaying slightly. 

"Somewhere where there's less fellas with guns, idiot," Race scoffs, righting their patient. 

"Cops might be coming," Jack adds, words quavering to his own ears, "Racket like that’s hard for even them to ignore." 

Finally, Davey seems to take in his surroundings: the overturned chairs, the dark bullets embedded in the whitewashed walls, the dent in the skirting board. 

"Fuck," he swears quietly, "That's gonna be a pain to repair." 

"Oh, for —" 

"Spot," Hotshot interrupts before Jack can launch into a spiel worthy of his mother, rest her soul, "We headin' or what? Bigshot here's fit to wake if we don't get a move on." 

When he turns to them, Jack catches the tail end of Spot and Race engaging in some strange telepathy. 

He trusts them. He does. But it sends a shiver down his spine. 

"We're moving," Spot nods, sharp. 

Steadier now — though not as sure on his feet as Jack would like —Davey steps forward. 

"Where are you taking him?" he asks, turning to face Spot and Hotshot and pointedly not looking anywhere near Lout, prone at their feet. 

Hotshot pinches her lips. It's Spot who replies, something guarded in the set of his shoulders.

"I don't know as we should tell you. We're not gonna kill him though." 

For a long moment Davey stares at Spot, assessing. Davey’s skin is still deathly pale, Jack can see beads of sweat on it from here, and his startling blue eyes are slightly bleary and unfocused, but for all that the gravity of his gaze is still arresting. It sends a buzzing all over Jack's body and he's not even the one on the receiving end. 

Eventually, David nods. Much to Jack's surprise, he also claps Spot on the shoulder. 

"Be careful."

"Aren't we ever," Hotshot smirks, before hauling Lout up by the back of his shirt. 

As his limp feet disappear out of the doorway, Davey punches himself in the stomach. 

“What the fu—”

“Huh,” Davey muses, “Reality.” 

He promptly doubles over and vomits. As one, Jack and Race jump back. Race transfers his hold to Davey’s shoulder while Jack braces his forearm across Davey’s chest, frowning. 

“Definitely reality,” Davey coughs, “ Shit . Everything’s spinning or wobbly. Or — Or—”

He trails off, blinking. 

“Concussion,” Jack concludes. He looks to Race for a second opinion but Race is blank, staring numbly at nothing at all.   

It occurs to Jack that Race has never actually told him exactly how he came to be a newsie. 

Fuck. 

Jack gingerly lets David go to jostle Race lightly.

“Racer? You in there?” 

“Are you hurt?” David adds, stumbling slightly as he turns. 

Jack’s stomach swoops; he’s so used to Race moaning like a cat in heat when he’s injured that it hadn’t even occurred to him that he might be hurt and silent. 

“Peachy,” Race grumbles lifelessly, jostling Jack back, “Let’s go.” 

****

It’s a long, slow walk to Duane Street. 

By the time they get there it’s truly night and probably past curfew. Jack’s bones ache with fatigue and Davey’s barely present, fading a little more every time Jack has to catch him by the bicep before he falls or brace him as he vomits. Blessedly, he’s at least stopped bleeding. Race’s eyes rove around them, and the blank mask of his expression hasn’t cracked. It’s a shitshow, and not one Jack wants to involve the Jacobses in at this hour of night. Wordlessly, he guides both Davey and Race up to the rooftop. 

Crutchie is there, as Jack had hoped, sitting up and awake. He slumps in relief as their silhouettes emerge over the fire escape, then is up like a shot when the moonlight catches on their faces. Several whispered conversations — and many wet rags— later, Crutchie has coaxed a flash of a smile out of Race and joined forces with Jack to persuade Davey to rest while they spot him for any complications. 

Race refuses to lie down, but is heavy with sleep; his head bears down on Jack’s shoulder. 

“It reminds me, ‘s all,” he whispers. 

“I know,” Jack sighs. Staring at the inky sky, he reels Race into his chest. 

Race stiffens. Then, to Jack’s relief, he begins to weep silently. Crutchie slots his shoulder against Jack’s and reaches over him, resting his palm on Race’s back. 

Half-asleep, half-awake, and mostly comforted, Jack drifts. 

Maybe some things do feel a little less complicated than they did before.

Chapter Text

David wakes to the sun in his eyes. The light is nearly white, more piercing than it should have any right to feel at this hour in early autumn. He groans.

"You alright there?" someone asks.

It takes a moment for David to pin the voice to the person. Jack. Outside, in his ‘penthouse’. That would explain things.

Carefully, David turns over.

Jack is staring at him intently, back against the bricks and hands hanging together between his dusty knees.

"Davey?"

"Hmm? Oh," David struggles upright, "I’m as good as can be."

With excellent timing, his temples throb and his guts churn.

Jack squints at him dubiously.

“‘Long as you don't undo all my hard work and die," he allows.

"Not planning to," David assures him, lip twitching helplessly.

Then, inexorably, the gears bite and the awful reality of last night’s events comes barrelling into David at full speed.

Unthinkingly, he presses a hand to his mouth.

It’s a mistake, the sensation of David’s bony wrist against his jaw too close to prodding metal.

His heart thuds like he’s hanging off a precipice. His eyes close of their own accord and then slam open as paranoia grips him by the throat. It’s like being a child again, paralysed under the covers as monsters writhe in the shadows outside. It’s like being sixteen, marching home with his little brother’s shoulder in a firm grip, the after-image of a swinging club burnt onto the back of his eyes.

Jack shifts onto the balls of his feet, crouched like a frog about to leap, but doesn’t approach.

“Dave?” he asks, terse.

“I’m fine,” David grits, “It’ll pass.”

He looks Jack’s way. On closer inspection, he looks about as haggard as David feels: skin wan, hair hanging lank, shirt only half fastened. A puddle of angry red peeks out from his stained undershirt. For a moment, David is convinced it’s wet blood. He surges up onto his knees. A second later, his insides lurch after him.

Slowly, deep breath by deep breath, the threat of vomit crawls back down David’s throat. Self-possession starts to take its place.

“He’s not here,” David informs Jack sternly, wringing out his hands, “And I don’t have my mother’s disposition.”

“Right,” Jack nods, confused but loyal.

Affection unfurls in the very heart of David’s chest, a balm to the radiating aftershocks of his panic.

"Thank you."

Jack scratches his head.

"For what?"

"What do you think?” David huffs, hoping Jack fills in the blanks. He doesn’t.

“Jack. You saved my life."

The words catch on their way out, too sharp not to nip his gums.

Jack stiffens like a flower caught in frost, then shrugs laboriously.

"It was nothin’."

"It was not nothing.”

Still on his knees, David shuffles forwards. A rough blanket falls to the ground. He doesn’t remember going to sleep with any coverings.

As David carefully folds the wool, Jack looks away.

His lips were surprisingly soft. Or maybe David is misremembering.

His heart flutters.

"Thank you," he repeats, willing Jack to look at him again, "It was the most stupid thing I've ever seen, but --"

"It weren't stupid," Jack snaps, white fire arcing, "Don't call it stupid."

David’s breath hitches; he powers on.

"Heroic and dumb, then. You could have died because of —”

“Weren’t heroic, neither,” Jack cuts in, searing.

With short, agitated movements Jack divests himself of his bandana and starts twisting it around his fingers.

"Wasn't doing it to be a hero. I was doing it… I was doing it because -—"

"There you are!"

Embarrassingly, David startles. He'd sort of forgotten the rest of the world existed.

Jack shoots up like he's been caught with his fingers in the pie.

"Been looking all over," Spot grumbles, hauling himself up onto the fire escape with enviable grace, "Jack, talk to your fellas. They's heard rumours already, and they ain't good ones."

Tentatively, David stands. Jack moves as if to steady him, then retreats just as quickly.

"Selling day's started," Jack frowns, turning distractedly to Spot, "Why are you in Manhattan?"

"I think I got more pressing matters than papes today,” Spot responds incredulously.

He looks like he hasn't slept, though he's changed into the same brick-red checked shirt he wore during the strike. David hopes that doesn't mean Spot's gearing up to re-enact his performance with the slingshot, too.

"Pressing like what?" Jack is saying.

Spot massages his brows, "What we're gonna do about Lout, dumbass."

"Where is he?" David asks, focussing very hard on not swaying, "That's a good place to start."

A devious smile spreads over Spot's lips, like the devil emerging from a mirror in some gothic rag.

"He took a hike. And he won't be eager to come back if he knows what's good for him, so don't go looking like that, Jack," Spot shoots David an arch look, "Your princess is safe."

"Hey," Jack rumbles, “You don’t gotta come here making —”

"And he really don't know where your folks live, Daves,” Spot continues, ignoring Jack entirely, “We checked."

Silently, David offers a prayer of thanks.

"Thank you, Spot. For…well, for everything. I'm grateful."

Softening ever so slightly, Spot claps him soundly on the elbow.

"You should be. You're fucking stressful to know, Daves."

Again, David’s heart warms. He nods seriously.

"Sorry for the inconvenience. Next time I get murdered, I’ll do it privately.”

“Skip the to-do,” Spot advises, “Do it yourself."

David grins.

Spot shares in his mirth for half a moment before his attention drifts. Darting eyes, half-cocked head, pads of his fingers worrying his trousers… A hook sinks into David's sternum.

"Where's Race?" he asks Jack, one eye on Spot.

"I dunno, I ain't his keeper," Jack responds, his own eyes far off on the dissolving horizon.

