Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Davey’s the first person Jack’s ever known to graduate high school. Not that he’d been surprised, really, because Davey’s also the smartest, most driven person Jack’s ever known. And yeah, he’d had to work twice as hard to get half as far as anyone else in his classes, but there’s never been anything in the world could keep Davey fucking Jacobs down.

Jack’d been half expecting him to leave after graduation. Off to do something big and important, off somewhere bigger and more important than Manhattan.

He hadn’t, though. He’d almost gotten a job at the factory a few blocks down from the lodging house, but then the normal school in Queens had offered to pay him to attend classes, and Davey’d been overjoyed at the opportunity for more schooling.

No matter how many people had pointed out how inconvenient it was for Davey to commute an hour each way to Queens, he’d refused to move into the school housing, and Jack hadn’t - hadn’t actually pushed as much as he probably should have. Because, yeah, it would be easier for Davey to live closer to his classes, but it would also mean that Jack wouldn’t get to see him as often, and no one’s ever accused him of being selfless.

With his earnings from the World, Jack can only just afford a little studio outside of Newsies square, and he’s fairly used to coming home to find someone already there, because none of his friends have a very good grasp on the idea of personal space.

(Not that Jack’s any better, to be fair. He’s lost track of the amount of times he’s shown up unannounced to Race and Crutchie’s, or dropped by Kath’s place without warning.)

And Davey stops by more often than anyone else, says that Jack’s place is quieter than the Jacobses’ apartment, better for studying. Which is true, and Jack doesn’t point out that the library on Fifth would probably be an even better study spot, because why in the world would he?

Davey’s not studying when he gets home that night, though.

He’s sitting half-curled into himself on Jack’s couch, the oil lamp having been lit some time ago, by the looks of the burnt out wick. There’s a newspaper opened on his lap, but he doesn’t seem to be reading it anymore, just staring, and he doesn’t give any indication that he’d heard Jack come in.

Jack throws the deadbolt on his apartment door, and then takes a step forward, the wood creaking underneath his feet.

“Davey?”

Davey looks up at him, blinks, and then says, “Oh. Hey, Jack.”

Like he wasn’t expecting to see him or something, in Jack’s apartment.

The light from the lamp jumps up, and Jack realizes that Davey’s eyes are puffy, red-rimmed, and his entire chest freezes over.

“Davey? Hey, what’s wrong?” It comes out all in a rush, and Jack sinks down onto the couch next to him, twisted to the side so he can face him. The flame from the lamp rests gently against his skin, and he’s clearly been crying, eyes swollen and tear tracks still visible down his cheeks. It should make him look a wreck, but there’s never been nothing about Davey that’s anything less than gorgeous.

Jack itches to do something, but he’s not sure what, exactly. Make everything better, somehow.

“Have you read the paper?” Davey asks, which isn’t what Jack had been expecting. It makes sense, though, with the way Davey’s grip is nearly tearing the paper, that it’s connected to whatever’s got him so upset.

Jack leans in closer, so he can read the headline over Davey’s shoulder. Front page news: Six Dead in Labor Dispute.

Davey sniffles, and Jack catches the ghost of a tremble in his fingers. “They killed them,” he says, all soft anger. “Just for- for asking for a fair wage and safe working conditions. They killed them.”

He takes a breath, and then turns to face Jack instead of the headline, eyes shining, and Jack’s knocked breathless with it, how much fight is in him, how much he cares. Because Davey, even now, still believes everyone deserves a fair deal.

“Every time I think we’re getting somewhere,” Davey says, “there’s just another setback. You can’t kill someone just for being poor! I just- We can’t win. They won’t let us.”

Davey’d been following the striking miners out in Colorado for the better part of two years, which is how Jack knows how rough it’s been on the union. They’d called the militia out to strike break about a year ago, and it’s been a lot of bad news since.

Davey hadn’t lost hope about it through all of it, though. Not like this.

Jack rests a hand on Davey’s shoulder, which is dangerous, when the urge to run his hand up a bit higher, rest it against the side of Davey’s neck, brush his jawline with his thumb, is a sharp ache in his chest. “Davey, hey. ‘S just a battle, right? We’s still gonna win the war, ain’t we?”

Davey laughs, but it’s a short, violently disappointed sound that tears at something in Jack’s chest. Because Davey’s never gotten like this, has he? Because he’s always been nothing but endless hope, even when all of the odds were stacked against them.

“They killed people, Jack. How are we supposed to win against that?”

Jack doesn’t have the answer. But Davey should.

“Yeah, they killed people,” he says, and it feels like a physical blow to tear the words out, but he has to keep going. “An’ that’s fuckin’ terrible. But what is we sayin’ if we jus’ roll over now? That they can get away with it? That we’s all gonna stay in line if they murder enough of us jus’ cause we dared to ask for a fair deal?”

Davey tightens his jaw, frowns down at the paper in his hand. The lamp, on its last dredges of oil, is slowly but surely dying, the light against Davey’s cheekbone getting softer and softer with the night. 

“Okay,” he says. “Okay. So we can’t give up. But what now? I just- I feel like there’s something we should be doing to help.”

Which is a bit ridiculous, when they’re hundreds of miles away, and Davey and some of the guys have already been protesting and collecting support money anyway, but it’s such a Davey thing to say that it cracks open something warm and soft inside his chest, and Jack doesn’t really have a good excuse for what he says next except that it’s Davey and it’s been five years and he’s so pretty in the fading lamplight and it’s just - it’s Davey.

“D’you have any idea how perfect ya are?”

Davey’s brow furrows, and he opens his mouth to say something, but now that’s out there, between them in the empty space of Jack’s apartment. And he can’t take it back if he wanted to, so. To hell with it.

He pushes forward into Davey’s space, slow enough that Davey could stop him, could do the smart thing and call it off. 

Davey doesn’t, though.

His heart beats a frantic pace against his chest, his lungs tight with his breath as he slides his hand up to the soft skin at the point where Davey’s neck meets his shoulder, warm and solid beneath his palm, and then breaches the last few inches between them, presses a kiss to Davey’s lips.

He tastes just slightly like Vaseline, and he’s so warm, full of passion, full of fight. Jack can feel every ounce of it.

He brings his other hand up to Davey’s cheek, cradling his face, and Davey fists a hand into the front of his shirt, the newspaper crinkling between them.

When they part, Davey’s gone a bit red, lips still barely parted, and the silence falls heavy around them, waiting for one of them to break it.

Davey doesn’t take his hand back from Jack’s shirt, doesn’t pull more than a few inches away. And his voice is still soft when he asks, “Why’d ya do that?”

And Jack doesn’t really know what to say to that. Because it’s Davey. Because he’s everything, everything, that Jack’s ever wanted. Because he’d waited five long years and Davey’s right here, bathed in firelight and curled up on Jack’s couch, in Jack’s tiny studio apartment, and how could Jack ever help wanting to close the gap, wanting to make Davey his in whatever way he wasn’t, already?

“’Cause ya looks so gorgeous when ya talkin’ about worker’s rights. An’ I couldn’t fuckin’ help myself anymore, Davey.” ‘Cause I been in love with you since you walked into that circulation gate and started a strike.

“Jack…” Davey says, quiet and trailing, and Jack knows Davey’s bad news voice when he hears it, but it’s so at odds with Davey still pressed into his space, still here, not running away when God knows he should. “Are you sure about this?”

Jack knows what he’s asking. Is he prepared to give up everything he’ll have to give up? To keep a secret this big from everyone? To commit to something that won’t see the light of day?

But then, Davey’s here. Davey’s here, and he’s real, Jack had kissed him and he’d kissed back. And he’s asking if Jack wants him, and really, what other possible choice does Jack have?

“Davey. Sweetheart,” he says, and Davey tenses up against him, and Jack only has a second to think that he’s somehow ruined this before Davey’s surging forward with enough force to knock Jack back against the arm of the sofa.

