Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Jack’s good at knowing rules.

He knows where he’s allowed to sleep, what he can take without punishment,  who he can make time with without risking a couple bruised ribs in the afterglow. He knows what rules can be broken, and which really damn shouldn’t be.

Newsies laws, those don’t get broken. There are a lot of ‘em — about property and soaking and helping a worse-off guy out with a penny or two, and about relationships. There’s partnerships — the simple shit, selling together and splitting profits, all over the table, all business. There’s the family type things — newsies who stick together, glued to each other’s side, sharing living expenses, and bringing hell to anyone who hurts their other(s).

Then there’s the other type.

It’s an open secret that if you make a move on another newsie, there’s a good chance he’ll take favorably to it. If not, he might punch you, but it’s not a real fight, and he won’t say anything nasty about you, either — it’s just to get you to back off. Or, rarer, he’ll refuse cause he and another newsie are going together. Plenty of newsies fool around with plenty of others, but sometimes two will take such a liking to each other that they keep it a steady thing and, if it goes long enough, they’re “keeping” each other. Never with an implication of forever, just for now — kept. Kept newsies aren’t partners — business and pleasure don’t mix, and if you try it on with your business partner, if he’s any good, he’ll tell you that — but they’re pretty indistinguishable from any other close-knit pair till you find them in a dark alley together.

Jack’s never had that, he’s never even ‘gone with’ anybody, and he’s never been interested. He fooled around, sure — his fifteenth summer was hot and sticky in more ways than one, which ingrained all those rules so damn well he’s stayed out of the whole thing since.

During that summer, he’d shared one charming evening with a gorgeous newsie named Ellis he had no goddamn way of knowing was kept, and got a proper soaking from Ellis’ Pete. He never understood why. Hell, Ellis and Pete seem to be going strong, two years later, and every time Jack’s ran into them, he’s wondered how the hell he’d been the one in the wrong.

Now, he watches Spot Conlon lean real close into Davey’s space, looking at him with that shark-grin like he wants to cut Dave open and eat what he finds inside.

And, yeah.

Jack gets it now.

He spends the walk back from Brooklyn calming himself and remembering he ain’t got a damn right to be jealous. Davey ain’t his, plain and simple — he’d wasted the first few weeks with the slow and steady route, testing the waters rather than diving right in with a boy who didn’t know newsie rules and might not even know he was allowed to want the things he — so very obviously — did. And look where patience got him. He’d’ve broken off the partnership, easy, to get in Dave’s proper schoolboy pants, (the business partnership was always more with Les, anyway — he’d been holding out on Davey for a less  transactional relationship) but Strike partners — that’s toeing a line. What they’re doing now matters a great deal more than getting off via Dave’s gorgeous fingers, so it’s for the best that Jack had resisted the urge to kiss him senseless one week into knowing him.

Really.

It’s just, well, everyone knew Dave was pretty with a single look. And with all the prestige of being a fancy new strike leader, and the way his clothing choices have deteriorated, leaving him a bit scruffier, neck more visible and less collared, hair out of the hat in those gorgeous goddamn curls — well, Jack isn’t blind, and he can see how many newsies want a bite of him.

Which is something Jack has no right to be sour about, seeing as he has no claim on Dave. None. Less than a claim, really, with the fact that they’ve set their relationship in business terms so clearly, so any newsie could look at Davey and try it on with him and Jack would be in no place to stop them, so long as it was what Davey wanted.

So, as long as Dave didn’t want them, all was well.

They’re a good twenty hours into striking when Jack learns what it looks like for someone to truly walk with their tail between their legs. 

Kloppman has the House open during the day for signmaking — when the Strike pays off, they’re gonna have to find a way to thank him, Jack thinks — and the lobby is so damn packed that Dave almost manages to slink in unnoticed by the bustle of newsboys. But Jack — he likes Dave pressed to his side far too much to ever be content to let him disappear into a crowd. He grabs him by the back collar and yanks him so he falls under Jack’s arm.  

“Now, where the hell have you been?” Asked mainly ‘cause Jack has a tendency to miss him when absent. Asked partly ‘cause he’s damn hungry and his odds of getting a meal out of the Jacobs seem like they’d dramatically drop if he only brought half their sons home. “The boys need sign ideas and you know I ain’t got the head for that.”

Davey looks around at the paint-on-scrapwood, but his eyes got the kinda glaze that tells he’s not looking to read, just to avoid looking at something else. “They mostly just say Strike, you didn’t need me.”

“That’s my point! They’d’ve been better if we’d gotten help from the Mouth.” Dave goes proper-fucking-scarlet there, and Jack knows the praise and the nickname haven’t bothered him before — “Seriously, where’d you get to?”

Dave continues his facial imitation of a tomato but doesn’t shy away from full eye contact when he answers, “Brooklyn.” And Davey — none of the Jacobs, Jack’s found, but especially Davey — can’t lie for shit, so Jack knows this is the truth. Just, a truth Dave didn’t want to share. “I thought it would be a good idea to follow up with Spot.”

“I don’t doubt your ideas, Dave. But he wanted action, not more words,” Jack responds. It ain’t a stupid idea, sure, but Dave is a hell of a lot more practical with his time than wasting it on some rendezvous in fucking Brooklyn, when he had nothing more to offer Spot than when he and Jack had gone together. “What’s the verdict?”

“He won’t confirm.” Dave has, apparently, been shuffling out of Jack’s grasp this whole time. Because the moment he is wrenched away from Jack isn’t a wrenching at all, just a tiny step to the side. “I’m hopeful, though.”

Seems like a useless trip, then, but Jack is in the habit of not saying things that will make Dave dislike him, for reasons including but not limited to the dinner invitation he’s gotta wheedle his way into. “Well, that’s impressive. Must have been one hell of a show.”

“What?” Davey asks, turning his head to Jack real sudden. Jack wants to push his thumb against the small bridge of space where the furrowed brows don’t quite meet. More pressingly, he wants to know why that brow’s furrowed in the first place.

“He said he wanted us to show what we got, before he backs us,” Jack reminds, and the furrow-brow softens. “So…”

“Oh.”

“What got you so panicked?” Jack reaches out to poke Dave’s temple. “Let me in that head of… yours.” In leaning away from Jack’s jabbing finger, the light is able to catch the line of skin beneath the slightly-unbuttoned shirt. Just enough to make visible the speckled, rosening, clear-as-day outline of teeth on Dave’s lower neck.

“I give you all my ideas already,” Dave answers, fully oblivious to the realization Jack is battling against. “You can’t be any more in my head,” which would be a real flattering statement, if he’d said it any time but now, Jack thinks. Jack thinks, maybe it’s for the best he’s not in Dave’s head, because he’s not sure he can handle the full truth of the situation right now. “Look, it doesn’t matter. You’re coming for dinner, right?” 

“Nah,” says Jack, not feeling the slightest bit hungry anymore. “I got someplace to be.”

“Another fuckin’ Manhattan,” mutters one of Spot’s boys, shirtless and gleaming from a dip in the river. Jack pays him far less mind that he usually would — low bar; he doesn’t fuck Brooklyn guys, not anymore — and storms right into the heart of things, where he finds Spot Conlon, surrounded by slingshot-shattered glass and reading a goddamn paperback copy of The goddamn Prince by goddamn Machiavelli. “Conlon.”

He doesn’t look up from the battered pages. “Now, it ain’t good to be wandering into someone else’s territory this late, Jack-be-nimble.”

Jack, against his better judgment, snaps back — “You wanna talk about territory, Spot?”

This gets him a look-up, Spot’s grin filling his features easy when he gets a look at Jack. “So, it’s Jack-be-jealous, then. Shoulda guessed.”