Spot's lips thin.

"Real helpful."

Slowly, like the drag of sodden wool out of a washtub, Jack comes back to himself. When he looks at Spot, his expression is suffused with what David can only describe as cautious epiphany.

"He’s safe," Jack says carefully, "Was shaken up, but I got him home alright and he went to the gate with Crutchie this morning."

Spot nods and splays his fingers flat against his thighs, on the cusp of saying something else when the whole fire escape starts to shake. David lurches to the side, too preoccupied with the way his brain is rattling in his skull like a peach in a pallet to realise he's only moved because Jack tugged on his elbow. Stars explode behind David's eyelids when he shuts them, but it helps his feet remember they're on the floor again.

"—had us going," Boots is wheezing when the world comes back.

He’s bent at the knees like he has a stitch, but when he looks up at David he manages to find the breath to whistle appreciatively.

"You look bad, though, Davey. Never seen no-one so pale."

"I'm Polish," David points out, wrongfooted, “I’m always pale.”

"Better than dead," Boots shrugs, face glowing angelically with sweat, “What happened?”

"What do all the boys think happened?" Jack counters, spine straightening. With his brows pinched and his chin lifted just so he transforms, no longer a boy teetering on the brink with the rest of them, but Jack Kelly: leader of men.

David tears his eyes away.

"No 'all' about it,” Boots sighs, “'Most everyone's got a different story and we’ve got newsies from all over wandering in telling tales. 'Lotta them saying Davey's bought it."

"Only nearly," David corrects, aiming for wry and landing on acerbic.

"For real?" Boots squarks, eyes bugging," 'Cos Kez from Harlem was saying there was guns involved."

"Yeah," Jack confirms darkly, "But we ain't telling the story a hundred times over, so you better get going and tell the fellas to meet at the statue at one. Davey ‘n I’ll be there."

Boots fires off a sloppy salute.

"Got it, boss.”

Halfway down the ladder, he calls up, "Was it — Someone said it was Flushing."

"Yeah,” Jack confirms, wandering closer to the edge. It doesn’t take many steps. The fire escape is hardly Central Park, and David is honestly impressed no-one managed to kick him off of it during the night.

Slowly, with all the dramatic weight of a chastised hand puppet, Boots’ head re-emerges.

“Was it Lout?” he whispers, wide-eyed and looking every inch his tender age.

"Yes," David confirms hesitantly.

"Shit," Boots sighs, deflating even further, "It was him."

Jack cranes around to give David a look. David trudges closer and asks the crucial question, "He was the one you saw when I was talking to you? The one you nearly took off after?"

Boots cringes.

“I thought it was him but I didn’t know for sure. Then I figured if he wasn’t tryna sell, and it might not’ve been him anyway, there ain’t no reason to go chasing fellas down in the streets.”

“That makes sense,” David begrudgingly admits.

“No it don’t,” Spot scoffs.

“You run Brooklyn, we run Manhattan,” Jack reminds him sternly.

Spot throws up his hands and backs away a step or two, swaggering like a peacock as he goes. Jack flaps a hand dismissively.

Ever wise, Boots takes the chance to vanish.

"Well — Alright," Jack sighs, "What are we gonna tell 'em? At the statue, I mean."

"The facts of the matter," David replies, bemused, "All of them."

It seems fairly obvious to him.

Jack rolls his eyes dramatically. For some reason, David finds the gesture reassuring.

"Well, yeah. What are we gonna tell them we're gonna do about Lout? They'll wanna know."

"And by 'do about him' do you mean do about the fact that he was there or the fact that he might be there again?"

Jack’s head tilts, "What?"

David's hands go to his hips, before he realises what he's done and hastily removes them.

"Well, when Spot said 'what we're going to do about Lout', what he was really talking about was the situation Lout created. And maybe punishing him through the union. Then you said it, and it might mean something else. Like 'what are we going to do if Lout comes back to cause more trouble?'. So really it's a valid question."

"I would hate to be the guy who has to get you home drunk, if this is Dave with just a concussion," Spot observes.

"I don't even know if it's the concussion or if it's just the Davey," Jack adds unhelpfully, "But sure. All of that. You look like you got ideas."

David nods. Responsibility weighs on him like a yoke, and the streets suddenly don't seem so far below their feet.

"We can't let this break the union," he begins, hoping fervently his voice doesn't crack, "But we're no union if we can't put aside our differences. None of us are the enemy. If we have one enemy, it's capitalism. It's the bosses. If we attack each other, we're going to war for them. You understand?"

The others nod slowly. They've probably guessed where he's going with this. Discontent settles over Jack like a cloak, and he rolls his shoulders. Spot's upper lip curls away to reveal a flash of teeth. Like a blade in the dark, David thinks. His heart beats thinly at the pulse point in his neck, but he speaks.

"Like I said, this won't break the union — but if resolutions disbarring Lout and adding a non-discrimination clause to the constitution don't pass, it'll be down a president."

"Two," Jack amends, arms crossed.

David nods, relieved. It's a momentous effort not to grab Jack and cling.

Spot, however, is not so easily won.

"Kinda sounds like giving up, to me," he drawls dangerously.

Before David can open his mouth, Jack is prowling into Spot's space, "He ain't gotta sit there helping people who's helping the guy who tried ta murder him, Spot."

"And he ain't helping no-one none if he just scrams the first time we ain't all doing exactly what he says, Jackie." Spot says, giving as good as he got.

David shoves between them before it can escalate, spitting out words in time with the piercing needle in the centre of his forehead.

"If it's not a majority vote, then I've not got the majority's respect. If I've not got their respect, they're not going to listen to me. If they're not listening to one of the presidents, the union stalls. The union stalls, the union falls apart. And we can't let that happen, because even if they're utter asses — and yeah,” David turns to Jack, “You’re right, I don’t want to stick my neck out for asses — they still deserve rights because the rights we’re fighting for are basic."

“Idiot,” Spot grits, “You was the one who said ‘if we back down now, they won’t ever listen to us again’, why the fuck do you think this is different?”

“Because this isn’t a strike,” David groans, “It’s an existential threat, we’ve got to think of the bigger picture, it’s not —”

“It ain’t a threat unless you make it a threat, Mouth,” Spot interrupts, punctuating his words with a hard poke to the centre of David’s chest, “I dunno what existential means, but I know the guy in charge fucking off is gonna send a pretty strong message the likes of ‘you win’. You want that? You want Lout to win? You want any little bastard who thinks like him to think they won, too?”

“No! No, of course not, but —”

“But what? You’re the leader, lead. Them kids out there, they’re confused. They don’t know what to think, they don’t know what’s going on, and they’re the big picture. Them,” Spot emphasises, gesturing emphatically, “Not some future you made up in your head. Don’t be a coward.”

“I’m not a coward,” David hisses.

“See, that’s what I thought, then you went acting like one.”

David’s jaw ticks.

“Fuck you.”

Spot’s eyes widen.

“Yeah, Spot,” Jack chirps smugly, “Fuck you.”

Spot tilts his head back, levelling Jack with a venomous look over David’s shoulder.

“I dunno why you’re laughing. You’d agree with me if you wasn’t so scared.”

David grits his teeth, “Jack isn’t a coward either.”

“I never said he was,” Spot points out, audibly frustrated, “I said he’s scared."

Spot shifts so he's facing Jack more directly. David watches in mild fascination (and not a little envy) as Spot spools his temper in. When he speaks, the words come low and firm, each carefully weighed and measured. David can understand why the Brooklyn newsies don't only fear their leader, but revere him too.

"I get it, Jackie. Really, I do. But you can't go protecting everyone from everything, even if you care for real. ‘specially then.”

David turns his head just in time to catch Jack's expression spasm, then iron out into a familiar mask.

“I can try,” Jack insists, all gravel.

“You’ll fail,” Spot replies simply, "And I think you already know that. Quit pretending."

The two stare at each other for a long, weighted moment. Feeling something like a bug clinging to a window pane, David shifts back. He wants his Mama. He wants to be young enough to hide in her skirts like he used to when everything got too loud and stopped making sense. He wants Papa’s hand on the top of his head, wide and warm and fortifying. His parents aren’t here, though, and David doesn’t necessarily want them to be. This is his world now, even if it wasn’t to begin with. He chose the papers and the politics and the edge of danger which never really goes away. He chose the people.

"Can we get a meeting sorted tonight?" David asks, "Or tomorrow?"

The tension melts. Spot grins, a quick, triumphant flash.

"Tonight's best," he says, "Gotta strike while the ironing's hot, or whatever they say."

Jack shrugs. He’s still staring in Spot’s general direction, but through him instead of at him. David takes his cue.

“We’ll get everyone our side of the river if you’ve got yours."

"Right," Spot nods, "Reps only? Who's chairing?"

"How much are we trying to push it?" David muses, "It doesn't seem right for neither of the presidents to chair a meeting that important, but it makes things more complicated. It would be a statement if I chaired, but Jack might come across as more neutral."

Spot scoffs, "Right."

"What?"

"Davey," Jack sighs, "Do I seem neutral to you?"

"You're —" Jack, practically trembling, protectiveness rolling off of him in waves, snapping like a tiger at its cage, coming closer to the gun, the fool, "I suppose not."

David cradles his elbow in his palm, trying to quiet the tentative ruffling of wings in his stomach. That ship has sailed and there’s no use clinging to the rudder. He clears his throat.