There’s a bit too much teeth this time, Davey passionate and overeager in his haste, and Jack can’t help but laugh into the kiss, relieved, happier than he can ever remember being. He traces the pad of his thumb along Davey’s jawline, like he can commit it to memory from the feeling alone. 

It’s early June, the heat already sweltering, and he should be overheating, with Davey nearly on top of him, but he isn’t, somehow. Because Davey’s nothing but perfect, just a soft warmth right next to him, and Jack would never dream of letting something like the temperature ruin this moment.

Davey pulls back, looking a bit dazed, and Jack fights against every instinct in his body not to start kissing him all over again.

“Davey,” Jack says around a smile. “I ain’t never been more sure in my life.”

Davey grins, leans in to kiss him again, and this is - it’s dangerous and a bad idea and Jack’s sure - dead sure - that he’s never gonna make a better decision than Davey Jacobs.

—

It’s nearing the end of November, and the air in New York City is electric. The streets are nearly overrun with working women that have poured out of textile factories to strike, and Kath’s so caught up in it that she’s spent most of her nights at their apartment, talking politics with Davey.

(Their apartment now, because Davey’d moved in not a second after he’d graduated, and Jack’s so fond over it that it threatens to split open his chest sometimes.)

Sarah’s there about half the time, too, being part of the striking workforce herself, and Jack’s not sure how Kath’s got any questions left to ask anyone, with how she’s badgered poor Sarah.

“And that Ms. Lemlich,” Kath’s saying, though how her and Davey have anything left to say on the strike is a mystery to him. “She’s so inspirational! And not an easy woman to get an interview with, let me tell you. Every paper in the city’s running an article on her, and none of them with an actual interview.”

She’s sat with Davey on the couch, a glass of wine in hand, and getting more and more animated as the night goes on. He and Sarah had taken to sitting perched on the edge of the bed, just barely close enough to still be part of the conversation.

At his side, Sarah sways in closer and asks, quietly, “Think they know we’re still here?”

He snorts a laugh. “Nah. Get Davey talkin’ about worker’s rights an’ he forgets everythin’ else.”

It’s not a lie, but Jack can’t be too bothered by the lack of attention, because now Davey’s talking, and he’s - God, he’s fucking beautiful when he really starts going.

“A born strike leader,” Davey says, because him and Kath haven’t stopped gushing about this Ms. Clara Lemlich all week. He’d be jealous if he didn’t have on very good authority that she wasn’t quite his speed. “I’m telling you, there’s no chance Harris can ignore them with leadership like that. A 52 hour week, Kath, imagine that!”

He’s all fire, all fight, alight with the thrill of change. Jack could look at him like this for years and never get tired of it.

“Better leader’n me?” Jack asks, rejoining the conversation, and Dave looks over like he really had forgotten that they were here. It should be annoying, if it weren’t so endearing on him.

Davey opens his mouth to say something, amusement playing along the line of his lips, but Kath beats him to it.

“Oh, are you the strike leader, now? What happened to ‘I’m a blowhard, Davey’s the brains’?” She affects a lower register to try and imitate him and it sends Sarah into a fit of giggles, which Kath looks way too proud of, in his opinion. Didn’t even sound like him.

Davey raises his eyebrows. “You said that?” He asks, because that quote hadn’t actually made Kath’s article, back then, and he’s managed to keep it pretty well under wraps since. In his defense, it had been fairly true. And, further in his defense, he’d been sixteen and infatuated at the time.

He shrugs and breaks into an easy grin. “What can I say, Davey? You’s a real union man. Led a city-wide strike at sixteen.”

Davey grins back, something bright flashing in his eyes, and shakes his head good-naturedly. “Since when are you one for modesty, Jack Kelly?”

Kath sits up a bit straighter. “That’s what I said! And anyway, this is a on an entirely different scale! Thousands, tens of thousands! They stand poised to reform the entire industry if they can hold out on the picket lines.”

And then Davey starts in on the importance of smaller, more concentrated strikes, and Jack means to listen to what he has to say, really, he does, but Davey just - He gets this fire about him. Animated and full of life and fucking beautiful in his sincere belief that things are going to change.

When Sarah and Kath excuse themselves later in the night, Jack only barely lets the door close behind them before he’s got Davey pushed up against the wall of their apartment, fingers scrabbling at the buttons on Davey’s shirt.

“Christ, Davey,” he says, almost over-warm despite the dropping temperatures outside. “Can’t get me all worked up like that when we’s got guests over.”

Davey laughs, brushes a palm against the side of Jack’s neck, achingly gentle. “I didn’t do anything!” he protests, but Jack can hear the playful lilt to his tone. He knows what he did.

He bites a kiss into Davey’s skin, just below his collar-line, where it won’t be visible to the light of day, and Davey sucks in a sharp breath above him. “C’mon, Davey,” he whispers against Davey’s skin. “Tell me more about worker’s rights. Say somethin’ about the shirtwaist strike, fuckin’ anythin’.”

Davey’s gone a bit breathless, Jack can tell, from the rapid rise and fall of his chest, and Jack kisses him, sharp and bruising, before he can answer.

“Yeah?” Davey asks when Jack lets him up for air. “Y’wanna hear about ‘em shutting down an entire industry for fair wages? About the safer working conditions they’re gonna win? Locked steel doors, Jackie, one bathroom break a day! They’re gonna change the world.”

He gets brighter as he goes on, his gaze more distant, like he can see it all, history unfolding in front of him. Jack wouldn’t be surprised if he can, if he can see the whole timeline broken down piece-by-piece, everything that needs to happen to enact change.

There’s awe colouring his voice, something bright and hopeful in his eyes, and Jack can’t help himself anymore.

He slips a hand underneath Davey’s shirt, now half unbuttoned, and pulls him down by the back of his neck to catch him in another kiss.

He doesn’t hear the door open up behind him.

“Sorry, I forgot my-” Kath’s voice cuts through the moment, and it’s like a bucket of cold water, freezing down his spine.

Jack almost doesn’t turn around, like it won’t have actually happened if he just doesn’t acknowledge it, but Davey’s clearly looking at Kath over Jack’s head, just on the verge of shaking, and Jack can’t let him face it alone.

He turns around, still positioned in front of Davey, like he needs protecting from Kath of all people. But then, Kath hasn’t hasn’t said anything yet, and maybe he does.

Jack’s heart feels too heavy for his chest, in danger of crashing straight through his ribcage.

“Kath,” he says, surprised by the pleading note that’s made it’s way into his voice. He doesn’t think he should be worried by her, but between Crutchie and Racer, she’ll make the third ever person who’s known, outside of the two of them, and Jack’s just not sure how this kinda thing goes, generally speaking. “Kath, it ain’t- Listen, me an’ Davey we’s not-”

And he’s not sure what he’s going to say, really, but he doesn’t get the opportunity to because Kath holds up a hand in a motion for him to wait, something unreadable in her expression.

“I should’ve noticed that,” she mumbles to herself, and then, louder, directed down the hallway outside their apartment door, “Sarah?”

Behind him, he can feel Davey tense, and he plants his feet more firmly.

“No, she doesn’t need to-” Davey starts, but Kath just gives him a look, reasserts her silent order to wait.

Sarah walks back into the doorway. “What’s the matter?” she asks, only sparing him and Davey a quick glance before turning her attention toward Kath. “Can’t you find-”

And Kath’s got a knack for cutting people off tonight, it seems, because she circles a hand around Sarah’s wrist and pulls her down into a kiss before she can finish the question.

Jack’s knocked breathless, and however he expected this conversation to go, it wasn’t like this. It’s clearly a surprise to Sarah, but not an unfamiliar one, Jack thinks, by the way Sarah’s hand hovers around Kath’s waist, leaned in rather than pulling away.