The unfortunate thing is, Spot’s known him for a good long while. Since before he was the leader of the Manhattan newsboys, since before he was Cowboy, hell — since before he was Jack. Spot don’t merit lying to, or arguing with on such an obvious point. He does merit arguing, when he does something like this. “It’s fucking low. You’re better than that.”

Spot lifts a sharp, clever brow. “Last I checked, the only claim you got on him is as business partners. Nothing else.” He casts a lithe, slingshot-strengthened hand out to the side. “If there was something, he didn’t seem inclined tell me.”

Spot is, as usual, being a dick. “There ain’t. And that’s not what I mean.” He crosses his arms and tries to think of how Davey — eloquent thing he is — would get this across. “This strike is a real fuckin thing. And maybe you ain’t on board with that yet, but either you’re with us or you ain’t. We’ll show you by sticking it out. You don’t — extort people, with the promise of being on our side. Especially not a guy who’s so fucking new to this.”

Spot is looking at him intently by the time he finishes. He shuts his book, laughs out something half-there, and leans forward. “Ha. So you think I — what? Wanted to see him use his mouth before I deemed it good enough for a strike?”

The implication seems so comparatively tame on Spot’s tongue — which has both said and done way worse, Jack knows — and he can’t help feeling silly. “Sure seems like it from where I’m standing.”

Spot fully laughs then. His laugh has always been a pointed thing. “You’re standing with your feet on the ground and your head in the clouds, Jacky-boy. I didn’t promise Dave a thing, and he didn’t ask me to. I didn’t ask him for nothing, either. He came to me for it.” Unlike Dave, Spot is a real good liar, and even knowing him half a life doesn’t mean Jack has a sure-fire way of knowing true from false. It would be fucking incredible, if this was a lie. “But who knows. Maybe he did do it to curry favor. He’s calculating, your Davey.” He flicks the cover of the book. He looks up and grins, and silhouetted against the water, he doesn’t look different than any other shark. “And you were right, about that mouth.”

Jack just about loses it then and there.

“Don’t see him again,” he says, instead of throwing a punch he knows ten lingering lackeys will pay him back for twentyfold. “It ain’t good for the Strike.”

“He can make his own decisions. You aren’t actually his guide, or his da. Or his keeper.” This does stutter something in his chest. He ignores it. “I won’t seek him out. I’m not looking for trouble, Sullivan, I do actually want to work with you. Besides,” he waves a hand. “I’m pretty sure he’s just sampling the boroughs. He’s young. He’s figuring out what he likes.”

Then why the hell didn’t he start with me? Jack thinks, and then thinks all of this anger makes a bit more sense, and then wishes he never thought about any of this, ever. “Look, all I’m saying, is if he comes back around, don’t pretend like you’re gonna give him something more than what it is. He don’t know the rules. I don’t want him feeling serious about you when you ain’t gonna give that back.”

“Who says I’m not?” Jack freezes, and Spot maintains an unsettlingly blank expression for a moment, before laughing right in his face.. “He ain’t ‘feeling serious’ about me. He’s trying things out. I wouldn’t be surprised if I wasn’t his first.”

“But—”

“Fuck off,” Spot says, tone cold and refined with none of the crudeness  of the words. “You’re quickly losing whatever good grace Davey bought with his mouth.” Jack wants to protest, so it was a bribe, so it was Spot conniving — but before he can— “I can have someone see you out if you’d rather.”

And that isn’t an empty threat.

“See you at the distribution gates,” Jack says, backing up as he watches Spot reopen The Prince .

“Sure,” he says, waving a hand. “If you’re lucky.” 

Chapter Text

For all his challenging bullshit, Spot does relent. As far as Jack knows, Dave doesn’t sneak off to Brooklyn on his own again, and Spot doesn’t seek him out. And maybe that’s Spot’s good will, maybe it got back to Dave that Jack ran off to Brooklyn with a plan and a purpose, or maybe Dave just wasn’t interested in a repeat performance.

This would all be much better news, if it ended with Spot.

Maybe he’s deluding himself, but he thinks he’d be fine with this, if it was just something Davey did that had nothing to do with him. But he’s been distant, too. The constant, nicely-oppressive closeness Jack began to expect from Davey — always under his arm, shoulder-to-shoulder — peters out, and Davey is slipping out from Jack’s space, stumbling back an hour and change later, a little redder-in-the-face, a little closer to guilty. It’s grating on him. 

But he can brave it. He braves it when Skittery slaps him on the ass and thanks him for recruiting Davey, he braves finding a stupid love poem Bumlets wrote about Dave’s eyes, he braves Specs leaning in to kiss him, ‘passing it on from Dave, don’t you want?’

It’s Mush that gets to him. 

Mush, asking full and genuine and wide-eyed, if Jack would be ‘ okay with it ’. Well, three cheers for getting any fucking respect out of these kids, but damn, this is worse somehow, especially when Mush adds: “I know you ain’t keeping him, Jack, but it seems unfair, that no one’s considerin’ how you feel about it. I wanted to ask.”

Jack shrugs, tightly, and glances around for listeners-in. “Like you said, he ain’t mine to make those calls on. Do what you want.” This doesn’t help the heartbreakingly pitying expression. “Ain’t you and Blink going together? I think that’d be more the meat of it.”

Mush leans his face in hand, scrunching up the babyfat. He’s adorable, with a chest that doesn’t make him any less appealing. Dave’s probably gonna take him up on the offer, and Jack will have to add another tally to his count of extreme acts of bravery. “Well, yeah, but it’s Davey.” Like that explains it. Like Davey is such a rare-auction item that it goes without saying, you can break the sacred laws of newsie courtship with him. Jesus. “And Blink already — well, you know — before the Strike.”

Before. The. Strike.

“What?”

“Yeah! So it’s even, really,” as if that’s the cause for alarm. Before the Strike. Dave’s been doing this before the Strike. While Jack was waiting around for him to figure himself out, Dave was figuring other guys out, and he never even asked Jack .

He bites the back of his hand, rather than scream.

“You know what, Mush? You have my blessing. It ain’t my business, but even if it was — go ahead. Have a fucking blast. You and Blink can both take him, all I care.”

“Jack?” Mush asks. He gets all high-pitched with the vowel, wide-eyes matching with the baby fat, and Davey’s probably too young for Jack anyway, if this is the type of guy he’s going for. What is he, fifteen? Maybe sixteen — Sarah had said his and Mayer’s birthdays were close, and they’d just celebrated that one. This was the age for boys to get into experimentation, Jack certainly had, and why should it matter, if Davey never even considered him — “Hey, Jack!”

“What, Mush?” Jack says, shaking out of his nonverbal torrent against no one. Maybe himself. Doesn’t even matter. 

“You just seem real put out about it, ‘s all,” Mush offers. He rubs at Jack’s shoulder with a commiserating little hum, and Jack knows Mush is one of the guys other newsies will go to when they got girl troubles or parent trouble or friend troubles, and figures the only reason this is so effective in calming him down is because Mush has got plenty of practice. “I won’t do anything with Dave.”

Jack groans an embarrassed sound. He’s a fucking Strike Leader, who is he to be telling other newsies who to fool around with? Doesn’t he have more important things to worry about? “Nah, Mush, I meant it, it’s all—”

“Have you tried with him?” Mush asks. His — broad, well-defined, not-unfamiliar — shoulder bumps Jack’s. “Maybe he just doesn’t think he can ask you, ‘cause you’re selling partners and all. But I’m sure he’d be interested!”

“Mush, you can leave it. I’m just real tired with the Strike, that’s all.” He knocks the shoulder back. “Look, let’s get something to drink. You can even invite Blink — I heard he’s got Strike ideas he’s too chickenshit to bring up to me.”