"I'll chair. It's my motion, after all, and it'll be good to show I'm not too shaken up."

"Aren't you?" Spot wonders.

"Obviously, but I'm not going to let them know that."

"Lookit that, Jack,” Spot crows, poking Jack in the foot with his stick, “He's learning."

"I did pick up a thing or two in nearly a decade of living here," David parries.

"Nearly a decade?" Spot echoes, snapping back into focus.

David’s lips thin.

"Are the numbers that relevant?" he asks, trying to joke.

Spot gives him a shrewd look, but shrugs, "Information's information. Which reminds me, we've gotta wrap this up, I gotta get back to Brooklyn. The air here's not good for a man."

"Union Square," Jack pipes up, "We'll meet there."

"If you insist," Spot agrees.

And then he's gone.

"I need to learn how to do that," David muses.

"Yeah, sure," Jack nods, rubbing at his stubble, "You run like a gazelle anyway. Just listen. What I was saying. He… Well, I think…I…”

Jack ducks his head, squinting at David’s boots, “Spot and Race is doing stuff, aren't they? That kind of stuff?"

"That kind?" David chokes.

"The —” Jack’s eyes roll up then keep rolling, fixing on the attic window at David’s back, “The lovin' kind."

Oy vey. Of all the times…

"I would think so, yes," David sighs.

"I never knew."

Of course you didn’t.

“I don’t thin—“

“Of course I didn’t?” Jack startles, “What’s that mean?”

Shit. The air starts to feel a little thin.

“I didn’t mean to say that out loud,” David begins, which is the worst thing he could have possibly said.

David can practically see the dark clouds coalescing over Jack’s head, shock putrefying into indignation.

“Go on,” Jack goads, “Say what you mean.”

The resentment David has bottled up starts to press against its stopper. He sighs.

“I mean, you’re not exactly the most welcoming person in the world to tell something like that.”

Jack’s jaw works, lips thin.

Finally, he says, “Race trusts me.”

Underneath the bravado, the words sound so plaintive that David nearly drops the whole thing then and there. But…

“I’m sure Race does trust you. Who knows I do; I trust you with Les, the union, my life, but Jack... Think about it. Is Race wrong to be wary, when you reacted exactly the way you did to me?”

Jack runs his hands through his hair, a seed of panic behind his eyes.

“I— I know I did bad, but I never hurt you. And I’d never hurt Racer neither, ‘least not properly.”

“I know,” David concedes shortly, “Not intentionally. But we’re not talking about me and you, or what you wouldn’t do to Race. We’re talking about what you have done, and what you have done is provide a prime example of how you’ll ostracise your closest friends if they show even a whiff of – of being a bit too different. How you won’t step up to do a thing if half his other friends go cold on him too, even if they don’t know why they’re doing it. Because your friends trust you, and they’ll take their cues from you, and they’ll assume the worst if you don’t step up to stop it.”

“Other friends?” Jack echoes, wholeheartedly bewildered, “The guys have been giving you a hard time?”

“God!” David explodes, practically ripping the hair from his head, “Fuck, Jack. How can you be so— so—”

“Stupid?” Jack offers brittly.

“Oblivious!” David practically screeches, “You clock Flushing from a mile away but when half of our friends suddenly start pretending I don’t exist you don’t notice?”

“Would it help,” Jack asks, as cowed as David has ever heard him, “If I told you I only really realised last night I’m a fairy.”

It’s a slap in the face, but David doesn’t quite know how. Jack says it frankly, a little self-reproach flavouring the final word, rattling around David’s breastbone and knocking into the bright burst of possible joy.

Jack watches him on tenterhooks.

“That would explain why you kissed me,” David manages.

A cloud shifts. For a moment, the white light surrounding them turns buttery yellow.

“I think you know what I want to say next, don’t you?” Jack asks ruefully.

“Yes. But don’t.”

“Ever?” Jack checks, the sound almost snatched by the air, “Or…”

“Later.”

The silence pricks.

David turns to the ladder, “Clock’s ticking.”

“And you’re gonna fall down before you get down,” Jack grumbles, pushing past him.

David huffs, but there’s not much he can do to dispute the accusation as Jack descends.

****

When Davey’s boots land firmly on solid ground, Jack’s relief is palpable. Personally he thinks he did a good job concealing it, but he gets a cold glance from Davey nonetheless. Jack frowns back. It’s not that he expects Davey to take a spill — it’s just that he doesn’t trust concussions as far as he can throw them, and it would be just like fate to rip Davey away just when...Well.

Later. The word had come out clanging like iron bars drawn shut, but Jack clings to the fact that it isn’t final.

“Have you eaten?” Davey asks, forcibly brisk and not quite meeting Jack’s eyes.

“No.”

Race had brought him a mug of water in the morning, but Jack barely took a sip with everything whirling in his head.

Race, who he’s apparently been an ass to for years without knowing it.

“We’ll go to mine,” David tells him, stumbling slightly as he turns to the mouth of the alley, “No-one should be home.”

Jack shoves his cap on to hide his uncombed hair and follows silently after.

****

It’s odd for Jack to be in Davey’s neighbourhood in the cold light of day. The late-morning glare flushes out details which have escaped him before: b roken-off railings and flaking windowsills, sun-bleached floral curtains and garlands of washing strung between buildings. A few streets away folks are sleeping three to a bed, and here they’re clinging to respectability by a thread.

D avey climbs the stairs to the Jacobs’ apartment furtively, but they don’t run into any neighbours. Jack pauses at the door expecting Davey to dig into his pockets, but instead he just takes it off the latch and pushes it open .

“You ain’t got a lock?” Jack asks, breaking the stiff silence they’ve sustained for half an hour.

“Only one key,” Davey explains, gesturing Jack inside.

Jack purses his lips and trails after Davey to the sink. It clunks, sputters, and spews flecks of something russet brown before a stream of clear water flows out. Wordlessly, Davey hands Jack a glass and, after a little fussing with boxes and tins, a slab of only slightly dry bread smeared with a bit of butter and a lot of jam. Despite his intentions to eat nicely, Jack inhales them both. Davey, on the other hand, chews his portion like a horse that’s tired of its hay.

In his mind’s eye, Jack sees them at a different sink eating bread and jam with gnarlier hands, Davey’s nose scrunched up the same way but hopefully for better reasons. Chest tight from more than the bruise seeping into it, Jack pours himself another glass of water.

Later.

Chapter Text

Standing on Horace Greeley’s plinth addressing every newsie there’s ever been in Manhattan feels like clinging to a mast in a storm. The mood is agitated and restless; the questions come as fast as jeers and jokes, outrage a storm swell. Passers-by stop and stare or squint and frown, pulling and stoking like the tide. David is glad, when he has a snatch of thought to be so, that he’d forked out for the trolley. He doesn’t think he and Jack would be able to captain the ship if they hadn’t spent the journey over side by side like distant stars.

Eventually, the bell tolls two and the sea begins to drain out of the square. David climbs awkwardly down to the cobbles, declining Crutchie’s extended hand; he doesn’t want to take him out too if he falls, which isn’t entirely unlikely. He doesn’t miss Jack wincing when his boots hit stone, either.

David squints at Jack, but doesn’t have time to interrogate him over just how far the bruises he glimpsed in the morning extend before Kid Blink is loping up to them, Mush in close pursuit. Specs and Boots follow at a more sedate pace.

“What now?” Blink asks without preamble, expression flinty.

J ack casts a quick glance David’s way. David quirks a brow and Jack nods.

He’s straight to the point.

“Someone’s gotta tell Midtown and Richmond where to be tonight. I can cover your ferry one way, but you gotta make ‘em come.”

“Oh, I can get ‘em here,” Blink promises with a sharp grin, “I’ll take Richmond.”

“And I’ll come with,” Mush tacks on, passing a cautious look Blink’s way, “More impressive if there’s two of us.”

“I ain’t paying for both of you,” Jack grumbles, even as he tosses Mush two coins. He catches one but has to dive after the other like a pigeon descending on a fated breadcrumb.

Race yawns, “Guess I’m Midtown, then.”

David almost agrees before he thinks better of it.

“Race, how about you go to Harlem with Jack? Boots has already been talking to Midtown today, he’ll go down better.”

“Sure,” Jack nods David’s way, “If you go with Boots –”

David shakes his head, “I’ll do the Bronx, I’ve already wasted a day’s selling.”

The pucker between Jack’s brows is deep, and deeply expressive. David bristles.

“Davey–”

Crutchie reaches past David to whack Jack in the shins.

“Shut it,” he drawls mildly, “I’ll go with Davey, I’ve been selling well.”

Race whistles mockingly, if not with his usual zest.

“So that leaves me to go with Boots, if we’re doing pairs,” Specs concludes, attempting to clean his glasses on Race’s collar, “This one gonna be the spare rep again tonight?”

“Guess I’ll have to,” Race grumbles, batting Specs away.

“No,” Crutchie says, watching Race with an expression like frost rolling in, “You’re gonna let me at ‘em.”

It’s fast enough he can’t be sure, but David thinks Race looks a little relieved when he nods.

****

The first couple of hours of their trek north see Jack, Race, Crutchie and David plodding along together quietly. Somewhere around the top of Central Park, Jack and Race split off for Harlem while David and Crutchie veer east. David’s feet are burning like crisp eggs, and he has no doubt Crutchie’s are too.

“Did you really sell well this morning?” David asks, partly out of curiosity and partly as a distraction.