Kath grins, bright and more than a bit mischievous, when they part, and says, “You don’t have to worry about us. We’ll keep your secret.” A confused relief floods through Jack’s veins.

Sarah blinks, a furrow in her brow, and for a second she looks so much like Davey it takes Jack aback.

“David,” she says, eyes trained on Davey behind him. “You and…” She trails off, but the implication is clear in the gaze she flits between the two of them.

Davey pushes lightly against Jack’s shoulder, and yeah, right, he’s still planted here, blocking Davey off from the rest of the room. Regretfully, even though, really, there’s nothing here to protect Davey from, he steps off to the side, the loss of warmth at his back sudden and jarring.

“You and Kath?” Davey shoots back. “You never…” he trails off, seems to remember that they never did, either, so how could he expect anything else from his sister?

Jack takes a look at Kath, and says, before he can think better of it, “Went an’ got yourself a Jacobs, too, huh?”

She laughs, and the tension between the eldest Jacobs siblings cracks, Davey turning red and throwing a scandalized “Jack!” toward him.

“We really should go,” Kath says haltingly, and Sarah gives her the same unimpressed look he’s seen on Davey a million times over.

“Your coat, Kitty,” she says, and come to think of it, Jack doesn’t think he’s heard anyone else call Kath ‘Kitty’ besides Sarah.

—

By their thirties, Jack and Davey’d upgraded to a one bedroom in lower Manhattan. It’s a stretch, between Jack’s salary at the World and Davey’s meager pay from the school he teaches at, they can only barely make the rent, but it’s worth it for the extra space, the ability to get a queen size bed into their bedroom.

Jack misses the full sometimes, how close it pressed them together, but the queen makes it easier for him to watch Davey sleep in the mid-morning light filtered through the window. 

He’s never quite as at ease as he is in his sleep, face smoothed out and softened. It’s only been fairly recently that he’s started to retain the worry lines between his brows, the beginnings of crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes.

Jack loves it. Loves every single morning he’s lucky enough to wake up next to him, to see him become this beautiful man in Jack’s bed, rather than the awkward teenager he’d been when they’d met.

He rests a palm on top of Davey’s bare stomach, thumb brushing back and forth in a pacing motion against his skin. He’d gained a bit of weight over the years, the two of them being generally able to get food on the table every day combined with the fact that he’s not up on his feet half the time selling papers anymore making him not that gangly kid he’d been, back when they were younger.

Davey stirs, eyes cracking barely open against the light coming in from the window.

“Jack? What time’s it?” He asks, half-mumbled, and Jack presses a kiss, feather-light, to the skin of his chest.

“Dunno. After ten, prob’ly.” It’s a guess, but a pretty good one, based on how bright it is outside, and the fact that Jack’d already been up for about half an hour, not willing to get out of bed.

Davey groans, eyes fluttering closed again. “’S the weekend. Go back to sleep.”

Jack grins, but presses another kiss to Davey’s chest, on top of a bruise that he’d left there last night. Davey’ll sleep half the day away, if Jack lets him.

“C’mon, Davey,” he says, between tracing the constellation of bruises against Davey’s skin. “Tell me more about this union a’ yours.”

The union, really, is the reason for the smattering of bruises, dark and purple, covering Davey’s chest, ‘cause he’d come home fucking alight about being recruited into the NYC Teacher’s Union, brand new with Davey as one of the very first members. Talking about fair wages and pensions and tenures and fucking collective action.

Jack’s going a bit out of his mind just thinking about it now, the look on Davey’s face, the fire in his eyes, and sucks another bruise into Davey’s sternum. A warm, soft hand comes to rest on the back of his neck, gentle, at odds with the near-violent passion in Jack’s chest.

“No,” Davey says, voice lined with laughter. “’M not gettin’ you worked up this early in the mornin’.”

Which isn’t fair, because Jack’s already worked up, just having Davey this gorgeous, this passionate here in their bed. Their bed. That’s never gonna stop being a wonder.

“’S not early, Sweetheart,” he says, and moves down to trail his lips along the line of Davey’s hipbone.

“Jackie,” Davey breathes out, and then pulls Jack up into a kiss, his lips chapped, still kind of gross with morning-breath, but it’s Davey, and he’s fucking perfect.

He trails down to Davey’s neck, running his teeth along tender skin just below his jawline. Careful not to make any marks, any bruises here.

“Dave, Sweetheart, Beloved,” he says, because he knows that the pet names still get Davey going, even now. “What’d’ya have ta say about loyalty oaths?”

Davey huffs a laugh, breathy and bright. “What, that they’re an employer overreach designed to create unfair wages? How are we supposed to get ahead if we’re bound to a single institution no matter what they’re paying?”

His palm is still resting against the back of Jack’s neck, gently woven into the ends of Jack’s braids, and he pulls softly every so often, distracted in an animated passion. Jack presses his lips to the dip of Davey’s collarbone.

“There’s no wage competition if we can’t go out and search for better pay! They can’t just keep us indentured like that. They have to respect our right to ask for a fair shot,” he’s saying, the breathless note in his voice the only indication that he’s otherwise preoccupied by Jack tracing his lips across the expanse of skin bared.

There’s that anger, that awe in his voice, that faraway note that means he’s thinking in big-picture about the changing times, about everything they’re owed as part of the workforce.

“Jesus Christ, Davey,” he says, past the blood rushing in his ears, resting his head against the sun-warmed skin of Davey’s chest. “Y’ever gonna stop bein’ so perfect?” 

He hears a breath catch in Davey’s throat, and then he grins, wide enough to crinkle at the smile lines around his eyes.

“I’m in love with you, Darling,”  he says, and Davey doesn’t pull out the ‘Darling’ very often, but it makes Jack melt inside every time he does. It’s so far from the first time Davey’s said that he loves him, and it knocks him more and more breathless every time, because he has no idea how he’s managed this. This life, this little corner of time they’ve carved out for themselves.

In their bed, in their apartment, Davey is warm and solid and real and really in love with him. Jack’s chest is full of nothing but fondness.

—

By the time the twenties roll around, things really start to move quickly. It’s strike after strike, court case after court case across the entire nation. Jack’s dizzy with it, the pace of societal change, beyond anything that he’d have even imagined, back when he was a kid selling papers on the street for a few cents a day.

They’d moved apartments again, because the one they’d been in had needed construction, and their new place has electricity and running water throughout, which is still a marvel to Jack. 

He’d been promoted through the ranks to head cartoonist, and Davey’d managed to bargain himself into better pay at the high school, so it’s not even quite the stretch it’d been before.

It’s only a few weeks after they move in that he runs into Crutchie just outside of the World, sat down on a bench with his crutches resting beside him. He’s dozing off a bit, looking like he’s been waiting for a while by the time Jack gets off work.

Jack sinks down to sit next to him, close enough that their shoulders brush together. They don’t get much chance to catch up anymore, between Jack’s day job and Crutchie having taken up running the lodging house from Kloppman, and without Jack noticing it’s somehow been almost two months since they’ve seen each other.

It’s surreal, how long it’s been since he was a teenager, seeing Crutchie every single day.

Crutchie brightens up as soon as Jack sits down, jostling him fully awake. “Hey, Jack,” he says, and no matter how long it’s been, he still says Jack’s name like family.

“Hey,” Jack says. “How long ya been waitin’?”

Crutchie shrugs and starts the process of getting to his feet, crutches braced underneath him. Very recently, he’d switched over to these forearm crutches that seem to make getting around a bit easier for him, but he’s still been slowing more and more as he gets older.

Then again, so has Jack.

“Couple’a hours maybe? Ain’t you s’pose to be out at five?”

Jack gets back to his feet, feeling the tight stretch of muscles in his back from sitting hunched over all day. “Yeah, usually. Everyone’s talkin’ about this Railway Labor act, though. Can’t hardly get any work done.”