“He is not!” Mush rushes to defend. “I’ll bring him, he does want to tell you, he’s been thinking about—” And Jack probably ain’t too good a friend, for how easy he can tune this out. But he’ll hear it again, probably more grandiously, from Blink, and he’ll let it stick, that time. For now, it’s enough to get Mush on an off tangent. Which is the goal.

On their meander through the street looking for Blink, they pass Davey, and he seems so put out that Jack doesn’t immediately beg him to tag along that Mush takes initiative to wrap an arm around him and drag him on their quest. They find Blink, and Jack charms a bucket of beer out of a pretty server, and Blink finangles a lock to a tenement roof, and through the city-light smog and the brain-fuzz tipsiness, Davey is shining like the brightest kinda light Manhattan’s got, and Jack doesn’t even feel stupid for thinking it.

Mush tackles Blink to the concrete roof, and Jack jeers and splashes beer at them while they wrestle and bite at each other, and Davey laughs, and laughs, and the moon catches the curve of his nose and the glint of beer on his lip and when he looks at Jack he is still smiling, and Jack thinks, whatever comes of this, whatever Davey does or doesn’t want from him, he will remember this moment til the day he dies.

The next time he can get Davey alone isn’t even on purpose — it’s when they go to break out Crutchie, and Dave has to haul him up by a rope, and he gets one moment of feeling what it’s like to be wrapped in Davey’s arms before he is well and truly deposited onto the roof. Davey collapses down with a huff, back pressed against the concrete wall. A sheen of sweat glinting on his forehead in the ambient window light of nearby buildings.

He is gorgeous, and he just fucking dangled Jack off a building, no questions asked,  even though all Jack’s done is fuck up the ideas Davey gave him, and that fuckup landed one of Jack’s best friends in the same fucking jail he himself nearly rotted in, and it’s all Jack’s fault —

He doesn’t even clock the sound he makes as a sob till Dave is leaning in to press a hand to his shoulder. “Jack?” He sounds undeniably unpracticed, with people crying, which is all well and good, cause Jack sure as shit ain’t practiced at crying in front of people. “Did you get hurt coming up?”

“Oh, yeah Dave, edge of the roof was real sharp,” Jack snipes, and it comes across a bit rude. Davey doesn’t deserve that. “No, it’s — this place is the worst.”

“Oh.” Davey’s hand on his shoulder lifts, just to return in an awkward pat. “It sounded bad.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Is it something you, you want to talk about?”

He sounds like he has no idea what he’s saying, and sure as hell does not want to talk about it. Jack manages a laugh. “Fuck, Davey, you’re real bad at this.”

Davey scoffs, but seems to calm down at the suggestion of teasing in Jack’s voice. “I think I’m better at the planning part.”

“Yeah? Gotta plan for me?” Jack can still hear the tight sound of his throat, the pushed-back sobs. It’s not good. Hiding on a roof is all well and good till one of its fugitives can be heard wailing up there. 

“Hm.” Dave settles into a more reclined pose, next to Jack, and Jack can feel how steady his gaze is, pointed out towards the night. Giving Jack space to cry without being watched. “Well, if we need to get inside, we could try to hitch a ride under the nuns carriage, and then get out the same way?”

“That doesn’t actually get us in the building,” Jack counters. “How about this: we dress like nuns. Gets us in the gates and the building, then we just sneak around all, ah, covert,” that’s the word. His Westerns are good for the kinda vocabulary Dave uses without even trying. 

Less good for Jack’s preferred vocabulary, with which Dave echoes, “Fuck, no.”

“C’mon,” Jack wheedles. He disguises a sniffle — he’s pretty much done crying, now, with a light laugh and a tug on one of Davey’s curls. “You wouldn’t do that for me? You’d look real cute in a habit.”

Dave snorts. “My ma would kill me.”

“Alright, alright. Don’t wanna get on Esther’s bad side.”

He can see the quick furrow of Davey’s brow. “Yeah, especially if you’re still going after Sarah.” Jack might be imagining the jealous hiss in his voice. He might just as well be confusing brotherly protectiveness for it, even, but—

Jack snorts. “Don’t gotta sound that unenthused, about having me in the family.”

“It isn’t up to me.” He sounds thoroughly insulted by this idea. As if Jack doesn’t evidently value any and all of Davey’s thoughts about any and everything. “She’s her own person. Convince her.”

“You ever considered I might care what you think about having me in your family, Jacobs?” 

It’s dim on the roof, even in the ambient city light. But he’s looking at Davey, proper in the face, and even with Dave’s cast-aside glance, he sees the open-mouth falter. “...I don’t care what you do with Sarah.”

“That isn’t what I asked,” Jack counters, and dares himself to curl his fingers around Davey’s wrist. “You want me in your family?”

David’s gaze traces a line from Jack’s bended knee to the place where their hands are locked in an uneven tangle, to the line of Jack’s neck, and up to meet his eye. He sucks in breath through his teeth, and answers: “You already are.”

It takes all Jack has to not kiss him, then and there.

“And I know—” And maybe Jack would’ve — kissed him — if his gaze didn’t flee so immediately out to the edge of the roof, legs unfolding beneath as he moves to stand. He gets closer to the edge before turning, casting a hand out to gesture down at the Refuge. “Crutchie’s your family too. We’re gonna get him out.”

Jack pushes up and meanders to Dave. “False promises are for the kids, David. Not for us.”

“This isn’t.” There is a way Davey gets, posture straightening, conviction embodied. Jack thinks he’s better at tugging the strings that bring this Davey out than most, and it’s one of the things he likes best about himself. That he can call this Davey to life. “I’ll figure it out. You trusted me with the Strike, you can trust me with this.”

Jack, he’s found, isn’t that strong.

Davey’s mouth is chapped and cold on his, almost comforting in the scorch of summer heat still-present into the night. Jack has two hands pressed firm to either side of Davey’s face, keeping him in place. Davey — Jack has found — is often the still and steady contrast to his own frantic, off-shoot energy, and much the same, he is fully unmoving, not even breathing, until Jack backs away. Davey looks at him like Jack has just posed a new complication to the Strike plan that he’ll need to work out and, hell, that might not be too far off.

He cocks his head to the side, purses his lips, and folds his arms. “What was that for?” he asks, fully level.

Jack shrugs. I’ve wanted to do that for weeks is embarrassingly desperate, and pointing out that Davey hasn’t had a problem doing this with literally any other newsie seems like it might be insulting. “Wanted to. You was being nice.” Davey is looking at him real intent, and Jack feels like a mystery puzzle Dave is way too smart not to crack, and feels like it might be a good idea to throw in a couple red herrings there. “You know this thing ain’t a huge deal, right? With the guys.”

“I know,” Davey confirms, and doesn’t look particularly surprised that Jack knows he knows this. “And I also know that you’re not supposed to do that with your selling partner.”

Jack raises his brow. “Damn, who studied you up on the rules?” 

“Picked it up here and there,” Davey says. Jack’s willing to bet it was Blink. Probably told Dave to stay away from him, too, just to fuck with him. Or maybe Spot did. “I’m told I’m a quick study, you should’ve expected me to know.”

“What, you think I was trying to take advantage of your naivete?” Jack scoffs. Yes, he was somewhat hoping Dave didn’t know that particular law of the land, but not — not to take advantage. “You gotta know I know you too well to think that would work.” 

“So what was it, then?” Davey asks.

“Wanted to,” Jack repeats. “It seems like I ain’t the first one who’s wanted, neither.” Dave’s eyebrows tighten to a furrow. Well, Dave’s gonna be pissed at him either way. Pennies and pounds, or however that expression goes. “Thought it might be easier for you to get a situation closer to home, if that was something you were interested in.”

Dave’s brow stays in its tight-wrinkled furrow for a moment before he steps back. Further from where Jack could hold on to him. Asks, incredulous: “You?”