Crutchie snorts, “You doubtin’ my authenticity?”

“Making conversation.”

“Alright,” Crutchie smirks, “If we’re making conversation, Jack tell you what he needed to?”

David’s steps don’t falter, but he does feel a bolt of ice in his chest for a second before it melts away. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t suspected Crutchie knew more than he was letting on.

“Way to spring it on a guy,” David grumbles anyway, “He tried to tell me. I stopped him.”

Crutchie frowns at his scuffed boots.

A few moments pass before he asks, cautiously, “You ever wish you was normal?”

“What's normal even mean?” David shrugs, a beat too late.

His eyes dart about the street. It’s broad and strikingly quiet in the early evening; the first sketch to Lower Manhattan’s vibrant, bustling painting. Even so, there a few people-shaped dots in sight.

“Dunno,” Crutchie shrugs apologetically, “Normal’s...not like you lot are, I ‘spose.”

David cocks his head.

“How many of ‘us lot’ do there have to be to make it normal?”

Crutchie frowns thoughtfully.

“I guess I do feel strange,” David continues, swinging his arms, “It's a feeling like…”

His lips purse. For all that his friends tease him for being a dictionary, his brain feels like a bowl full of soup sometimes. The concussion probably isn’t helping; it’s mostly stubbornness and the invigorating impact of an urgent task keeping him going.

David left a note on the kitchen table before he and Jack left this morning, but his parents are still going to be utterly livid when he gets home. Livid, out of their minds with worry, or both.

“Like?” Crutchie prods.

“It feels –”

A gaggle of young girls flows out of the cut adjacent to them and surrounds them like a plaited, giggling flash flood. Just as quickly, they vanish down a different street.

David checks his pockets absently, “It feels like forgetting to put socks on. It won’t stop you going about your day, and you might forget about it sometimes, but it’s always there. You’re…”

He glances at Crutchie quickly, “You’re always almost about to feel it.”

Crutchie nods, considering, “So you wish you did put ya socks on?”

“No,” David replies definitively.

He’s not wearing a satchel, so his fingertips rub against the lapels of his jacket.

“I don't like knowing that I don’t have any socks on. I don't like that other people might know I don't. But it's not all bad, either.”

David stares at his boots, moving along step by step almost without his mind’s permission.

“I think if no-one ever told me to wear socks I wouldn't feel a thing about it either way. It just...is,” David shrugs, “But I think I’ve always felt at least a little weird anywhere I’ve ever been, so maybe it's different for... other people.”

“I'll say,” Crutchie teases.

His smile is easy, and there’s nothing predatory in the way he looks David up and down with a quirk of his brow. Still...

“You’re very calm about all this,” David notes.

Crutchie shifts the position of his crutch, grunting lightly, “That a compliment or an accusation?”

“An observation. Rest?”

“Nah, so long as you buy me bath salts. When we get there I’ll sit at the back an’ heckle.”

“Suit yourself,” David shrugs, “But I’m heckling back.”

Crutchie turns his face up to the weakening sun like a cat, “I dunno if that counts as heckling.”

“I’ll just hit you then,” David hums, “That better?”

“Lots,” Crutchie smirks.

“Really, though,” David insists, batting at Crutchie’s shoulder, “Why are you so… nothing about all this? Are you,” he lowers his voice, “An invert too?”

“Oh no, I’m a one-hundred-percent red-blooded specimen of American manhood,” Crutchie assures him with a wicked grin, “And I’m also a lot of things that ain’t calm about Jack and you and…”

Crutchie trails off significantly.

“Race,” David fills in.

“Yeah, figured he’d’ve told you. Anyway,” Crutchie exhales, “If proper society’s saying one thing and I’m seeing another? At this point I’m inclined to believe my own two eyes. They’s been working well enough so far.”

“And that’s it?” David wonders.

“Ain’t complicated. What,” Crutchie scoffs, “You want me to call you the scum of the Earth an’ kick ya teeth in? Cos that ain’t gonna fly with me.”

“And,” Crutchie adds, a glimmer of warning in his tone, “I ain’t lettin’ no-one hold nothing against Jackie, neither.”

It shouldn’t have any effect on him, really, but David straightens his spine and nods.

****

“So how we voting?” Mary asks, standing with her arms crossed beside her second. She has the kind of wiry muscle Sarah does and seems constantly about to berate you. A handful of assorted Bronx boys watch on in interest.

“I can’t tell you how to vote,” David points out, a little less than patiently, “That’s the opposite of impartial.”

“I was there last night. That’s pretty damn partial if you ask me,” Mary replies, unimpressed.

She looks straight past David.

“Morris?”

“We’re voting ‘yes’,” Crutchie answers. He winks when David turns to look at him.

“That all you needed?” Mary’s second asks. Richard, David thinks, although he hasn’t outright asked — he’s not sure if he’s meant to know already or not.

“Yeah.”

“Let’s get you some water, then,” Mary nods.

****

“No.”

Jack narrowly resists braining himself on the conveniently placed railing beside him.

“You were in Manhattan today. You were talking to Boots.”

“Don’t mean I trust it tonight,” Kez shrugs.

Kez is far from in charge of Harlem, but he’s one of their lithest and wiliest, and he’s famous for getting into and out of trouble like a bad penny. He’s Harlem’s canary in the goldmine.

Jack grits his teeth; he’s tired, sore, antsy, and, he’ll admit, nervous about letting Davey out of his sight. Like a dopey old dog or something.

“Too chicken?” he prods, going on the offensive, “Or don’t wanna vote?”

Kez adjusts his cap, balanced jauntily to let his perfectly set waves peak through, “Too smart ‘a trust Brooklyn when they’s told you they’s fixed a problem.”

Jack grits his teeth and looks to Race, but the bastard’s just watching them keenly, like it’s the tense end to a close race.

“Look,” Jack sighs, “I hate to say it, but if Spot Conlon says he’s good for something, he’s good for something. Ain’t nothing happening tonight but unionism.”

Still, Kez shakes his head, “See, it ain’t Spot Conlon I don’t trust. It’s Lout’s buddies I don’t trust. Who’s to say they don’t come and take issue?”

Jack just about rips his hair out.

“They’s career criminals, Kez, they ain’t got time for a buncha newsies.”

“Lout was a newsie.”

Jack goes to reply, then frowns. It’s a concerning truth, after all.

“So?” Race chips in, finally making his bet, “Way I see it, if we don’t even know what gang Lout was auditioning for, they ain’t exactly infamous. Anyway, ain’t the point they won’t finish the job? The gang mighta told Lout he had to put a bullet in some sap’s head, it was Lout who tried to make Davey the lucky cadaver. What I’m saying here, is the gang ain’t interested in us.”

Jack nods, giving Race a congratulatory pat on the back, “Exactly. Far as they’re concerned, we don’t exist to them no more. And if Davey can bounce back from having some yellow-bellied bastard try to kill him, then someone from Harlem can get to Union Square tonight.”

There’s nowhere to run. They’ve got Kez where they want him, and he isn’t happy about it.

“Alright,” Kez glowers, “We’ll show.”

Then he slams the door in their faces.

“Hot dogs?” Race suggests acerbically.

“Hot dogs,” Jack agrees.

****

“What does he take us for?” Jack grumbles between bites of sausage, “Acting like we’s serving them up to Five Points on a platter.”

“Hey, I dunno,” Race muses, brushing crumbs off his waistcoat, “I see his thinking. Turf wars is one thing, gangs...?”

He throws out his hands and collapses back against the trunk of the tree they’re sitting under.

Jack glances up the path again; no sign of Davey and Crutchie yet, but the sun is only just starting to dip under the trees dotting the path. He hopes they arrive before the spare hot dogs start to stink, and certainly before evening truly sets in. Not that Jack doesn’t have more pressing concerns.

“You sure about what you said back there? That they ain’t gonna try nothing? The gang, I mean.”

Race looks at him askance, “How should I know? I ain’t one of ‘em.”

“But,” he adds a second later, pushing the word out in a puff of air, “Down at the track, to hear ‘em talk they seem real big on shame and all that. Might not be the same guys,” he shrugs, “Probably isn’t. But I’d bet we ain’t insulted them by stopping Lout, he’s insulted himself by letting it happen.”

Jack chews thoughtfully.

“What exactly do you do at the tracks?”

It’s not the first time he’s asked, but the older they both get the more Jack lets the matter rest. The fierce scowl Race sets on him suggests he’s not too happy about the return to form.

“I can handle myself.”

Jack rolls his shoulders, bruise on his sternum flaring, “I know.”

For a moment, they both quiet down, examining the neat green grass stretching out into infinity in front of them, and the stately buildings peering down from either side.

Race taps his knee decisively, “I’d be worried about Flushing.”

“Lout popular?”

He hadn’t really seemed it to Jack, but then again Jack isn’t an expert on Flushing’s internal politics.

Race shrugs, “God knows, but I reckon Tripper went back there and I dunno what he’s told ‘em. We can’t rule out that they’ll come in ready to brawl. And they won’t just send two, no matter what Spottie says.”

Jack nods.

“Actually,” Race adds, fondly amused, “He mighta told ‘em to bring more just so he can bring some a’ his lot. I wish Betsie was still around.”

Jack grins, nostalgia swooping in to pinch his ribs. He hasn’t thought about Betsie for years. She’d been at least sixteen when Jack had first started selling and (in addition to knowing everything there was to know about Annie Oakley, which put her highly in Jack’s favour all on its own) she was the best shot with any small object he’d ever met. Some rumours said she’d joined the circus. Jack liked to believe they were true.