Crutchie grins. “Yeah, how’s your- How’s Davey feel about that?”

Davey’s been- God, he’s been a wildfire recently. Letter campaigns and protests trying to get the RLA to pass through Congress. He’s been all go, all fight, and Jack’s just been caught in the whirlwind of it, of how fucking gorgeous Davey still is when he’s got a cause this close to put his full weight behind.

He smiles, and he’s sure it looks as stupidly lovestruck as he feels, but he can’t imagine why he should care. “Sure he’s throwin’ a party or somethin’ now it’s finally been passed. Haven’t seen ‘im since the Sun printed the story this mornin’.”

Crutchie laughs, and they stand at a still for a moment, the sun painting everything in golden as it dips below the horizon. “Kath said ya got a new place,” Crutchie says, which makes sense, because Davey’d told Sarah as soon as they’d moved, who’d surely told Kath. “Can I see?”

Jack kicks himself a bit. If Davey were here, he’d chastise him for his bad manners. Then again, if Davey were here, he’d’ve already invited Crutchie home for supper.

“Yeah. Yeah, ‘course. ‘S a few blocks down; y’good to walk?”

Crutchie agrees, and Jack tries not to look too closely at how heavily he’s leaning on his crutches, because he knows how badly Crutch hates it when he gets too overbearing.

It’s a quick enough walk, even with the both of them trailing at a fairly slow speed, catching up on everything that’s happened in the past couple of months, and they’ve made it to Jack and Davey’s front door before dark.

Crutchie whistles lowly as Jack turns his key in the door. “Electricity?” he says, because they’d been able to see the building lit up through the outside windows. “Pulitzer’s really payin’ the big bucks, ain’t he?”

“Jackie?” Davey’s voice comes from the kitchen as soon as the door’s open. He’s never stopped doing that, calling Jack’s name as soon as he walks through the door, and Jack’s never stopped being unbearably fond over it.

It must show on his face, because Crutchie rolls his eyes good-naturedly and shoulders past into the apartment. “And me,” he calls out, and something in the kitchen makes a muted clattering sound as Davey rushes out to greet them.

“Crutchie!” Davey exclaims, pulling Crutchie into a hug as soon as he’s within sight. “Jack didn’t tell me you were comin’, I’d have made something else for supper. All we’ve got is stew.”

Jack forgoes the kiss he’d usually greet Davey with, because it’s just Crutchie, but he knows it still makes Davey a bit nervous around anyone else. “Hey, I didn’t know he was comin’. Little pest just showed up at the World and followed me home.”

Crutchie gives him a grin that Jack recognizes well enough to mean that he’d be flipping Jack off, if it wouldn’t make him lose balance, and makes his way over to sit on their couch. “Y’heard the news, Davey?”

Davey brightens several notches, and Jack leans back against the wall, arms folded over his chest. Crutchie shoots him another grin, because he’s always been able to see right through Jack, but doesn’t call him on it.

“A seat at the table, Crutch,” he says, and he’s already lost in it, already seeing five, six steps ahead of what Jack can even imagine. “A seat at the table! A full set of rules for collective bargaining, a guarantee that the union can go on strike without risking their jobs.”

He’s swept up, a vision in all of his passion, all of his wonder, and Jack realizes suddenly that he’s not going to be able to stand here with his hands to himself if he has to keep watching Davey go on like this.

He brushes past him to get to the kitchen, hand trailing along the small of his back as he does, and says, quiet, “Gonna watch the stew.”

Davey, without even breaking the rhythm of his speech, nods and turns his head to catch Jack in a kiss as he walks past.

He and Crutchie share a look over it, amused, but Davey doesn’t even seem to realize he’s done it, still not breaking pace on his tirade, still going on and on about the labor relations that have been laid out by this bill. Tearing himself away from Davey when he’s like this, so caught up in the fight that he’d kissed Jack in front of Crutchie without even realizing it, is a physical ache, but Crutchie definitely does not want to see him and Davey making out like teenagers, so he does, regretfully excusing himself to the kitchen.

Even from the other room, Jack can still hear him, can still catch every ounce of passion, every assertion of how the world is going to change. On the stove, the stew that Davey’d started simmers at a low heat, and, truthfully, he pays less attention to it that he does to Davey’s voice floating over from their living room, the softly familar rise-and-fall rhythm of Davey steadfast in his belief that every single thing they’re owed is going to be either given to them, or taken.

The thing is, Jack fell in love with Davey within a month, at the most, of knowing him, but he’d had no idea how deeply. It’s like he hasn’t stopped falling since he was sixteen, like every single time Davey does something this- this Davey, Jack finds out that what he’d thought was the floor wasn’t actually, and he goes careening all over again.

In the living room, Davey isn’t losing momentum, snowballing into a tirade, and Jack turns the heat down further on the stove and diverts his attention entirely. Let it burn. Jack couldn’t care any less.

—

Davey’s hair is a muddy silver in the afternoon sun, these days. He’d taken longer to start greying than Jack had, but he’s making up time now, his hair going lighter and lighter by the month, and Jack’s sort of over-the-moon enamoured by it.

When he’d been a kid, he hadn’t - hadn’t known, really. He’d hoped. Of course he’d hoped, some blind-selfish and desperate thing in his chest that needed to think that Davey wouldn’t ever find someone better, someone easier. Wouldn’t ever realize how much he was sacrificing. That they’d get to grow old together.

But slowly, so gradually that Jack hadn’t known it was happening, he’d come to realize that Davey was here for the long haul. That he knew exactly how much he was sacrificing, and just thought that Jack was worth it.

And isn’t that something? If there’s some God, or higher power out there, that Jack’s managed to pull one over on them. Managed to keep this, keep Davey. To watch him go grey and collect wrinkles, settle into their life.

“Are you listening?” Davey asks at his side, and at some point on their walk down the block, they’d stopped without him noticing. “This is important, Jack.”

Jack doesn’t doubt that, because just about everything that Davey has to say is important, but he can’t help that he gets distracted sometimes. Which is Davey’s fault, anyway, for the record. If he’d stop being so gorgeous, Jack’d stop getting distracted.

“Sorry, sorry,” Jack says, and leans in just close enough that the back of his hand brushes against Davey’s. “You was sayin’?”

Davey narrows his eyes. “So you weren’t listening.”

Jack grins, and something in him longs to pull Davey in close, the way he would if they were back at the apartment, but it’s an old, faded impulse, a familiar splinter he’s never quite learned to tune out. “I’m easily distracted. Y’oughtta know that, Dave.”

Davey gives him an unimpressed look, one that hasn’t really changed in the thirty years they’ve known each other, that Jack’s heart still flips over in his chest for.

“Distracted by what? What could be more important than this bill, Jackie?”

“You,” Jack says, matter-of-fact, and he’s made the same comment a million times over, but Davey always gets flustered over it like the very first time.

He looks straight ahead and bites the inside of his cheek to keep a straight face, but is betrayed by the smile lines around his eyes deepening, the tips of his ears going red. When he looks back over, he’s soft, framed by the sun in his hair, reflecting off of his glasses.

“D’you wanna hear about the bill?” he asks, quiet, but not unsure, and really what Jack wants is to kiss him senseless, but that’s not an option that Davey’s presenting.

“Start at the beginning for me?” He says, because he really hadn’t caught any of what Davey’d been saying about it.

He shifts a bit in place, trying to discreetly take some weight off of his joints, but it doesn’t get past Davey, who shoots him another look.

“There’s a bench a block down,” he says, without giving Jack any room to protest, because he knows Jack better than anyone, and he knows Jack would protest that he doesn’t need it, given the chance.

He does, more and more these days. Davey’d gotten off a bit easier, but Jack’s barely fifty, and his joints are already wrecked from hours standing out in the cold on street corners in his youth. 

Davey starts walking forward again, leaving Jack to follow closely behind, and picks up back at the beginning.