Which does sting a bit.

Jack spreads his hands in a shrug. He knows, well as Dave does, all the reasons why this is a real stupid idea, but doesn’t find that he particularly cares, not when he knows the press of Davey’s mouth and thinks he’s one compelling speech about getting it as a part of his everyday life.

“No,” Dave says, conclusive. “You don’t — do that. With business partners. Let alone Strike partners. Too much risk, it would get too complicated.”

It wasn’t ‘too complicated’ when you fucked Spot , Jack has the good sense not to say. All that good sense focused on preventing him from voicing that specified jealousy leaves none to keep him from voicing the general jealousy: “More complicated than trying it on with every newsie you’re supposed to be representing?”

It’s not a good move.

Even in their arguments, even in their tense debates over Strike rhetoric, even when Jack’s being a genuine dumbass about Sarah or his past or his own unfettered jealousy, Davey always has something in his expression that invites Jack to continue their conversation. He never shuts down. Jack hasn’t seen him in that cold, guarded expression since his first failed attempt at a spit-swap handshake.

He sees it, now.

“It isn’t any of your business, what I do with my time,” Davey says.

How could it not be? Jack wonders. There isn’t a part of his life that he doesn’t want Davey to be fully involved in. “I know. I just — wanted to offer you another option, if you wanted. Don’t want you getting hurt by getting in over your head with someone who don’t know you well as I do.”

“I’m not ‘getting in over my head’ with anyone. I know what I’m doing,” Dave says, cooly. “I appreciate the offer, but I’ll pass.” 

Jack prides himself on his ability to take rejection, though he sure as hell hasn’t been proving that capability, not today. (Maybe he’s never been rejected when it mattered.) (This has no reason to matter, he reminds himself.) 

Jack shrugs. Pretends he isn’t hurting in a heart he had no way of knowing was so preoccupied with Dave Jacobs. “No worries.” Then, a shallow defense of a vulnerable area: “Look — you’re probably right. We got enough trouble with the Strike without adding shit to it.”

“Like Crutchie,” Davey reminds, which really doesn’t help the tightness of Jack’s chest. “You’re just worried about him. I was being nice, and you thought…”

“Always got a theory, don’t you,” Jack wishes he knew how to talk about Davey without sounding so damn fond. “You’re probably right, as usual. My head ain’t screwed on right right now.” He slings a casual arm around Dave’s shoulder, and thanks the God he half-believes in when Davey doesn’t move away. Nearly swears off sin in general, as thanks, when Davey leans into it. “Seriously, Dave. Thank you. This was a bitch of a failed mission and — thank you.”

“Of course,” Dave does look at him then, and it’s like the ice-melt off store awnings at the start of spring — the same shade of blue. “I still mean it. About getting him out.”

He leans a bit away, there, and Jack tries not to take it personal. “Hey, don’t worry. I ain’t gonna try to kiss you every time you say something nice to me.” He jostles Dave’s shoulder, to impart some measure of playful into it. “You got your point across.”

Davey doesn’t respond, and Jack wouldn’t know what to say to that either, he guesses. He continues. “C’mon. I gotta get you home before your ma thinks I got you in even worse trouble.” Davey snorts. Like ice-melt, like the warmth of Spring, and he can bring back that ease of conversation: “Maybe Sarah will be up, see how responsible I am.”

It’s good, being pressed up to Dave. Lets Jack feel the moment he falters before his next step forward. “Maybe.” He makes that tongue-click sound he does when sorting through the million gorgeous ideas in that gorgeous head of his for the right one to say. He doesn’t seem to settle on it. “Yeah. If we can get off the roof.”

Jack laughs. “One more adventure for the night, Jacobs.”

Chapter Text

“Hey, Miss Medda.”

The star turns, her corset and bustle having enough layers to themselves to flutter with the motion. She smiles as she sees him — it’s nice, he thinks; no one has for a good while — crosses the dressing room foyer, and cups his face in hand. Her skin, soft as a cloud. All her callouses ground down and leaving only the kind of gentleness that has to be fought for. And she pulls him into her arms.

“I heard you’re in bad trouble, kid,” she says, sad and soft as the hand running over Jack’s hair. 

“Law’s on my side for once, actually.” He wouldn’t believe his own tone, shaky as is. But hey, he’s in the theater; might as well act. “Money is, too.”

She snorts against the side of his head. “Oh, since when did money and the law do anything good, for the real people? It’s not always the side to be on.”

“It’s the safer side.”

“Yeah. A lot of times it is.” She leans out of the hug and takes his face in both of her hands. He watches her watch him; sees the flitting heartbreak as she takes in dark circles, red corner-eyes. “And you know I do want you safe. I just wish…”

“Yeah,” he agrees. “I do too.”

“If you ever need, you can sleep here.”

“Nah.” Shakes his head, and continues with a bravado she’d never believe: “Joe’s given me a penthouse at the Ritz. Be rude to turn ‘im down.”

She smiles her gap-toothed, shining thing. “More generous than the Pulitzer I know.”

“Oh, he’s really grown. Really willing to help out the little guy, these days.”

“You seem convinced.” Her knuckles brush in gentle strokes over his cheek. “I’m not gonna ask why you threw your chips in with him. I know you thought it over and made the decision you needed to.”

Jack cracks a smile. “But?”

She whacks him on the shoulder a bit, “But, you don’t got anything you can do to get out of it?”

He shakes his head. “Nothing worth the price of doing.”

“Hm.” She sighs, shuts the dressing room door, and glides past him to the mirror. “I’ve been seeing your David around the theater.”

“He ain’t mine,” Jack argues. Nevermind the tight set of his chest, denying that sentiment. Well, maybe that’s the point. Davey ain’t got something tight-in-the-chest about Jack, only the other way around, so if anything, he’s Davey’s. “Never really was.”

“‘Never really…’” 

“Never was.” She gives him a little argumentative glance in the mirror, and she sets out a hand. He stretches up to grab her powderbox off the high shelf, and offers it over to her waiting fingers.

“You been practicing your painting, kid?” He shrugs. He’s had a Strike to deal with, after all, and in the time before he was so overwhelmed drawing one pretty former-schoolboy it’s not like that practice will amount to all that much. “Wanna do my makeup?”

He plops down on the stool next to hers. He remembers, his first few times sitting here, he was still shorter than Medda, even with the stool a good six inches higher than her chair. Now that he thinks about it, he prolly held Medda’s makeup brushes before ever getting his hands on a paintset. “This my payment for boring ya with my problems?”

“Is that all you owe me for, Kelly?” She rifles through the box, pulls out rogue and liner for the eyes, and her powder palette. “I’m wearing light blue, today, if you can match that well.”

He flips open the palette and finds a couple shades he can work with. “You overestimate my artistic skills, Meddy.”

He's so lost in planning his order of making up, that he doesn’t see her smile till she tilts up his chin so they can look eye-to-eye. “You ain’t called me that since your da was still in my audience.” Jack flushes, and shrugs. He always feels small and young around her. Even as he leans down to line her eyes, he feels like he’s looking up. “Tell me, kid, you known anybody longer than you known me?”

He thinks about it, real hard, between the focus of making sure he doesn’t stab this long-known person in the eye. “Nope. Don’t think I have.”

“So there’s nothing you can’t ask or tell me, you know that, right?”

“I know.” He finishes the left eye, and musters up the courage to ask, “What’d you say Dave’s been doing around here?”

He’s looking at her too close to miss the quirk of her lip. “At first he said he was checking in on me, making sure I was alright after the rally.”

“You didn’t believe him?”

Medda shrugs, once Jack’s leaned away with his brush enough for that not to mess up anything. “I like the boy. I get why you like him. But he’s not someone who’s nice for niceness sake. I figured he wanted something…”

“Yeah?”