He nods, “Wouldn’t surprise me if everyone brought extra. I got a feeling we ain’t keeping all our guys away.”

“You see Blink this afternoon?” Race scoffs, a little proud, “We ain’t. I’ll go along an’ keep ‘em away from the meeting though.”

“Away from the others too,” Jack advises, “We don’t want the bulls on our asses.”

“Obviously,” Race agrees, shoving the last of his hot dog into his mouth and adding through it, “I do know how to run this circus, y’know.”

“Yeah,” Jack sighs.

He taps his foot, a hard clump of something digging into the thinning soles.

“Speaking of. You holding up okay?”

“Speaking of what? I’m fine,” Race slips a cigar out of his breast pocket, gesturing neatly, “Sitting in the ass-end of Central Park, but other than that I’m peachy.”

Jack doesn’t wait for the cigar to get near Race’s mouth before he says, “Want me to get you a moment with Spot, after?”

Race’s head whips around like a whirlygig.

“What?”

Jack licks his lips nervously, “There’s a couple things I figured out lately.”

“Then,” Race responds smartly, fumbling for a light, “You know I don’t need you to get me a moment with Spot.”

Something pangs in Jack’s chest. He pulls at the grass.

“You guys’re real solid then?”

“We are,” Race confirms with a short nod.

The comforting, dusty sweetness of tobacco kindles between them. Still, Race’s posture is tense.

“I’m glad f’ you,” Jack says quietly, not quite catching Race’s eye.

Race’s jaw ticks.

There’s a light breeze in the air and an anvil on Jack’s chest.

“I’m sorry, too,” he murmurs.

“Sorry for what?” Race asks.

The words are dripping in wariness, but Jack can’t help but read a little bit of hope in the shadows of them. The hot dog churns in his guts, but Jack’s said worse things to less willing listeners.

“This morning Davey explained to me that I ain’t been treating you right.”

“Oh, he did, did he?” Race mutters, surprise swiftly followed by a complicated expression, like he isn’t sure whether to be offended or touched.

Jack nods unnecessarily. His next words come out sounding like a reprimand, tripping over each other.

“I do care about you.”

“I know,” Race acknowledges, a low pulse.

“And I ain't been a good pal, lately,” Jack continues, gaining confidence in that, “But I'm gonna be better.”

He means it. A chord’s struck him this past day, a feeling he can’t put a name to. It’s the lax-boned rush of euphoria when you drop a heavy satchel after a long day’s work, or the first blast of crisp air in autumn. Perhaps it’s almost clarity.

It would be better if it wasn’t accompanied by the low resonance of guilt, but Jack figures he’s probably earned that.

Race holds out his cigar.

“Take that.”

Jack does, balancing it between his fingers like a paintbrush.

“Smoke it, Jesus, don’t just hold it!” Race scolds, shaking his head, “What are you?”

“Smart,” Jack tells him, obligingly taking a puff, “Last time I tried to take soma’ your cigar, you punched me.”

“Last time we wasn’t having a conversation.”

“Alright,” Jack grouches, “Let’s conversate.”

“Let’s conversate,” Race mocks, making his voice all squeaky.

Just for that, Jack takes an extra deep drag. It’s not a bad cigar, smooth on the way down. If Race didn’t steal it, he must have won it in a bet. Slender fingers snatch it straight out of Jack’s mouth half-way through the inhale. He sputters.

“Serves you right,” Race laughs. He takes his own drag, and on the exhale he sobers.

“Alright, then. What exactly is you apologising for?”

Jack smiles faintly. The words come easier after a bit of bickering.

“I made you feel like you couldn’t trust me. And I guess I made my problem your problem.”

“Your problem?” Race frowns.

Jack licks his teeth.

“I didn’t want to know. About you, or me, or anyone. I didn’t want to… to have to find out what I’d do if I knew one of us wasn’t on the straight and narrow like that.”

“You mean like if one of us was a fairy?” Race clarifies, inscrutable.

“Like a… yeah. Anyway,” Jack breathes, “Davey made it pretty clear that not doing nothing at all was just as bad as doing something hurtful, and I think I gotta agree. ‘Cos you and me, we’ve had this understanding we’d be there for each other. And I wasn’t. I didn’t even notice you was struggling like you is. Then I got mad that you and Davey was thick as thieves all of a sudden and I didn’t even realise then that maybe it was ‘cos you was both hurting. ‘Cos of what I didn’t do. And after all I did in the strike—”

“You don’t gotta bring that up,” Race cuts in, “Makes it pretty hard not to get spitting mad.”

Jack nods mutely.

“And I ain’t been struggling. Not all the time. Me and Spot? Best fucking thing that’s happened in years,” Race sneaks Jack a glance, bristling, “And I coulda told you all about it if you’d pulled your head out of your ass and done some real thinking sooner.”

The air changes, wrapping in close around Jack’s throat.

“You’d’a told me?”

“’Course,” Race says fiercely, “It ain’t real friends if you ain’t happy being happy together. And we’re friends.”

“We are,” Jack confirms, gruff, “I’m sorry.”

“It’s happened,” Race shrugs.

“I’m still sorry.”

For a moment, Race just looks at Jack.

“Don’t be. You do stupid shit when you’re feeling guilty. Really stupid shit,” Race finishes with a sly look, nodding to where Crutchie and Davey have finally appeared on the horizon.

Jack tries to glare, but the effect is probably ruined by the way he hauls Race into a hug. He makes sure to mess Race’s hair up on the way back though, snorting as Race sputters and squeaks like an angry kettle, loud enough for Davey to be smirking as he folds himself down next to Jack.

****

If Newsies Square in the morning was a stormy sea then Union Square at nightfall is a frozen lake, silent and fathomless. Nobody says a word beyond superficial greetings as the contingents arrive and take their places in a loose diamond, heads high or shoulders stooped. Woodside informs them outright that they didn’t come alone, but the rest leave that unsaid and their backup in the side streets. Soon the only people left to emerge into the square are the representatives from Flushing.

Their arrival is heralded by a flurry of jeers. Moving as one, David and the union reps turn to stare in the direction of the noise. Like marbles tumbling in a cup, the jeers pitch and settle into an angry fizz. David rolls his shoulders.

Footsteps falling like boulders, six Flushing newsies emerge from the mouth of the street. Tripper is front and centre, less standing and more caught partway through the process of folding in on himself. He’s boxed in by two burly guys who are giving Tripper and the assembled sour looks in equal measure. Three other boys hang off at the edges, stone-faced.

“What’re we doing with him, then?” one of the burly guys asks with no preamble, pushing Tripper forwards.

David has a lot of suggestions, none of which are very presidential.

“It’s not up to me,” he says instead, “Whatever we decide to do with Tripper, we’ll be setting a precedent. If we’re setting a precedent it has to be something we all agree on.”

“What’re the options?” Mary asks as if on cue. Her dark eyes are voids in the low light, fixed keenly on their prey. David decides he likes her.

“Well, for better or worse we aren’t the law,” David begins, “So anything we decide is about the union, and Tripper as a member of it. And when we do decide, we’ve got to stick to that decision, hold ourselves to it.”

He’s getting nods, some of them understanding and some concerned. David deliberates silently for a second, feeling very much like he’s picking a path through nettles. If the union feels manipulated it could all blow up in their faces, irrespective of how many prep talks about strong leadership Spot gives.

Before his silence becomes suspicious, David continues.

“Jack and Spot and I have discussed a few options briefly.”

“’Course you have,” Kez scoffs. His fellow Harlem rep frowns.

“We aren’t going to force any of them on you,” David assures them, gesturing, “None of us want to be dictating to you like Pulitzer or Hurst.While we have discussed our options, we’d welcome other suggestions. I’ll open the floor to them now.”

With a short nod of encouragement, David steps back.

There’s a long moment of quiet. Then Mary steps in.

“’Spose we showed him the door?”

Jack laughs, a magnetic, crackling thing. Attention caught, he saunters into a patch of moonlight.

“So happens I was plannin’ to propose that we allow the Newsies’ Union to expel members.”

“You can talk,” Kez scoffs; the other Harlem rep nods vigorously.

“Yeah,” Jack agrees, lip curling ever so slightly, “I can talk. ‘Cos a little over a year ago, Joe got to me and I scabbed. Them’s the facts. What’s also the facts is you couldn’t’ve kick me outta the union. Maybe you oughta been able to. Now, I ain’t saying you gotta be a dictator about it, but there’s lines you don’t cross. You gotta decide if you’s willing to draw ‘em.”

David nods, sliding in before Jack can bundle the whole thing up into one. They can’t afford for anything to get muddled.

“And that’s the first motion I’m putting to you as Chairman of this meeting: to enable the union to disbar members by vote, given sufficient cause. Any questions?”

“How do we know it’s sufficient?”

“I’m getting to that. Right now we’re only voting on if you want the option to take away a membership, or not.”

A pause. When it seems no further questions are coming, David tables the motion again.

“All in favour say ‘aye’.”

They patter down like hail. Unanimous.

David doesn’t let himself smile, but the tightness in his shoulders does ebb a little as he proclaims, “Motion carried.”

“Next?”

“Sufficient cause. Where,” David echoes, “Is our line in the sand? I’d like to propose that we add a clause to the constitution to explicitly disallow discrimination against any member of the union based on their background. I’d also propose that we make contravening that clause an offence punishable, to the furthest extent, by expulsion.”