“It’s going to pass through Congress, I know it,” Davey says, already animated and as lovely as he’s ever been. “Norris and La Guardia are both pushing it through.”

Fiorello H. La Guardia. Davey’s always got this dreamy quality when he says the name of New York City’s mayor, because he’d openly allied himself with the socialist party and Davey’s a little bit smitten. Jack bites his cheek to keep the stupidly lovestruck smile from his face.

“It’ll outlaw yellow-dogs and injunctions. The employers have got to respect the right of their employees to unionize. It should be a guaranteed right, codified into law.”

As soon as they get to the bench, the couple of young kids who’d been sitting there take one look and get up to offer their seats, and Jack’ll consider how he feels about that later, when the rest isn’t such a welcome relief on his joints.

Davey sits down beside him, their thighs pressed together, and he’s still going on about this bill, swept up in a speech about the right to organize. Jack, having caught the gist of the actual bill, turns his attention from the content of Davey’s speech to the fire in his eyes, the stubborn and steadfast lilt to his voice.

God. Someone oughtta lock Davey Jacobs up, for being this beautifully irresistible out in public.

It’s then, in the middle of Davey’s speech, that they’re interrupted by one Racetrack Higgins.

In a lot of ways, Race hasn’t changed a bit since they were kids, because he breaks into a grin as soon as he sees them, and forces his way onto the bench to sit in between them, arms spread on top of the backrest.

Davey breaks off from his tirade with a startled sound in the back of his throat, because he’d been swept up enough that he hadn’t noticed Race coming over until he’d forceably made himself known.

Race just grins bigger when Jack pushes against his shoulder, Davey throwing them both an exasperated look and mumbling something about them being “like overgrown kids.”

“Hey, d’ya mind?” Jack says instead of ‘hello’, and Davey might have a point about them being overgrown kids, because somehow Jack always feels like a teenager again when he’s around Race. “We was sittin’ here.”

Race shrugs. “I ain’t stoppin’ ya. You’s still sittin’ here.”

Jack rolls his eyes, but he doesn’t push it, because he’s not actually that annoyed, and it isn’t like Race’ll move anyway.

“Where’s Spot?” Davey asks from the other side of the bench, because Spot and Race are pretty much a package deal, at this point. Not that Jack has any right to give him shit about it, because he knows that him and Davey are worse.

Race shrugs again, uneasy smile a touch too wide to be believable to anyone that knows him, and Jack goes to push him about it, but Race cuts in before he can. “Dunno. Thought you two’d be at home celebratin’.”

Jack’s heart stops dead in his chest, and then starts up beating twice the speed. On Race’s other side, Davey furrows his brow, and then brightens, and Jack knows exactly what he’s thinking before he even says it.

“Did it pass?” he asks, and the look on Racetrack’s face means he absolutely has no idea what Davey’s talking about. Jack grins, and a little piece of metal in his pocket almost burns.

“Did- You ain’t tell ‘im yet?” Race says, turning to address Jack halfway through the sentence, and Jack gives him a look he hopes still conveys ‘shut up, Racetrack,’ but it’s too late.

“Tell me what?”

Jack doesn’t answer, because Race is already berating him.

“For real? It’s been months, Jack! What ya waitin’ for?”

Jack takes a breath and resists the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose, because he’s not that old yet, no matter how many grey hairs Racer seems to be set on giving him.

“Mind ya own business, Racer,” he says, and then gets back to his feet, because him and Davey have got to have this conversation now, thanks to Racetrack and his inability to keep his mouth shut.

Davey’s oddly quiet on the walk back to the apartment, and Jack’s not sure exactly what he’s thinking, but he knows Davey too well to hope it’s not ridden with anxieties.

He yearns to throw an arm around Davey’s shoulder, do something to distract him, but he’s a few decades too old, now, to do that without raising eyebrows, and Davey hates raising eyebrows. That little piece of metal burns and burns and maybe this was a stupid idea to begin with.

And then they get back to their apartment, and the electric lights are so much harsher than lamplight, but Davey’s never been anything less than breathtaking, and, really, what other idea was he supposed to have, if not this one?

He throws the deadbolt, and him and Davey face each other, in the silence of their own apartment. Nerves fill his stomach, and it feels wrong, because when’s the last time he’s been nervous to talk to Davey?

The silence stretches, the both of them waiting for Jack to finally say something that he still can’t work up the courage for.

When Jack finally does say something, he doesn’t think it’s what either of them had been expecting.

“Tell me more about this bill,” he says, and Davey blinks, furrows his brow to deepen the frown lines collected there. 

Davey looks him over, opens his mouth to say something, and then sighs instead. “It would overturn Hitchman,” he starts, and it’s a name that Jack only vaguely recognizes from at least a decade back, but Davey never seems to forget a single detail when it comes to workers’ rights.

“Yellow-dogs’ll be fully unenforceable in court. Do you understand the importance of that, Jackie? The people on top have to concede ground to us. They don’t have to like us, but they have to respect our right to organize and bargain.”

Davey’s off, that fire alight in his eyes, and whatever worries Jack’s had start to melt away. 

He’d thought, briefly over the years, about marrying Kath or Sarah, about giving them an alibi and getting one for him and Davey at the same time. But it’d always seemed wrong. Marrying anyone at all who wasn’t Davey. Promising himself to anyone who isn’t Davey.

It’s stupid, he knows. He can’t marry Davey.

That piece of metal is still burning.

Slowly, Jack advances, crowds a bit into Davey’s space, cradles his face in a palm. His other hand slips into his own pocket, makes a fist around the ring. Jackhammer heart in his ribcage, lungs too full of air.

Davey trails off, softly speechless, and Jack swallows past the lump of nerves in his throat. The edges of the ring create rivets in the skin of his palm, and he doesn’t pull it out yet.

“Dave,” he says, and quiet isn’t a word many people would use to describe Jack, but he’s afraid to speak too loud here, afraid to break the still or scare Davey off, with this. “Y’know I ain’t never loved anyone else, right? Ain’t never wanted to spend my life with anyone else.”

And what a privilege, that he has. That he is. That Davey has been at his side for the better part of thirty-five years.

Davey sucks in a breath that gets caught in his throat, and the fire in his eyes has died down to a hearth instead of an inferno. He nods.

“This ain’t- This ain’t how I wanted to do this, but I got’ya somethin’. And I- Christ, I dunno how to do this, Davey,” he says, and Davey laughs softly.

“Keep goin’.”

So he does.

“I know we can’t really do this. An’ I know it don’t mean anythin’ to anyone but us but I- I mean you’s my husband, ain’t ya, Dave? We been together thirty-five years, and I wake up every mornin’ and just stare at ya asleep in our bed, and I ain’t never wanna be anywhere, anywhere, but right next to ya. Don’t that make you my husband? And I jus’ been thinkin’- You deserve a ring,” he finishes, and pulls his fist out of his pocket, blooms it open between them to reveal a shiny circle of gold. A wedding band.

Davey makes a sound in the back of his throat, something like a half-aborted gasp, and picks the ring up in gently trembling fingers, twists it over and over in his hand.

“Jackie,” he says, voice thick, and his eyes are going a bit shiny. “Jack. Darling.”

Jack near melts, the ring passes back to him, and he draws Davey’s left hand in, slips the ring on Davey’s wedding finger. “What’d’ya say, Sweetheart?”

Davey does something halfway between a sob and a laugh, and then pulls Jack the rest of the way in by the front of his shirt, both hands fisted into the fabric under his collar. Jack can feel the tears tracking down Davey’s face, and he’s laughing a bit too much for it to really be a kiss, but he’s Davey. 

He’s Davey, and he’s Jack’s, and he’s Jack’s husband, and he’s perfect, perfect, perfect.

—

The war, finally, is over, and Davey is positively alight. His energy is buzzing, electric, a match for the commotion of the pickets on every street in New York.