“Turns out, he wanted to see if I could help. Getting you out of the Refuge.” She pulls lightly on the lapel of his scab-coat. “It was before all this.”

Jack, at the dead center of wanting to shove off the coat and wanting to burrow deep inside it, doesn’t move at all. “Yeah, I’d figure.”

“I had a couple plans. Seeing what strings I could pull, what money I could spare.” Jack shakes his head, first stilling the hand painting the space between eyelid and eyebrow with dark, shadowed blue. “It was nothing immediate enough for him, in any case. And, well, after that…”

Switches brush, a lighter, near-white blue on her lids. “You said he’s still been hanging around?”

“Yeah. Figured I should give you a warning.” When he takes the brush away, she looks up at him through lashes he’ll need to darken. “He barely makes eye contact with me anymore. I think he doesn’t want it getting back to you, that he’s here.”

Jack scoffs. “No fair, I showed him this spot!”

“I think he knows it, too, it’s why he’s so unsure about it. I mean, it looks to me like he thinks he’s doing you wrong.” She taps her fingernails on the table. “I heard he’s been spending time with one of my dancers.”

Jack bites his lip to not immediately ask an obviously jealous ‘Who?’. As it is, he barely manages a shake-of-the-head, and a drop-of-the-heart, before: “Huh.”

He’s given time to talk, to expand upon that single syllable, as he lines her lips in a dark mauve, but he doesn’t take it. When he lets up, she continues, “Like I said, it looks like he’s guilty about it.”

“Yeah, cause he’s in my space.” He fills in the lined lips with her favorite shade, and her lack of ability to speak doesn’t save him from the intensity of the look she gives him. He takes a few extra moments on the lips, anyway, to brace himself.

“Nothing else?”

“Nothing worth talking about, in any case.” She looks long over him, through the ink-and-rosewater lashes. Their lids flutter shut, the endeavor given up. He appreciates it; lonely as he’s been the last few days, there’s still a couple things he got no desire to talk about. “Alright. Take a look, see if you gotta scrape all this off and start over.”

She turns to her vanity, looks over her face, and smiles. “Perfect.” He hands back over the brushes and powders and she tucks them to the side. “I gotta get dressed and wigged, you can wait out in the hall.”

“No worries, I got some papes to sell, still.”

She picks up her folding fan and whacks him on the shoulder. “Stick around for the show, Kelly.” Jack shrugs, more on instinct than anything else. He’s used to being in motion, always needing to go somewhere, talk to someone, sell off some lie. But now… He’s stuck. Stasis, till Joe lets him off his leash. Doesn’t matter if he makes or loses three cents on his last six papes; why not stay for Medda?

It would be nice, to make someone happy.

“Got new material for me?”

Medda laughs. “We have a song in rehearsal. I’ll talk to Ernest and Randy, see if we can’t get it playing today.” She pats him on the side of his face. “I’m glad you’ll stick around. I like you here where I can see you. Let Toby give you a snack, okay?”

“If you insist.”

“I do, Sully.” She leans over and presses a kiss to the high point of his cheekbone. “See ya in my audience.”

Jack’s balancing one of Toby’s gumballs on the ridge of his brow, waiting for Medda to finish up her set, when he catches an unmistakable, curly head ducking out of a dressing room.

Huh.

Sure as he’d said: he knows Medda’s is always half a danger to him in his scab-coat. It ain’t uncommon for a newsboy or two to pass through — nevermind the other fear, of guards and horses and friends dragged, bloody, off — but, look, he told them about it. It’s his place first, it’s the newsies’ by way of it being Jack’s, not the other way ‘round, and as much as Medda’s eyes turn sadly downward, as much as she gently admonishes, as much as she hates the coat on his shoulders, she told him this would always be a safe place for him. It’s his place.

Which means it sure as hell ain’t Davey’s.

Jack, unseen — he grabbed the gumball in his hand, to not drop and startle and alert his position — watches Dave. He looks good. A little gussied-up, his shirt buttoned-to-neck, hair hatless but well-kept, and a pair of shoes Jack would bet two of his traitor-earned dollars are Mayer’s, not his. ‘Course, Jack doesn’t like him this way half as much as he likes him stripped down to undershirt, dirt-stained and righteous, but he can appreciate a different view of his favorite sight. Especially when any damn view of him has been so hard to get. 

The door hasn’t shut behind Dave. From out it flits a pretty hand, belonging to a beautiful arm, belonging to a gorgeous showgirl. That hand curls around Davey’s shoulder, turns him to face her, and tilts his chin up till he presses a kiss to her round, pink cheek. His hands dip in to the soft give of her waist, its well-defined presence against her bust and hips, all of which she has plenty, given she has to have at least four years on Dave.

Which isn’t to say Jack never took his turn falling down the rabbithole that is Medda’s girls — he would say Miss Kitty had broken his heart, if he didn’t know how much that pain dulled against the shatter he’d felt, hearing Dave say he never needed Jack. Point is, he gets it. They’re pretty, the girls, and talented, and they get enough shit from their mightier-than-thou customers that playing around with poor, powerless newsboys has its appeal for a lot of them. It’s win-win, usually, even if this particular coupling is a hell of a loss, for Jack.

Davey waves her goodbye as she shuts the door. He turns. He runs a hand over his face, the tired fingers trailing over his cheeks and falling to reveal that smile.

This, of all of it, makes Jack the most jealous.

Dave shakes his head, grin fallen. He walks over, past where Jack is ducked away, like he don’t got the same pull in him towards Jack that Jack has for him. And look, Jack wasn’t ever planning on letting him go easy, but to be unnoticed—

“Ain’t she a bit old for you?”

Watching from behind, Jack sees the straighten of Dave’s spine, like fishing wire from his tailbone to head pulled straight up. Those hands — those that cupped face, hid smile — spasm out at his sides. 

He doesn’t turn around.

“I get it, the girls is pretty. But I don’t wanna see you throwing away your life on a showgirl’s baby. I know you don’t got that kinda money.”

Davey’s shoes walk a gentle half-circle. He looks Jack over with a dour sense of confirmation; he wasn’t positive who was talking, until he was, and he doesn’t look too happy to be proven right. “What do you want?”

Jack shrugs, and pushes to stand. “To give you fair warning. I’ve done my time with one of ‘em, and I got out without too much trouble, but I know a guy who’s living hand-to-mouth raising a kid one of these girls didn’t want.”

Davey looks at him, tongue running over his front teeth, just visible through the part of his lips. “Why are you talking to me?”

“Why wouldn’t I?” Jack says. He’s giving Davey his space, not encroaching too far, letting his blithe honesty cross the space he can’t. “When you’s right in front of me?”

“You didn’t  want to, last time I was.”

Jack laughs out some sad thing. “I don’t get one off-day, in all our friendship?”

Any openness slams shut, at that. “I think you’ve used them up.” He jerks his body, awkward as he is, out from the bubble of space between them. “Enjoy the show, Jack. Maybe use that money to tip the dancers.”

“Why? So they can take you to dinner?” Davey, turned from him, scoffs. He’s walking away. Jack knows he don’t got long left, that Dave is gonna topple the idiot Pulitzer (or else, he worries, be swallowed and stifled and extinguished with the Strike) before too much time, and then Jack will flee with what he’s got left, from the newsboys and Jacobses that hate him for good reason. He knows, his chances to talk to David are numbered low enough for eight-year-old Fencepost to count, and he’s not ready to let this one go.

He grabs Davey’s wrist.

Davey turns to him, throat tight with breath and shock. Jack feels it too; skin against skin too-hot in its far-off familiarity. Jack meets his gaze, and fights his way through, same as he was taught: “I mean, I know you don’t got much on your own, with the Strike cutting into profits, but still, Dave, making the lady pay? It ain’t classy.”