“And that could mean we don’t have to deal with him and his like?” Mary clarifies, tipping her head at Tripper.

“If you agreed that he committed a sufficient offence and the union voted unanimously to expel him,” David replies, “But don’t base your vote just on how you feel about Tripper or what happened last night.”

“Yeah, how come’s you’s not dead?” someone asks. David doesn’t see who.

He sighs. Curtains are starting to twitch around the square; they need to hurry up before someone assumes they’re up to something and sets the cops on them. Or comes out to deal with the problem themselves.

“’Cos I only got slightly shot. Does anyone need time to discuss the proposal more?”

“Hold your horses,” Spot interjects, stepping forwards. His eyes slide over David’s as he turns to face the group. David gestures him on.

“I got an amendment to propose. See, what Davey here ain’t saying out loud is this ain’t just about being respectful an’ all. This is about loyalty. Are you a newsie, or a shmuck in some gang? You gonna stand with your brothers and sisters and hold your head high and do somethin’ with your life? Or let some big boss decide your life for you? I know most all a’ you have chosen right. So. We got a chance to make some real change here, and I for one ain’t gonna let that get ruined ‘cos some of you is working for other interests. I’m saying anyone in a gang, we kick ‘em out.”

That one sends a quiet ripple through the representatives; they eye each other like alley cats, hissing to each other in pairs. David’s fairly sure agreement sits on most of their tongues, but something – or someone – is making it stick. Unsurprisingly, Spot seems to have anticipated this. He stands with his hands in his pockets and his chin jutted out imperiously, drawing in flickers of the unease and transforming it to support with a look or a nod. Strangely the representatives from Richmond seem to be the subject of much scrutiny. That’s a thread that David would pull on, at any other time.

Suddenly, a low hoot cuts through the discussions.

Kez’s head snaps up, “Someone’s gone for the cops.”

“Alright,” David acknowledges, bouncing on the balls of his feet, “All in favour of amending our constitution?”

Seven hands are raised; every neighbourhood but Queens.

“Queens, are you abstaining or against?”

“You didn’t hardly give us time to talk.”

“I’ll count that as abstained. All in favour of Spot’s proposed amendment?”

Six hands. Still a pass, but barely.

“Motion carried, with the amendment.”

A whistle, insistent.

“Who’s was that?” David asks, craning his head as if he could see far down the shadowed streets.

“Ours,” Spot responds, bouncing on the balls of his feet, “We gotta split.”

“Alright,” David nods, “We’ll deal with Tripper later. Meeting adjourned.”

The union vanishes like smoke, Manhattan among them. Somehow, David finds himself being walked home.

Chapter Text

In the wee hours of the morning, after a round of fierce hugs and a pot of coffee, David runs out of ways to avoid telling his family the truth about his disappearance.

He had considered lying. There are some things no-one’s mother should have to know. But Les has already heard a distorted version of some of the story from his friends, Mama would be able to sniff the deceit on David’s breath anyway, and it isn’t impossible that someone will sell the story to the papers. In the face of all that – and David’s pre-emptive guilt – it seems honesty is the only option. Even as David tries to make the story as pretty as it can be, skipping over the gory details and shining the spotlight on Jack and Spot as the dashing heroes, the atmosphere around the dining table steadily thickens.

Les stares near-unblinkingly at David with wide, wet eyes. Sarah’s arm snakes around their brother in a white-knuckled hold, while Papa turns his face up to the ceiling.

Unable to meet any of their eyes, David alternates between delivering his words to the tabletop and watching Mama’s shoulders crawl slowly to her ears. Every inch they creep is like a ratchet in David’s intestines.

Eventually, his words dry up. There are a few seconds of silence before the deluge.

****

Outside, the darkness thins.

David’s head is held up only by his palm, and his mother’s rasping words have begun to merely brush against his consciousness. The others have gone to bed.

“Oh, David,” Mama whispers, cutting herself off mid-sentence.

With difficulty, David forces his eyelids to lift. Wisps of silvery-blonde curl out of Mama’s plait and frame her reddened face and narrow shoulders. Her lips are chapped and shadows seep into the hollows around her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” David chokes, crumbling.

Clumsily, he stands and stumbles over to press a kiss to the top of his mother’s head. She pulls him closer, hand cool and steady against his back.

“Look at me.”

David does. Mama meets his eyes, solemn as a stone.

“We love you very much, young man.”

David sniffs. His voice warbles, just a little.

“I love you too.”

****

By the time dawn truly breaks, David’s body has reached its limit. For two days, he succumbs to a blur of compresses, tinctures, and broken sleep. At one point his father’s voice threads through the haze, reading poetry aloud.

When he surfaces, David spends an hour finding unremarkable things bizarre and disorienting. Even the kitchen seems too-sharp and new. Les follows him around the entire time, observing judgementally.

The joke’s on Les. When David opens the small cabinet by the sink, the bath salts left over from Papa’s injury tumble out. David attaches a note which reads they’re going spare and dispatches them with Les to give to Crutchie. Upon his return, Les presents David with a handful of gravel. He’s giggling the whole time.

****

Three days later, David is feeling almost alert. It’s a mixed blessing. At the same time as it allows David to ponder (Jack, his friends) and plan (the union, his finances), it also makes it increasingly difficult not to agonise and fret. If he tries to read for more than a few minutes at a time the words begin to waver on the page, so David turns to cleaning to occupy his mind.

When David is halfway through wiping down the insides of their drawers, Sarah comes home bearing gifts. The first comes from the mail box: a get-well-soon card from Katherine featuring a picture of a snail holding a handkerchief, with a non-negotiable summons to tea next week inside. The other is a copy of The Sun. It’s folded back to an article by K. Plumber about teething issues in the newsboy’s union, as featured the previous year.

****

Mama lets David loose on his final day with enough time spare to track Jack down after the evening edition.

Before he leaves, David makes a pass over his five-o-clock shadow, shucks his scruffy shirt, and replaces it with one of his neatest. It’s cornflower blue and Jack asked if it was new the tenth time David wore it in his presence, so David figures it’s nice enough to make him seem presentable despite his fading bruises. Sure enough, only a few of David’s neighbours stare him down as he walks by. Some even give him a nod.

****

The moment Jack spots David, his weary expression is obliterated by a blinding grin. David’s heart just about trips over itself. As Jack hooks a hand around his elbow and tugs him along towards the Bowery, it continues to stumble on, nervous and excited in equal measure.

They chat on the way there about little things – a spat between bunkmates, a delivery of genuine fresh doughnuts from the nuns, whether or not David should have cleaned the Jacobs’ rug.

The big thing bides its time in little glances. Resolution is just beyond the curtain; they only need to find the words to pull it back.

Fittingly, they return to Medda’s theatre. The building is full to the brim with a flurry of ropes and greasepaint in preparation for a show, but Medda promises slyly that they won’t be disturbed in the alley beside it.

In unspoken agreement, David and Jack settle just under the shadow of the fire escape, obscured a little from the curious eyes of passers-by.

Jack opens, a muscle ticking in his jaw: “You really okay? For certain?”

“Are you?”

Jack squints, looking irked.

“I’m alright,” David relents, kicking himself, “I promise.”

“So ‘m I,” Jack nods, cagey.

In a rush, he adds, “Your parents? Sarah?”

Jack cares, indisputably. But there’s something else there, too. A glimmer of anxiety.

David takes off his cap for something to do, then starts running his fingers over the rim as he formulates his response.

“They’re worried,” David settles on saying, “They’re not exactly gonna forget me vanishing anytime soon, but they forgive me too. They know I wasn’t getting into fights on purpose, and they know what we’re doing is important.”

“They’re not gonna…?”

“What?” David frowns.

Jack raises a brow and shifts uncomfortably, dust and gravel grinding under his boots.

David shakes his head.

“You’re not making any sense.”

“Y’know,” Jack says in a significant kind of way. He gestures to himself, a brief disgruntled flick of the wrist.

David can’t help but let his brows lift incredulously.

“They know it’s not your fault, either.”

“Really?”

Instead of tearing his hair out, David plasters on a grin and pushes at Jack’s shoulder.

“Don’t be ridiculous, they know you. You’re more in their good books than I am. Come to dinner on Friday, you’ll see.”

Still, Jack doesn’t look quite convinced. A little unhappy divot has appeared at the corner of his lip.

David pulls out the big guns.

“They’ll want to thank you for looking after Les while I’ve been away, anyway.”

That works.

“Kid don’t need looking after,” Jack laughs, “He needs herding.”

“Don’t I know it,” David agrees, shaking his head.

Jack’s smile gradually fades as David watches, replaced by a look as if Jack’s trying to do a complicated sum.

When Jack doesn’t make any move to enlighten David, he prods.

“What’s with the face?”

“I ain’t got a face.”

As a reflex born from having a younger brother, David attempts to poke Jack’s nose.

“’Course you’ve got a face. It’s right there, I’m looking at it.”

Jack swats him away, snorting.

“Geddoff, you loon. I’m trying to talk. We got… a lot to cover.”

David bounces on the balls of his feet, shakes out his arms.

“Okay.”

“Alright,” Jack nods, wiping his palms on his front pockets, “That night.”

A sensation flashes down David’s spine like a spider in a drainpipe. David doesn’t need a verbal clarification to know they’re talking about the Woodside meeting; the undercurrent of hatred in Jack’s expression is enough.