It’s not just New York, Jack knows. The whole world. The whole world is waiting, poised, ready for change, willing to take it if it’s not given.

There’s something in the air, something that Jack hasn’t felt the full force of in nearly fifty years. The weight of certainty, the stubborn refusal to back down. There’s a fire starting, growing steadily across the nation.

If Jack were a bit younger, if his joints would allow him to stand for more than about an hour at a time, Jack likes to think that he’d be on the picket lines with them, but he’s not quite as sure as he should be. There’s no question about Davey, though. Davey’d be on the front lines, beautiful as he’s always been in demanding a square deal.

Beautiful as he is now, talking animatedly at Jack’s side, pointing out the strike leaders and explaining each union’s demands. Jack could listen to him for another five decades and never know how he keeps all of that in his head.

He’s a wonder. He’s always been a wonder.

The walk to Kath and Sarah’s place takes about three times longer than usual, between the crowds and Davey stopping once every ten minutes to discuss politics with the striking workers, and the sun is well into its descent through the sky when they finally get to the plain oak door of Kath’s place.

Jack had never gotten into the habit of knocking on his friends’ doors, as much as it annoys Davey, and he isn’t about to start now, so he throws open Kath’s door with a called out “We’s home, Kathy!”

Kath’s apartment is much fuller than he’d been expecting. 

Full to bursting, in fact, women of varying ages draped over every open surface in the place, and all of them turned to face him and Davey, interlopers. 

They’re never invited to Kath’s gatherings, sort of excluded by default, seeing as neither of them are women, but he’s heard enough second-hand from both Kath and Sarah to recognize it for what it is. It feels odd to be here, an intrusion into a part of the girls’ lives that they keep so far separated from him.

In his defense, he hadn’t known they were meeting tonight, and, anyway, Kath and Sarah used to show up unannounced nearly every other day at their place, back when the textile workers were striking. In Kath and Sarah’s defense, they’d all been in their mid-twenties at the time, as opposed to the sixty-somethings they are now.

God, has it really been nearly forty years?

At his side, Davey seems to understand what they’ve stumbled into as well, going a bit tense at his side. Jack’s fairly certain they’re in good company for him to rest a hand on the small of Davey’s back in comfort, but doesn’t.

“Oh,” Davey says, and nothing else, and Jack can’t keep himself from laughing.

“Jack!” Davey throws back at him, lightly scandalized, and pushes against his shoulder so lightly Jack can barely call it a push. He sways to the side anyway, overdramatized, which earns him an eyeroll.

“Sorry, Davey,” he says, hands up in mock surrender. If it were just him and Davey, he’d say something about how pretty he is on the rare occasion he’s stunned speechless, but Davey seems to hear it anyway, because his smile goes all softly fond.

He turns to Sarah, perched on the arm of the couch next to Kath, at the edge of the conversation. “We didn’t know you was hostin’ tonight,” he says, apologetic.

She waves her hand in dismissal, smiling softly, and every time Jack sees her he’s struck with the fact that she looks more and more like Davey with every passing year. “’S fine,” she says, and this must not be her first glass of wine of the night, because the New York hangs heavy around her words.

“They’re friends of the cause,” Kath adds, addressing the gathered crowd of women, and Davey seems to catch the meaning behind her stressed syllables, too, going a bit red.

One of the women, a dark-skinned girl in her early twenties sitting cross-legged on the floor, snorts a laugh derisively. “What cause?”

Sarah gives a look, familiarly exasperated, that’s so reminiscent of Esther that it makes Jack’s chest ache.

“One meeting, Lucky, please,” she says. 

The woman, Lucky, rolls her eyes, starts picking at a loose thread in her trousers, and mumbles something that sounds suspiciously like “just don’t think we need a social group.”

Jack looks over at Davey, who gives him the same look he’d given a few years back, when Jack had got into his head that they needed to take home this scrappy little street dog that had followed them around for the better part of a day. Jack grins. What can he say? He’s always had a soft spot for strays.

Davey wanders off into the crowd, distracting Kath from her own gathering with political talk, which she’s more than happy to get swept up in, and Jack, after a moment of lingering admiration, sits carefully on the ground next to Lucky.

It takes him a while, his joints protesting every movement, but he eventually gets to the ground. Lucky spares him a wary glare, but otherwise ignores him.

“So,” he says, “ya don’t need a social group. What’d’ya need?”

Lucky’s silent for a moment longer, but seems unable to stop herself from saying, “What we all need, including you and… and that boy of yours-”

Jack has to hide a laugh with a cough, because Lucky does not seem like the type who’d appreciate being laughed at. He looks over at Davey, animatedly discussing the ongoing strikes, pulling more and more people into his orbit as he does, and feels himself soften over it. “My husband?”

That seems to knock Lucky a bit speechless, which he understands, he supposes. At her age, the idea of someone like him, people like him and Davey, living the lives they have would have seemed downright impossible. It still does, sometimes. He smiles at her.

“He don’t wear the ring,” he says in explanation, like that’s the part that needs explaining. It’s half true - Davey’d never taken to wearing the ring on his finger, but it’s hanging around his neck on a plain silver chain, always tucked neatly underneath his shirt.

Lucky considers him for a moment, face carefully blank. “What we need,” she continues, without acknowledgment of Jack’s interruption, “is a legal overhaul and to have homosexuality recognized as a healthy sexual preference.”

She leans back a bit, her weight rested on the heels of her hands behind her. “There ain’t nothing wrong with me, and I should get the same rights as the heterosexuals. We need political action,” she says, and she reminds him so much of Davey, at that age. That same fire, same stubborn set to her jaw.

What she’s talking about, though… God, she’s so young. Too young to understand, really, everything she’s asking for.

Then again, they’d been young, too, hadn’t they? Back when they’d led a city-wide strike.

He tracks Davey’s movements from the across the room, animated and gorgeous and dazzling the room with his talk about labor rights. He’s still got that fire, but it’s different now, than it had been back then. Not dying, but more reigned in, more controlled. Less a wildfire than a kiln.

What was it that Teddy’d said, all those years ago, about moving aside to make room for the new generation?

“’S a tall order,” he says eventually, when the conversation lulls around them, people getting ready to leave before it gets too dark outside.

“So, what, we don’t even try? Just let them keep telling us what we’re doing is immoral? What you’re doing?”

Jack grins. God, she could pass for Davey’s blood with that look in her eyes.

“I didn’t say that. Jus’ that you should know what ya gettin’ into. If this is what’ya wanna do it ain’t gonna be a walk in the park.”

God knows their strike hadn’t been. God knows it’d almost broke Jack. And they’d only won with no small amount of luck, it’ll be a fucking miracle if someone can actually pull this off, what Lucky’s talking about.

Sometimes, though, Jack thinks, as he watches Davey pick his way back through the crowd of people slowly filtering out the door, sometimes a miracle comes down to a person, dedicated beyond reproach to things they know are right.

Maybe she can change the world. Maybe she will. Why not.

Lucky starts to reply, but Davey’s back in front of them before she can, hands on hips, looking stern but the soft smile on his lips. 

“Couch is open, Jackie,” he says, and holds a hand out to help him up. “You should get off the floor.”

Davey does too much worrying, but Jack can’t deny the stiff discomfort settling into his bones, so he takes the offered hand, uses it to help pull himself slowly up from his makeshift seat. “Done talkin’ politics?” he asks, and Davey grins, close enough for Jack to feel his heartbeat.

“D’you want me to be?” Davey asks back, smile gone a bit too knowing, teasingly playful.

Closer than Jack’d realized, there’s a sigh, and then Kath’s voice - “Not in front of the children, please.”

And none of the women are any less than twenty, at the absolute youngest, and they’re not actually even doing anything that incriminating, but Jack’s under no delusions about how lovestruck he looks around Davey.