Davey scoffs. “Does that suit make you think you know about class?”

“Nah, nah, that was always you, wasn’t it?” Jack tilts his head to the side, feels the sneer fall easily over his expression. Not needing fakeness to act, at all. “I’m just the street trash you had the bad luck of finding under your feet, right?”

“Jack—”

“Hate to break it to ya, Dave, this girl you’re seeing ain’t made of better stuff. You just traded one piece of litter for another.”

Davey shakes his head, pulls his wrist, gets nowhere, and spits, “I didn’t trade anything. I never had you to give away. And you’re one to talk—” He reaches up with his spare hand, dips his thumb in his mouth and — before Jack can get any more pleasant ideas of what it’s for — uses it to wipe at the high point of Jack’s cheekbone. “You’re still carrying around someone’s lipstick.”

Just Medda’s, Jack thinks, before considering the dark waters in front of him, and saying: “Why, you jealous you didn’t put that mark there?”

Davey scoffs, but even in the muted backroom light, Jack can see the rising flush of his face. “If anyone has been jealous, it’s you.”

Dark waters, right in front of him. But how can he give a damn? What’s one more ruin, one more horrific honesty offered out to a boy who already hates him? What worse could it do? “Yeah. Yeah, and what if I is?”

Dave, piss-poor liar, does shuffle through a bit of shock before landing on indifference. “I’d tell you you have no right.” Jack just shrugs — he knows, already, and he wants to see what else he can get Dave to offer up. “Because I’m not yours. Because I never was, and you never had any right to be mad about who I’d rather spend time with than you. And you definitely don’t now.”

“‘Spending time’,” Jack repeats, the words cool. “Not just making time, you like spending it with ‘em more, too?”

“I said what I meant.” Through the boards between them and the stage, light passes over Davey’s face in cruel bars. “Why would I waste my time on a scabber?”

“Before.” He can tell he’s begging, pathetic. “Really. You know you was my favorite, you’re gonna break my heart if it wasn’t the same way.” His laugh is watery, and obvious.

“It doesn’t matter,” he sounds like he means it. “Your favor is worth less than a new coat and a one-way ticket. If that’s all you have, I don’t want it.”

Jack sneers. “Too bad. You got it, and it’s not going anywhere.”

“Isn’t it going to Santa Fe?” Davey wrenches his wrist away, but doesn’t flee. He raises his hand to point towards and press into Jack’s chest. “What, you’re gonna take your money and your tickets and go build yourself another life, and you’re still gonna be jealous? Gonna stand alone on your farm, being mad about every guy I might make with, every girl I might marry?”

“Yeah, I is.” He’s being rude, snappish, brows furrowed over narrow eyes, but he feels it in his chest as he says it. He means this. “I’m gonna be looking out at the desert and thinking about anybody you might got in your arms and wishing a cruel death on ‘em, for getting what I can’t.”

Jack watches the bob of Davey’s throat, the tight swallow. “I don’t understand you.”

“You do. I is what you see: a selfish, coward scabber. And a guy who misses you like hell. Both can be true.”

Dave shakes his head. “You’re a liar.”

“Yours, though.”

The head shake again, and again. He backs away, and Jack can’t bear to follow. “Jack.”

“Dave.”

“Don’t ever speak to me again,” he says, and it’s as honest as the boy it comes from.

He doesn’t give Jack the chance to respond before turning and fleeing down the hallway.

Jack sighs.

He takes the gumball from his pocket, and crushes it to chalky debris, fallen to the floor.

Chapter Text

Dave Jacobs, standing up from a near-lost fight, looks by far the coldest Jack’s ever seen him. Colder than when they met, colder even than his face, seeing Jack walk forward in a suit that fit too well for how much it betrayed him. There had been anger, then, at least. Fury and heat and determination.

Davey might as well be the sun's second coming. It's not right to see him cold.

Next to Jack, Sarah’s bracing herself against the wall, and he can hear it, the heaviness of her breath. The heaviness of his own heart doesn’t let up, as it moves from the adrenaline of a fight to the sharp fear of what happens when the scab-deal shatters. “C’mon,” he says, no room for interruption. “We gotta get you home safe.”

“I have to go to work,” Sarah says, faintly. When Jack looks at her — “I can, I’m okay, they didn’t…” her hand drifts to her side, the smudge of dirt on her upper hip. “I’m okay.”

“Yeah, but they could come back,” Jack rebuts. The Delancys, and Snider — it ain’t as common but girls do get taken to the Refuge too — or worse, there are horrible things they could do to her to coax Davey into a fight, and it would be all Jack’s fault, all, whatever happened to this family— “But they’ll probably be looking for me. I’ll go another way.”

“We can’t split up now!” Les reaches over to grab Jack’s arm and yank him back into that inner circle of injured Jacobses. “You’re back at the Strike, right? You were spying, and you’re done now, so we gotta go win it, you’re coming, right?”

“Are you back with the Strike?” Sarah asks. Jack sees where Davey’s hand is resting on her wrist, like she can voice the words he’s unwilling to say. “Or were you just helping us?”

“I don’t think I got a choice,” Jack answers. No more than he had a choice, helping them. He had had a choice, with Pulitzer — him or Dave, who gets to stay, and the Strike could win without his voice but not without Dave’s words — but he don’t have a choice now. Protecting these three — that’s the only damn thing that matters. (If they don’t want him, if the newsies don’t forgive him, after all this, then he can go. If nobody wants the whole of him, the open road will still take whatever scraps make him up.) “Delancys will rat me out, going back there would be turning myself in.”

“You could take that train to Santa Fe.” Dave’s voice — reading his mind — is tight, rough from the fight, the anger forced through every word. “With all that real money in your pockets.”

He’s missed Dave’s voice. His touch, too, and his smile, but he ain’t smart enough to know how to prompt either of those. “Nah. I think I best see this through.”

Jack ignores Dave’s scoff in favor of Les yanking him forward. “We should talk to Denton! He had a plan—”

“Les!” Dave snaps. “Denton isn’t any—”

“He wrote a beautiful article,” Sarah interrupts. Dave looks at her, betrayed. “You should read it. I’m sure it has something you can use.”

Jack blinks. “Thought nobody was printing on the rally.”

“They aren’t,” Davey hisses. Then, like the name is as difficult in his mouth as Jack’s is: “Denton isn’t.”

“He wanted to,” Sarah counters. Despite the argument, despite Davey’s darkening expression, his hand never leaves her wrist. “There’s a ban on it, so he can’t—”

“If he wanted to, he could,” Davey says. His gaze is fixed firmly on Jack. “It wasn’t worth the risk to him. He sold us out. He took what was easy and couldn’t care where it left us.”

They can’t talk here, in front of Sarah and Les, but without Sarah and Les, he isn’t so sure he could get Dave to stay in a room with him. Sarah glances to him, and back at Davey, and says, like Jack isn’t even there: “Jack came back. Why not Denton?”

Davey scoffs. His shoulders are raised to his burned-red ears. “Fine. Jack’s current failure to stick to a side was convenient for us, so we’ll bring him to our house, feed him as thanks, and then go begging on Denton’s door for newspaper scraps. That’s our plan?”

“Davey,” Sarah admonishes, and under her firm gaze, Davey looks so very young, his challenging all child’s posturing. “That’s a perfectly good idea,” she says, and her challenging seems far more grounded. “Let’s go then.”

Davey doesn’t speak. He looks at Jack, wrenches his hand out of Sarah’s, and stalks ahead of them, in the direction of the Jacobs’ building. Les heaves a sigh of someone much older, offers: “I’ll keep an eye on him,” and scampers off.

Which leaves Jack and Sarah.