Jack sways closer.

“I never finished saying why I did what I did. And I think I oughtta.”

Jack levels David with a gaze like a cool fire burning low. David licks his lips.

“Funny thing is,” Jack says, smiling lightly, “I don’t think I realised why I got involved like that. Not ‘till after. I only knew I had to, no matter what. I’d’ve died for you.”

The idea of it sends a needle through David’s heart. He’d been scared when Lout had him at his mercy – the second Jack had started speaking, he was petrified.

“Don’t,” he orders. Grunts, more like.

“Oh, stop it,” Jack tuts.

Not in response to David’s words, though. Instead, Jack starts firmly unspooling David’s hands. They were curled into fists, nails gouging into the meat of his palms. He hadn’t noticed.

“Jack-”

“Shh.”

Jack squeezes David’s hands gently before releasing them. They hang on the ends of David’s arms, suddenly useless.

“Point is,” Jack continues, deceptively bright, “There’s a handful of people I’d take a bullet for. It’s only you I’d kiss. It’s only you I’d go to battle for not just ‘cos I need you safe, but ‘cos I need you with me. I need to be yours. I need…”

As an aside, David notes that Jack is wringing his hands. Mostly, David is being rocked by a firework. I need to be yours.

Yours.

David exhales raggedly. The walls watch on. Bit by bit, the evening unfurls.

All too fleetingly, Jack’s fingertips smooth over David’s jaw. David leans into the movement. Jack watches him, expression inscrutable.

“I need to talk about last time we was here, too, so’s you can understand.”

“Sure,” David rasps.

Jack’s brows arch, amused.

“Well, first of all, I gotta say you’re a snooty asshole sometimes. You looked at me like I was a pest the first few days of us.”

David must pull a face at that because Jack’s eyes sparkle and, without missing a beat, he chucks David’s chin.

“Hey-”

“Then, you took the stick out of your ass and you looked at me like I really fucking mattered.”

It’s only because David’s staring at Jack so intensely that he notices his lower lip wobble. David, for his part, feels frozen as an ice sculpture.

“I woulda loved you for that alone. But in Medda’s? God.”

Jack laughs helplessly, shaking his head.

“No-one looks at me like that. Whatever I’m doing, I’ll do it ten times over if it keeps you looking at me that way.”

“Looking how?” David asks.

The corners of Jack’s eyes crinkle.

“Nevermind. What matters is, there was a moment there I felt things I’d never felt before. I felt in love with you. And for a second I liked it. ‘Course,” Jack adds, a bitter set to his mouth, “It couldn’t be, right? Not me. Not us.”

“So you decided to ignore the problem,” David concludes.

He isn’t trying to be cruel; listening to Jack talk is like watching himself from months ago through a fun-house mirror, distorted but still striking. It would just be easier not to be sour if ‘the problem’ wasn’t him.

Jack rubs at his brow.

“Davey, I couldn’t honestly tell you if I decided anything. I just reacted.”

David looks to the scrubby clouds for strength.

“By giving me the cold shoulder for weeks. It was –”

David makes the mistake of looking at Jack. He’s slumping where he stands, hurt by the hurt he caused. The urge to forgive and forget without another word pulls at David like a chain, but he resists.

“I almost thought you hated me, Jack,” David begins, as plain as can be, “And I nearly felt like I deserved it. I knew I liked you before, but I didn’t even realise I was actually in love with you until after you started ignoring me. I was so...ashamed of it all, I-”

Jack’s head jerks up like a hunting dog’s.

“You shouldn’t be ashamed of a damn thing.”

David huffs sharply. His arms twitch, trying instinctively to cross, but he overrules them. Instead, David shakes his head.

“Tell that to the guy whose best friend just accused him of being an invert then dropped him like a hot potato.”

Jack swallows visibly. Otherwise, he doesn’t react.

David sniffs, getting a hold of himself. He was angry, when the topic of their rupture came up last week. Whatever he’s feeling now, it isn’t quite that. Perhaps it’s closer to frustration, or a strange sort of solitude: David forgives Jack, but he also desperately needs him to understand.

The faint smell of half-dry paint wends its way over from somewhere nearby.

The right words come.

“I think I figured if you were that ashamed of me, why shouldn’t I be ashamed of myself? I thought I could’ve lost everything, not just you. The guys, my job, the place I have with you all, all of it.”

“Dave, I…”

Jack trails off. His eyes are as red as the brick hemming them in.

They lapse into a jagged silence. Through the door to his left David hears the muffled sounds of something falling and a round of laughter like chittering birds. An elderly couple pick their way carefully along the pavement, framed like a picture postcard by the mouth of the alley. Jack follows David’s eyeline.

When the couple are out of sight, Jack’s gaze wheels back to David. His jaw ticks.

“I ain’t never been ashamed of you. You ain’t done a thing to be ashamed of.”

Despite himself, David bows his head.

“I mean it,” Jack insists, honing in on David like an alley cat stalks a mouse, “I’m proud to know a guy like you. Fuck, I’m so in love with you I can’t breathe with it sometimes. And I don’t think Heaven or Earth could ever make me ashamed of that.”

David’s breathing abruptly becomes very intentional.

“But,” Jack continues, wincing, stumbling over himself, “I’m scared and stupid, and I was scared-er and stupider then. I was cruel and I hurt you, and I guess a part of me probably knew it the entire time but I did it anyway. I’ll spend the rest of my life making up for that if I hafta.”

It’s a rush like a steaming bath on a frosty day.

Lungs straining, David shakes his head.

“You don’t have to grovel. Just don’t do it again.”

“Not ever.”

Slowly, deliberately, David exhales.

“You keep saying that like you think it’s definitely true.”

“What?”

“That you’re in love with me.”

Jack blinks heavily, shipwrecked.

“Davey,” he says, like a punch to the gut, “You think I’d lie about that?”

Maybe David should, with how categorically Jack had denied it before. But for all that David’s hopes have been crushed over and again, some stubborn kindling lingers for a reason. The facts support the hypothesis. Jack’s provided sufficient evidence in the past two weeks alone. A forest fire licks down to David’s fingertips. The rush nearly lifts him off the ground.

Wordlessly, David opens his arms. Jack immediately throws himself into the embrace, notching his neck against David’s like they’re two swans. David locks his knees and takes Jack’s weight. The fire inside him settles to a bone-deep warmth. His eyes slide shut.

“I forgive you,” David whispers, nose full of Jack’s hair and the smell of his scalp, “I was always going to.”

“You give a guy too many chances,” Jack murmurs back, close against David’s ear, “Thank you.”

There’s a little wetness on David’s neck.

He opens his eyes and squeezes Jack tighter, feels Jack’s heart thumping quickly through his chest. A live wire safe in David’s arms.

Tentatively, David traces the shell of Jack’s ear with the pad of his finger. He shudders lightly under the touch. David wonders if anyone’s ever touched Jack’s ear like that before. He’s not even quite sure why he did – maybe just to see if he could.

He smiles to himself.

“I adore you, you know.”

Jack emits a strange whine. David pulls back slowly, letting space intrude between them.

“Jack?”

Silently, Jack retreats further underneath the fire escape. He slumps against a support with a soft clang.

David’s stomach clenches.

“You believe me, right?”

He’d be a hypocrite if he didn’t, but that’s never stopped Jack Kelly before.

“’Course I do,” Jack affirms gruffly, “You told me you loved me when you thought I mighta hated you. On the chance I loved you back.”

David sneaks closer.

“But?”

Jack bends at the waist, bracing himself on his knees.

“I want this. But it’s still-”

Jack straightens, agitated, “Two years ago I was a guy who thought he’d find some girl somewhere and settle down and be her husband. I knew what I was getting into with romance. I had pictures in my head. It felt solid. Safe.”

Jack gestures between the two of them.

“For this thing, it’s just...colours.”

“Colours?” David echoes, bemused. He feels like he’s skipping a gear, lurching away from his destination.

“Beautiful ones,” Jack assures him earnestly, “But there ain’t nothing to ‘em, no shapes, nothing to hold on to. It could be all I ever wanted, but it feels like if I got any closer I’d fall right through and bust my face in on the ground.”

The warmth David felt is cooling; he clings to it stubbornly.

Slashes of light throw Jack’s pleading eyes into stark relief.

“And I got people. If I’m gone, what happens to them? What happens to you?”

“Oh, Jackie,” David sighs, deflating.

Maybe he should have expected this.

“I’m not making excuses or nothing,” Jack insists.

No, David thinks, you’re just panicking.

Instead of airing that particular thought, David drifts closer, settling shoulder to shoulder with Jack against the strut. The air is crisping, and Jack’s jacket feels a little thin against David’s own. Eyes on the mouth of the alley, David offers his hand. Jack’s fingers slot in nicely.

“If something happened to me, you’d carry on, and our friends would too. It wouldn’t be different the other way around,” David says.

“Nothing’ll happen to you,” Jack swears, glaring.

David shrugs.

“I’ve gotta die somehow, eventually. It’s just a matter if I do it stepping out with you or not.”

Jack grips his hand so tightly it hurts.

“Stop acting like it’s not dangerous.”

“Stop acting like it’s inevitable we’ll die from it,” David counters, letting a little steel show, “I seem to remember we nearly got our heads cracked in during the strike, and that had nothing to do with romance.”

Jack’s nostrils flare.

“Yeah, and Lout wasn’t thinking about your proclivities at all?”