Davey huffs a laugh and turns halfway toward Kath. “We’re not doing anything. And do I need to point out that my sister’s been on your arm half the night?”

Sure enough, when Jack tears his eyes from Davey, Sarah’s got both hands wrapped around Kath’s elbow, though, to be fair, that could just be for balance, judging by the flush to her cheeks.

Sarah shrugs, unbothered, and Kath shoots something back that Jack doesn’t quite catch, because when he looks back at Lucky still sitting on the ground, she’s watching the four of them, something quietly contemplative in her eyes. Gone from fire-hot passionate to a calm flame. Jack recognizes that look, the big picture, five steps ahead look.

He thinks about Davey’s ring, about it being hidden away, never seeing daylight. About the near perfect life he’s lived with Davey, and about what they’ve had to give up for it.

He’s not sure what it looks like exactly, the world Lucky’s seeing, has never even considered it as a possibility. And maybe it’s the fervor in the air, or maybe it’s the warmth of Davey’s fire right next to him, or maybe he’s just remembering another strike, one that happened nearly forty years ago, now, one that he’d never considered as a possibility either, before Davey showed up. Maybe it’s just her. Maybe he just believes in her, but whatever it is, he feels certain that she’s going to bring to light whatever world it is that’s shining unspoken in her eyes.

He gets distracted again, Davey needling him to go take a seat on the couch, and he’s so bright, softly golden in the setting sun, and Jack wishes very much that he’ll be alive to see the world change, again.

—

Davey’s got a newspaper in hand, already breathless with rage when he walks in their apartment door one afternoon.

“Didja see this, Jackie?” he asks, throwing the paper down on the coffee table in front of Jack. He’d been doing the mending while Davey was out visiting with his siblings, so he’s already got his reading glasses on, and it’s easy enough to pick out the article Davey’s referring to.

He had, actually, already seen it. Had been preparing for Davey’s bad mood since he’d read the paper this morning, after Davey had already gone out.

Victor Riesel is a name Jack’s only recently familiar with, within the past ten years, and, honestly, Davey’s not even the guys biggest fan, politically, but still. 

“Acid, Jack! They could have blinded him! All so they can keep taking money from the union, and we’re just supposed to- to let them?”

He’s pacing the floor of their living room, and his hands shake more often than not, these days, but there’s an extra tremor from the adrenaline, and Jack’s chest starts to fill with worry. Davey’s heart’s not what it used to be.

“Sweetheart,-” he starts, but Davey’s too entrenched in his tirade to give any ground.

“What, they think they can maim people and we’re just gonna give up? That they can reduce the whole movement to a cash grab?”

“Davey-”

“Decades! Decades of work they think they can just co-opt to- to make a buck! And they think we’re gonna let them, Jackie! That we’re gonna concede all of the work we’ve done to get here!”

“Dave!”

Davey blinks, finally stopping, and the breath he takes is rasping.

“Sit down, Davey. Ya gonna give yourself a heart attack.” Even he can hear the worry in his own voice, and Davey’s face cycles through a few emotions, landing on something long-sufferingly fond.

“I’m fine,” he says, but sits down at Jack’s side anyway, wrapping Jack’s hand in his own. He’s warm, solid around the tremors, and it makes Jack calm, a bit, that he can feel Davey’s pulse.

Davey sighs. “I’m getting too old for the movement, aren’t I?” he asks, and it’s true.

It’s not fair, but it’s true. This fight, the one Davey’s been ingrained in since Jack’s known him, the one he’s dedicated his whole life to, has outgrown him. He can’t keep up anymore, not at this pace, and he’s already had one heart attack, which is an experience Jack’s not keen on repeating.

Jack takes him in, the age-worn lines of his face, his hair a thinned-out silver-grey. He’s never gotten any less bright, though. Never burned up on the fight the way Jack’s seen so many other people do.

He’s still as passionate, as dedicated as he was at seventeen, and Jack’s struck, not for the first time, with how fucking lucky he’s gotten.

He smiles, rests a hand on Davey’s knee. “Maybe a little,” he says, “but ya still a perfect age to be my husband.”

Davey rolls his eyes, but he’s betrayed by a grin, and Jack’s never gonna get tired of seeing him with that soft love in his eyes.

—

As the year turns slowly to golden leaves, and then bracing white snow, Davey gets sicker and sicker. The doctors say there’s nothing more to do for him, say to take him home and make him comfortable.

So Jack does.

Makes him comfortable. Lies him down in their bed, brings him water, digs out Esther’s old matzo ball soup recipe, when Davey’s able to keep anything down.

Prepares himself.

His death is a slow and unflinching thing, the sort of thing that announces itself in whatever room Davey’s in, that forces him to shrink to make room for it. What weight he’s managed to gain over the years has been mostly lost again, melted away under the swelter of his fever.

It’s one of Davey’s clearer moments when he says, without preamble, “I’m going to die soon.”

Jack’s chest feels like an empty, cavernous pit, their stark white sheets suddenly too reminiscent of a hospital bed. He tightens his grip on Davey’s hand, like he can keep him here by sheer force of will.

“Hey, ya don’t know that Davey,” he says, around a lump in his throat, but it’s more for his own benefit than Davey’s, because Davey knows he’s dying. “Ya don’t know.”

Davey smiles, sad and soft, but with that same determination he’s had all along. “I don’t wanna leave you alone. But I think I’m ready to go, Jackie.”

For a second, Jack’s angry. Angry that Davey’s giving up, that he’s surrendering to death. That he’s leaving Jack to figure out how to be alone, somehow.

But he’s not alone, is he? He’s still got Sarah, and Les. Lucky. Even him and Spot had gotten closer, in the few years since Race had passed.

And he’s had so many years with Davey. He’s had so much life, so much love. He’s had so much more than he’d ever thought possible. What’s a few years without? What’s a few years, when he’s had a lifetime more than he’d ever imagined?

He brings Davey’s hand up shakily to his lips, struggles to pull any words at all out of his lungs.

“Y’ain’t leavin’ me, Sweetheart. You wouldn’t leave me. Jus’- gotta wait for me to catch up.”

Davey presses a trembling hand to his own chest, and maybe he’s just trying to get a full breath in, but Jack knows that his ring is still right there, underneath the tender of his palm.

“Hey,” Jack says, desperate to change the subject, to think about anything else but Davey’s impending prognosis. “Hey, d’ya wanna hear about the strike news?”

Like some kind of cruel irony, the city is in the middle of a newspaper strike. Davey’d started following the news back when he’d first started getting sick, gorgeously passionate, but the fire had waned with his health. Fitting, that this is how Davey leaves his life, the same way he came in.

Davey furrows his brow, and he’d gone pale and glassy-eyes, and Jack watches the moment of lucidity flee as easily as it’d come. “We won that, right?”

Jack’s throat feels full of cotton, almost impossible to speak through, but he manages. 

“Yeah, Dave. You won.”

—

If there’s any good about Jack’s death, in comes in the fact that he doesn’t last much longer than Davey. It’s a gentle thing, easier than he’d been expecting. One night, he goes to sleep, and he’s alive, and then, morning comes, and he isn’t.

When he manages to get his eyes open, it feels like years after he’d gone to bed. The apartment is warmer than he thinks it’d been when he went to sleep, and, for a moment, it’s disorientingly unfamiliar.

It takes a few moments of bleary-eyed tracking around the room before the recognition sets in. The charcoal stained stucco-brick walls, the run down and just slightly torn upholstery of the sofa, the bookcase filled with textbooks and poetry and an oil lamp running perpetually low on oil.

His first apartment. Where he’d kissed Davey for the first time. Where Davey’d moved in and told Jack he was in love with him, and gotten his first teaching job at the primary school around the block.

So many memories here, and all of them more sweet than bitter, all of them tangibly intertwined with Davey.