“You really okay?” Jack asks, noticing her pained expression, looking ahead at her little brothers.

She shrugs. “I will be.” She pulls her arms around her, and takes her first uneasy steps forward. “I don’t forgive you, either, just so you know.”

Jack nods. There was no reason she should, but her words sink in his chest and he realizes, he really had wanted her to. “That’s fair.”

“You really hurt them,” she says, looking out at where Les is tugging at Davey’s sleeve. “You abandoned him.”

Jack swallows. His throat is tight and dry and he picks up his pace, hoping for a drink of water at the Jacobs’ that won’t half soothe that particular issue. “Yeah, but they don’t need me. Dave, it was his ideas. He knows how to deal with the guys — he can do it without me.”

“That wasn’t what I meant.”

Jack kicks at a cobblestone to avoid her eyes. “I know.”

“You didn’t just do it for the money, right?” she asks, and Jack recognizes the note of pleading in it. He doesn’t respond. “Did they threaten Davey?”

Jack shuts his eyes. “That don’t make it right.”

“It doesn’t,” Sarah agrees. She stops his step, still feet from the tenement — “Thank you.”

“It was the better move,” Jack defends, flushing under the full weight of her gaze. “Like I said, it was Davey’s brain—”

“Jack.” He shuts his mouth. “Thank you.”

He bites his lip to force down another refusal. Looks up, so his eyes aren’t so obviously wet. “I couldn’t’ve done anything else.”

“I know.” She squeezes his bicep. “But you’re wrong. They do need you.”

He shakes his head. “I don’t think—”

“Well I do think. And I know…” She purses her lips, like deciding on whether the words between them are safe to be let out. “I know Davey needs you. You can be sure of that.”

Denton’s apartment is quiet as hell before sin, empty of roommates and full of stuff, and Jack is reveling in the luxury of it while wondering if Davey would let Jack get away with stealing his shit. He could say it was a revenge thing, or something to hold ransom in case Denton quits on them again. Davey’s pissed at Denton; that might just do it.

Problem is, Davey’s even more pissed at him.

He hasn’t said a damn word to Jack in the time they’ve been alone. It’s been twenty minutes, at least, since Sarah rushed Les home, worried about a previously-unnoticed large and dark bruise from the Delanceys. It’s been fifteen since Denton’s got fed up with the horrible tenseness in the room and fucked off on some unspecified jaunt around the block. Jack doesn’t blame him.

It’s miserable here.

“Did you find the inking ball?” Jack asks, lifting another stack of haphazard books as if looking behind it will reveal anything more than a puff of dust directly for his breathing-in.

Over his own cough, Jack hears Davey grouse, “Denton’s buying them. With the paper,” like this is something established. Perhaps that was the very obvious excuse Denton had offered to leave with.

“Yeah, ’course,” Jack says, like he knew that. “How’s the edits coming?” Because while Jack’s useless job in this apartment is finding shit that apparently Denton’s just gonna buy, Davey’s is making edits to Denton’s essay. He’d volunteered for that job at least, apparently convinced something in Denton’s pro-newsie report would somehow be fucking them over again. It’s a pointless job. But Jack’s pretty sure that’s by design — their actual job here is to be getting along.

And he isn’t the one refusing to put in the hours. “Fine,” Dave says, curt as anything.

“Did it reveal Denton’s evil plan yet?” Jack asks. He circles around to sit at the edge of the desk Davey’s reading on. Jack’s been trying to give him space, but that hasn’t helped anything, and if it’s one or the other — he’d prefer the proximity. Dave glances up at him, but whether the scowl was prompted by the sudden influx of closeness or the question, Jack isn’t sure. He doesn’t get an answer. “You gonna talk to me at all, Jacobs?”

Davey snorts. “If I had something to say, I would.”

“How about listening to me when I talk?”

“Are you giving me any other option?”

“Nope.” Davey gestures an obvious get to it then, and Jack says, “I’m sorry.” It’s honester than he’d’ve liked, but he’s been beating around every corner of this bush for the last hour and he hasn’t hit a thing. “For scabbing—”

“I know what for,” Davey snaps. “It’s fine. You’re helping us for now.”

“Not ‘for now’. I’m helping you. I’m in, Jacobs.” This isn’t quite the rousing speech he’d hoped to give, but he don’t got that kind of power without Davey’s ideas, his belief, backing him. And Davey knows that. Knows the emptiness of Jack without Dave’s words to fill him. “You don’t believe me.”

“I believe it’s currently more advantageous for you to work with us.” Dave slices through an errant word with the tip of his pen. Jack wonders if he’s reading it at all, and hopes Denton made a spare copy. “I’m just not convinced you’ll stick around when that changes.”

Jack looks down at the paper. Davey’s scrawled, scratched handwriting over the neat lines of print, divisive but caring, still. “You was willing to forgive Denton.”

“Denton has something we need.” It was clearly implied, but Dave's weapon is that mouth, and he wields it clear and even as he says: “I don’t need anything from you, Jack.”

Jack swallows, tightly. “I believed you more the first time you said it.”

Dave cracks a half-smile. “I believe it more now.”

“I did it for you,” Jack confesses, quiet and half-hoping it won’t be heard. This feels too obvious, the unappealing insides of him spilled out on Denton’s rickety wooden desk for Davey to coldly pick over. He just — he has to see if it matters. “If I didn’t — Joe was gonna lock you up.”

The pen in Davey’s hand freezes. There is a hiss of breath as it catches in his throat, his expression a slight lip-downturning spasm, eyebrows furrowing in time to make him look intimately pained. It returns to even a moment later, but the pen shakes as much as his voice when he says, “Huh.”

“I wasn’t gonna take the money. Course not. They could lock me up, I didn’t give a damn, because I knew you could handle the Strike without me. But he — he said your name. He could tell it got to me. Mentioned your family, and what he could do to them.” The grip on the pen tightens. “That ain’t an option, to me.”

“Okay.” Davey taps his pen thrice on the paper, three dots in an uneven-sided triangle, and looks up at Jack. “Why should I believe you.”

“Cause you know me.”

“Do I?”

“You do.” Davey can say a lot of things, about himself and about Jack, and Jack will believe him. But not this. Davey knows Jack, because none of this — the Striking, the scabbing, the desperate crawl home — would work, if he didn’t. “If I didn’t do it for you, why would I be back? The moment the Delancys laid a hand on you, far as I consider it, that’s Pulitzer breaking the deal we made.”

“You should’ve let him take me,” Davey says. “You don’t — I don’t need your protection. I never have. I’m not a kid.”

“Dave—”

“And—” His hands falling down to push against the desk, draw him to standing. “And — unlike you, I’d gladly get locked up for the Strike. Unlike you, this matters to me.”

“Yeah? Yeah, and what the hell happens to the Strike with you in jail?”

“The kids fight harder,” Dave snarls back. “They know what we have is worth fighting for. We’re leaders, Jack. When their leader scabs, that sends the message that money is more important than protecting their rights!”

“If their leaders both get themselves thrown in jail, it sends the message that they should get themselves thrown in jail too! They’ll get hurt, for your pride!” Jack contends. “And, and they won’t have anyone to lead them! They look up to me, sure, but they could do without that. They can’t do without you. They can’t do it without your words.”

“So, what, my words matter more than your actions?”

“Yes! You fucking said it, Dave, you don’t need me. The boys don’t need me, they need you. You needed to believe that, you did believe that, so don’t tell me you don’t know now. You know you matter more. Why the fuck else would I do this?”

“I— I don’t know!” Davey throws his hands in the air, brows all tight-furrow, and in the shiny glint of ceiling light, there is a shine of tears there too. “I don’t understand.” Then, hand rested over his heart, fingers digging into his shirt. “I did need you.”