“Sure, but – Look.”

Jack raises a brow, expectant.

David jostles him.

“We’re in as good a position as folks like us can be. We’ve got allies.”

“Allies?” Jack echoes sceptically.

“Yeah,” David affirms, “Crutchie, Race, Spot, Sarah. Probably Les too, eventually. People who can know about us, and people we can trust to keep the secret.”

Though Jack’s frown abates a little, it doesn’t entirely fade.

“They’re not everybody we know. I know it’s a new century and all, but I doubt it’ll ever be everybody.”

“No,” David has to admit. It leaves him with a clammy sensation, like condensed sweat.

“But,” he adds, rallying, “It’s better than a lot of people get.”

Jack purses his lips, eyeing a cobweb near his face like it’s about to give up the secrets of the universe. Want intrudes like a stab wound, but David stays quiet and lets Jack think.

“Sure,” Jack allows, coming back to himself, “We’ll have allies. Most of ‘em we can trust. I just don’t know if I can bet everything we have on that.”

David stomach clenches like he’s hanging off the railing of a ship, staring down to the ocean churning below. He detaches his hand from Jack’s grip. The action seems final, but David viciously quashes the thought. He’ll believe in their future, even if Jack can’t yet bring himself to.

Nonetheless, David has his pride.

“Jack.”

Caution stamped into every line of his features, Jack nods.

When he speaks, David tries to press every word into Jack’s skull.

“I don’t think I’m ever not going to be in love with you. I also don’t want anything from you you’re not willing to give, and I’ve got enough self-respect not to beg for your scraps.”

Jack’s jaw ticks.

“What are you saying?”

David meets Jack’s eyes, unrelenting.

“I’m saying if we do this, I need you to be all-in. I know you. I know an exit strategy makes you comfortable, but I can’t live with you always having one foot out the door.”

“Dave,” Jack replies, “I’m tryna’ keep us alive. In one piece.”

Though he’s tense as a bowstring, Jack’s words flow out liquid and smooth. It’s the voice he uses to calm squabbles and diffuse wound-up beat-cops. David’s not sure if he’s even doing it on purpose.

David smiles tiredly.

“I know. That ‘us’ is the other thing.”

“I thought us was the question.”

“It is,” David agrees, “But this is about you and me as separate people too. You might be the first boy I’ve ever fallen in love with, but you’re not the first I’ve ever taken a fancy to. If you choose not to be lovers, that doesn’t mean I’ll never be anything like it with anyone else. There’s other men out there who might be interested. If I meet one I like too, I’ll probably try it. You can’t change that decision for me.”

Jack rocks back on his heels.

“You’d really step out with some random fella?”

He says it like David has just announced he enjoys stealing people’s livers. David levels Jack with a potently unimpressed look.

“I’d get to know him first. I don’t have a death wish.”

Jack crosses his arms.

“What if you ‘n me did start going together, and then you met another fella you liked?”

A short, surprisedguffawrips itself out of David’s throat. Jack’s expression suggests that David has lost his mind. Ridiculous man.

“Jack,” David sighs, “If I could choose anyone in New York, I’d still prefer to have you.”

Jack’s lips work, chewing on phrases which don’t live to see the light of day.

“Anyone?” he asks in the end, fierce eyes covering for three fragile syllables.

“Anyone,” David confirms, heart aching, “You don’t have a clue what you do to me.”

“Guess that’s mutual,” Jack mumbles, swiping at his face, “Y’know I told Crutchie you could do better than me.”

“You were being an idiot, then,” David smiles, “The day we met, I knew you’d be in my life forever.”

Jack laughs.

“Now who’s the idiot?”

The ocean calms. David’s grip on the figurative railing loosens.

Jack licks his lips.

“I want this,” he promises, “I do. I want to be lovers. I just gotta get my head around how.”

David can work with that. David can definitely work with that.

“You’re scheming again,” Jack observes.

David shrugs, unrepentant.

“Yeah. What’s ‘all you ever wanted’?”

Jack pushes a hand through his hair.

“I dunno. Four walls, a door that locks. Our friends close by. Everybody's fed and no-one’s cold, and we get to get old and not hate it too much.”

Fondness unfurls in David like a flower.

“That sounds nice.”

“Yeah,” Jack agrees, a little wistful.

“I could kiss you in the morning where no-one can see,” David muses, “We’d eat at a little table and nearly knock heads every time we bent down for a spoon of soup. We’d fix the place up as best we could, just the way we wanted.”

It cracks David open a little bit, just thinking about it.

He bounces on his heels.

“We could tell our friends I’m too much of a prude to kiss a girl and you could have fun with a string of made-up love affairs. We could act like real spouses, or something like it; I’m not great at taking care of people, but I’d try.”

Jack gazes at David steadily. Eventually, he says.

“We’d need enough room for Crutchie to stay, if he needed.”

“Of course,” David agrees easily, “He doesn’t take up much room. It’d be best to have two beds anyway for show, we could squash onto one and let him have the other.”

Jack nods, considering. There’s a sharp light in his eyes.

“What if I wanted a bed all my own? Hell,” he snorts, “What if I wanted my own bedroom?”

David nods seriously.

“That’s fine, if we can swing it financially. I guess I might visit some nights, if I get lonely.”

“And what if any of your folks needed to stay over?”

David tilts his head.

“We’d make room. They’re adaptable.”

Jack’s teeth glint.

“Where would we get the money?”

“We’d get jobs, obviously. We’ve got skills. It’s doable, Jack.”

As subtly as he can, David crosses his fingers. Jack twists towards the mouth of the alley, caught up in a bubble of his own thoughts.

The shadows under the fire escape have thickened perceptibly. In a little while they’ll lose the light.

“Okay,” Jack says eventually, turning back to face David, “I see it. But what about your big plans?”

“My what?”

Jack rolls his eyes.

“What you want out of life. Your lofty goals. What happens to them? There must be more plans in that head of yours than just living in sin with me.”

“That’s a stupid phrase,” David feels obligated to point out.

“I didn’t make it up, did I?”

“Whatever,” David shrugs, “My plans...”

“My plans don’t really matter now,” he realises, going lax.

“Sure,” Jack agrees, sarcastic, “Plans aren’t your thing.”

“No, I didn’t mean that,” David backtracks, teasing out the thought as it forms, “My plans still matter. But they matter for… for the dream underneath them. I wanted to be useful. I wanted to make something of myself. I’ve done that, with the strike and the union, even if it wasn’t how I imagined it happening.”

It’s a very good realisation to have. David shakes himself.

“I’ll make new plans, of course, but they won’t be anything us being lovers can’t fit into.”

“Your plan,” Jack points at David sharply, “Is to not have a plan?”

David pulls a face.

“I wouldn’t go that far.”

“So…?”

“So I have room in them to make arrangements. To include you,” David clarifies, just in case he isn’t being clear enough.

“So’ve I,” Jack nods.

“My plans are,” Jack scratches the back of his head, “Are to survive, if I’m being honest. And try to be happy. And do right by people. I’ll work out how when it happens.”

David drips affection like honey. It’s a good job no-one can see them, because he may as well have ‘LOVE’ scrawled on his forehead in block letters.

“We could work it out together?” David suggests, “We’d be partners. Forever.”

“’Till death do us part?” Jack laughs. The sound comes out distinctly mangled.

“That’s what forever tends to mean,” David replies, as soft as butter in the sun.

For a split second, Jack’s cheeks dimple.

“Steady with the marriage vows, we ain’t even stepping out yet.”

David’s hand settles on Jack’s arm.

“Yet?”

Jack nods.

“You gotta say yes to me, to make it all official.”

“Hey!” David protests, jaw dropping, “That’s my line.”

“Tough,” Jack smirks, “You stole my heart, I can take your line. I love you. I’ll be your man. Will you be mine?”

“I’d like nothing more,” David answers honestly. Tears prick his eyes.

“You’re a miracle, you know,” Jack sighs, “And a madman too.”

“Only you’d say that.”

“More’s the pity for the rest of ‘em,” Jack purrs, “‘Means I get your handsome face all to myself. What’s a little madness to the prettiest pair of eyes I ever seen?”

All of David’s systems grind to an abrupt halt.

“Oh, I’m gonna enjoy this,” Jack croons.

David’s cheeks are past burning and getting close to charred.

“You are, huh?” he says, all jumbled up.

Jack’s hair is burnished by the last rays of the setting sun. If it weren’t for the hopeful arching of his brows he’d look like an angel. As it is, he’s practically licentious, a confection from David’s most secret dreams.

David’s heart flutters like a caged bird. Reverently, he lets his fingers skim under Jack’s jacket and curl around his braces. With a light tug, they’re chest to chest. Jack’s eyes are dark wells. Barely breathing, David takes the plunge.

****

Jack dives into the kiss with abandon; their first kiss, given Jack isn't inclined to count his earlier lapse as a proper attempt.

It's clumsy, mismatched, and Davey melts under Jack's careful touch. Jack’s a sculptor perfecting a masterpiece; he’s a god at an altar, taking nectar from a golden cup. The heat from their mouths zings all the way down to Jack’s toes. Only the pesky need to breathe induces them to part.

Davey pulls back looking slightly dazed.

****

The entire time David is trying to remember how to breathe, Jack caresses the nape of his neck. Satisfaction pours out of his expression like light through a window.

David has the wherewithal only to move them further into the obscurity of the alley before he’s falling in for more.