There’ a figure, sat on the couch, and it’s been decades since he’d had hair that full, since he’d been more brunette than grey, but Jack’d recognize him entirely blind.

“Davey?”

Davey turns, blinks in surprise, and then splits into a smile that crinkles at the corners of his eyes. He can’t be any than thirty-five, his smile lines still just brief indents.

For a second, Jack wishes he looked a bit older, and then he does, in his early sixties, hair a gradually thinning grey.

“Hi, Jack,” he say, soft against the odd, surreal quality of their little studio apartment. “D’you remember this place?”

Jack grins, even though the question strikes him as a bit odd, given that they’re both currently inside of the apartment. He forgoes an answer in favor of moving from the small, full-size bed to their tattered sofa, only finding himself slightly surprised that Davey’s still warm and soft and real beside him.

He gentles a palm against Davey’s cheek, thumb tracing the line of his cheekbone. “I missed ya so much, Sweetheart,” he says, which feels like the most insanely oversimplified overstatement he’s ever made. “Christ, I been goin’ outta my skin these past few months. Dunno how I ever lived without ya.”

He really doesn’t, in a way he can’t he even quantify - the bone-deep loss that’d been left in Davey’s wake. Like he’s been going through withdrawals, missing a fundamental part of himself.

And now, Davey’s here, filling his chest so full and so rapidly that it aches.

Davey wraps a hand around his own, bringing it down to press a kiss to the center of Jack’s palm. Jack’s heart flips over in his chest, because there’s the cool touch of metal there, too, and when he looks down, Davey’s wearing his ring.

Davey’s never worn his ring, not since that very first day, but there it is - that little sliver of gold on his finger, that tangible proof that Davey is his husband. That Davey his, in whatever way he hadn’t been, already.

When he looks back up at Davey’s face, he’s older again, looks like he did a year ago, before he’d gotten sick. Healthy, still full of fire, but with a face weathered by age, by a life lived.

“Sweetheart. Ya wearin’ the ring,” he says, full of wonder.

Davey’s grin dampens to something a bit sadder. “I figured, after you went to all the trouble…” He trails off, brow furrowed, and then adds, “I’m sorry I never wore it, Jackie.”

He looks about fifty, now, as beautiful as he’d been on the day Jack had asked him to be his husband. And Davey’d been his husband for thirty years, undeniably. What’d he need a ring to prove that?

“I ain’t got any regrets, Dave.”

Davey sighs softly, takes Jack’s hand in his own and rests his head on Jack’s shoulder, turns his gaze back to the window.

“No. Me either.”

Jack grins, and then turns his attention to the window, too.

It’s New York, the city Jack’d spent his entire life in, for better or worse. It’s the city of his childhood, streets he still knows by heart from years spent selling papers on them, the city he’d grown into, spent his life inside of, and a skyline he doesn’t recognize, buildings he’s never seen.

He can see it all: the big picture, the way a moment snowballs and becomes a strike, millions of little dots of light, each connecting in a constellation that builds to a wildfire. He thinks he can pick out Davey, among the myriad of stars, as bright as he’s alway been. A breath gets lodged in his throat.

This must be how Davey’s always seen it, each shining moment of class-consciousness melting together into action. He’s been around Davey’s bright, stubborn refusal to waver most all of his life, and he’s always agreed, always been on Davey’s side, but for the first time, he understands it.

“Dave,” he says, punched out, at a loss for any other words, and Davey sits up, grins knowingly at him, and he’s seventeen again.

Young, a single flame, full of nothing but passion and potential.

“D’you wanna go again?” he asks, and Jack looks toward their apartment door, certain, somehow, that it doesn’t lead to the hallway outside of their apartment.

Jack’s been so lucky, to have had a life with Davey all these years. He doesn’t need any more, and he’s certain that they could stay here, that Davey’d be happy to stay here forever, if Jack wanted to.

But Davey’s still grinning, still bright and furiously warm, and, God, he’s not done changing the world yet, is he?

Jack’s pulling him out the door before he’s fully considered it.

Chapter Text

Here’s he thing: I knew I wanted to get Davey out to a normal school, because at this point in history he would not have been able to get a teaching job without going through formal training, but, technically, the closest normal school to him would have been in Buffalo, which is definitely a bit of a trek from Manhattan. I did not want to ship him off to Buffalo. So I created one in Queens. Tuition costs were generally fairly low at this time, but it still would’ve been a stretch for the Jacobses to afford, and scholarships were not at all common. I gave him one anyway.

A lot of people would relegate the labor rights movement to the twenties, and while it is true that that a lot of progress and legislation was pushed forward in that decade, the movement was definitely alive and well in the 1900s. It was, largely, the miners game at this point in time, so there was a lot of striking and collective action happening out west. The IWW was exceptionally active during this time.

Clara Lemlich was a real and very impressive woman, who was a very prominent figure in the Triangle Shirtwaist strike in New York, and the larger general textile strike across the nation. If you’re interested, the general textile strike was largely successful in its efforts to improve hours and wages, but management refused to listen to the union about safety concerns concerning locked doors, which eventually led to the fire a year later. I do want to acknowledge that while it’s true she was not interviewed for the news, this was not because she was unwilling. New outlets were largely not on the strikers side in the first place, and she was a young, female immigrant who spoke to the union membership in Yiddish. No one was really tripping over themselves to give her an interview in the first place. In fact, I know of at least one newspaper that cites her as an “unknown girl,” when, in fact, she was the defacto union leader and had been for some time.

The RLA, or Railway Labor act, is a sort of early predecessor to the NLRA. It’s more specific than the NLRA in how disputes have to be handled by both parties, and it only applies to the railway industry at this time, but it was a majorly impactful piece of legislation for the labor rights movement.

The Norris-La Guardia act will pass, marking a decisive win for the labor rights movement. It outlawed yellow-dog contracts, which were a way for employers to prohibit their employees from joining a union. Once this passes into law, these contracts become unenforceable in court, which means that employees entering into a union are now federally protected.

After WWII, there’s a huge strike wave across the US and even expanding into other countries. It was a time of furious unrest. Jobs were being made redundant by soldiers returning to the workforce, and this combined with the fact that inflation was rapidly outpacing wages made for a hotbed of labor unrest. Now, this was an important piece of history, and I would not in any way say it’s something that shouldn’t have been done, but it is important to acknowledge that this is what would ultimately lead to the passing of the Taft-Hartley act, which will legislate new restrictions the rights of unions to go on strike.

A quick note on Kath’s gatherings: the early homophile movement won’t really pick up until about five years later with the founding of the Mattachine society, but it is generally agreed that there were several grassroots organizations at this time and earlier, the most well known being the Society for Human Rights over in Chicago, and, of course, William Dorsey Swann was politically active as early as the 1890s. The problem is that we don’t have many records of these groups, because they had to either operate covertly, or were decisively and quickly shut down. I envision Kath’s gatherings as a sort of predecessor to the DOB. I do think Kath is still politically active at this time as a reporter, but she especially wouldn’t want to openly attach herself to a gay organization because it would 1. Discredit her professionalism and 2. Most likely lead to her losing her job.

Obviously, this fic is more a love letter to the labor rights movement, but I’d be remiss not to include my first and truest love: gay rights history.

The labor movement in the fifties, in a lot ways, was most decisively marked by labor racketeering. Unions provided a convenient position for mobs and organized crime to take bribes, and this significantly dampened the labor movement. Victor Riesel was a journalist who dedicated his career to uncovering corruption within labor unions. In return, the mob threw acid in his face and permanently blinded him. This prompted significant investigations into union corruption, and reforms. Now, he was a firm proponent for labor rights, however he was also fairly McCarthyist in his politics, and it’s been alleged that he even provided information to the CIA on people within the labor movement he believed might be communist.

I hurt my own feelings I’m not saying anything about the 1962 newspaper strike.