“Nah.” Jack feels his own smile tugged at the corner, something sad to it. “You did perfect without.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Dave—”

“I was falling apart.” Davey isn’t looking at him. His hand is still gripped tight on the fabric of his shirt, tone the kind of steady it only is when you know how bad it could break. “I’m not a leader, Jack. I’m not meant for this. And the kids — they’re all looking at me, like I’m you. I’m not you. I couldn’t be you, so they left. They followed your footsteps, they gave up, and I had half a mind to, also.”

Jack shakes his head. He reaches out, and puts his fingers to Davey’s wrist. “You wouldn’t’ve. You’re too damn good for that.”

“I’m not.” Davey pulls away from Jack’s offering, holding his own wrist up to his chest, protecting it, an impenetrable defense. “I wanted to. I wanted to throw it all out and be done with it. I told Denton I was gonna hold out, but I’ve never been more relieved than when he told me I could give it up. It was so, I,— It would have been over in days, if you didn’t come back.”

Jack swallows around the hard-pill that is Davey’s obvious certainty in this situation. He asks, instead, “When was you talking to Denton?”

Davey doesn’t move his arm from his chest, but Jack’s noticed, by now, how his knuckles faintly mimic whatever blush he gets on his face — and there it is, that bony ridge lit pink. “A few days ago.”

“Thought he turned on you bad as I did. You was making house calls for him?” He laughs,

Davey leans back, looks with eyes-narrowed: “I wanted to get him alone.”

Since Medda’s, Jack has had the time to calm down and think through that whole jealousy discussion. He doesn’t see way that letting Davey taunt him into that argument again will end well. He’s not gonna do it. Davey’s definitely just fucking with him, to get him angry, to turn him into something Davey can hate easily and without the fear of getting something wrong. Jack’s come too damn far in this conversation to let them backslide into a fight on the slim-chance that Davey actually made with a forty-something reporter he seems just as angry with. (Even though — Dave did always lean close to Denton, grin at him, eyes-shining and saying something too smart for Jack to understand, but Denton got perfectly, it wouldn’t be impossible, for Davey to want, and would Denton really be so stupid to not take him up on it—)

No. No, he’s not doing it. Nowhere good it goes.

“Alright,” he says, proud of his own restraint. “Look. Look, I hear ya, about the wanting to quit. It— the Strike was ours, you and me, our thing we raised up and kept strong. It wasn’t fair, for me to leave you alone with it, half-baked and unsupported.”

“You say that like the Strike’s our kid,” Davey says, falling just on the over-played side of condescending. The godawful-liar likes the idea.

“Ain’t she?” Jack says, soft.

David looks to the side. His fingers curl tight into a fist, pressed against the cage ‘round his heart. “Makes you the deadbeat da.”

“Deadbeat, sure, but I think you’s the da.” Dave scoffs, and Jack continues: “Hey! Hear me out. You had the idea, the like, seed, right, for the whole Strike, union thing, but I was the one that got to bring it out into the world.”

Davey looks at him, vaguely pissed, for a full ten seconds before coughing out a sound so reluctant it takes its repetition for Jack to understand that it’s a laugh. He’s still looking over at Jack with furrowed brow like he’s pissed, even choking his words with laughter. “You— Jack—” is all he manages before collapsing back on Denton’s well-made chair, head in hands. “I knocked you up with a Union?”

“Well, hell.” Jack laughs too, then, and hears the way it, as so much of him, fills in the space to match with Dave. “That is what I said, ain’t it?” Dave returns his head to his hands, shoulders shaking in laughter he surely wishes were silent.“I mean, some of those boys, they is our sons, ain’t they?”

“There’s some of them,” Davey says, through a wheezy laugh. He clearly doesn’t laugh enough, the poor guy’s out of practice. “I really hope are not.”

It takes Jack a second to get, and he barks out a laugh. “Ha! Yeah, the newsie family is ripe with inbreeding, that’s damn sure.”

Dave is leaned back, the fist over his mouth not quite hiding his smile. “That’s not—” There must be something funny in Jack’s expression, because he falls back into laughing a half second after looking at him. Jack, delighted by his delight, joins in.”

Eventually, they settle into some sort of still calmness. Jack is sat across from Davey, tears still in the corners of his eyes. Davey gives him a long-over look. “You should’ve told me.”

“’Bout the baby?” Jack jokes, and sees the quirk of Dave’s mouth as the kindness it is. “Bout the deal with Pulitzer.”

“That you were making a deal.” He has his hand curled into fist, resting against his mouth. “I had you alone in the alley. You could’ve told me you had to scab.”

Jack shakes his head, relenting more than negating. “You woulda fought me till you got a reason why.”

“Then—”

“And soon as you got a reason, we’d be having the fight we just did. You telling me you don’t need the protection, and me telling you I’m doing it anyway.”

“And you telling me I got you pregnant with the Strike?” Davey says, eyebrows half-raised. Jack shakes his head — yeah, the joke’s fun, but they gotta get to a point, sometime — but Davey continues. “I’m serious. You’re right. We would’ve argued, just like we’re doing here. But then we would have gotten to this part of the argument, where we’re at least willing to hear each other out.” He runs his tongue over his teeth, something hard in the set of his face. “And at least, that way, I would have known.”

Jack bites his lip, and the comment it’s holding back. He doesn’t need to say anything more. Dave’s right, and he’s right, and both of them are so damn wrong about plenty, so that they oughta get on the same page just to try to fill in the other’s gaps. “I’m sorry, Dave.”

“I know.”

“I shoulda told you.”

Davey nods. “But I think I get why you didn’t.”

“Why’s that?”

“You were scared.”

Davey doesn’t say the word like it means ‘a coward’, with any harsh bite or condemnation. It takes the better part of three long breaths for Jack to convince himself he don’t gotta be up in arms about it, then grins out a little: “Yeah, well, seeing you there, thinking I just got my favorite person in Manhattan locked up, at least — yeah, got me a little nervous.”

Davey’s scarlet flush is evident in the small space. “I meant— of going back to the Refuge, and of Pulitzer, and of the guys who would beat you up once you scabbed.”

“Oh, well. That too, I guess.”

There’s a knock on the door, a tentative sound unneeded by the owner of the apartment, but of course, is who walks through when Jack offers an allowing, ‘It’s open.’

“Hey, you two.” Denton looks back and forth between them, sitting adjacent on sofa and chaise. When Jack’s gaze falls back to Davey, he sees him sitting at attention, no trace of the tears or laughter Jack had coaxed from him.

(Jack thinks, briefly, of whether Dave was full of shit or not vis-a-vis him and Denton, and chooses to stop thinking it.)

“Hiya, Denton,” Jack says, smile a bit tight. Denton looks like he’s still trying to piece out where Jack and Davey ended up, and eventually decides he’s content with it because he nods and sets down his purchases. This includes, centrally, two wooden-handled objects that seem to be something like cloth maracas.

Jack deems these to be the inking balls.

Davey glances between Jack and Denton, and seems to notice, same as Jack, where Denton’s unsurety mutes him. Davey stands. “I finished my edits on your article. We can take a look at it, if you’re ready.”

Denton looks surprised — maybe he’d expected Jack and Dave to be at each other’s throats from the moment he left, leaving no time for actual work — but turns towards the writing desk, offering Davey some obliging comment to get them working.

Jack figures that’s that.

He stands up, dusts off his pants, and starts to go investigate this inking ball thing, but Davey catches his wrist. Jack looks up, sharply, and meets those blue eyes, softest he’s seen of them in ages. Davey glances to the side — checking that Denton is turned away, he’d guess — and then back at Jack. He slacks his grip on Jack’s wrist just enough to slide it down and hold his hand, giving it a gentle squeeze.

And Davey smiles.