Author's Note: Fluffy/Angsty Javid Slash ficlet. Disney owns Newsies.
Stranger Things Than Runaway Dreams
By Shoesie
Into the darkness I speak. "Are you thinking of me?" No answer of course, besides the snore of the little kid sleeping next to me. I hate sleeping with Les.
You aren't here. How could you answer my question spoken into a wakeful night of desperate loneliness? Yet I wonder if I'm really alone, or if our dreams are together right now. Have our dreams left our bodies, to reach out into the sleeping city, hoping to again intermingle? Maybe that's why I can't sleep now…because my dreams have run away to be with your dreams. Stranger things have happened at 1:03 in the morning.
Like that strange thing that happened last week.
The rain kept me from going home. At the very first signs of the rain I cursed it, leaping up from a game of poker to rush home before the storm got too bad. But you climbed out onto the fire escape, looked up at the rain, and begged it to ignore my curses. I laughed at your melodramatic passion and joined you on the fire escape while the others kept up their game. Soon, your clothes clung to your body, your hair to your face. "Like a drowned rat, Jack." I guess I looked the same. Your fingers pushed my limp curls off my forehead and I felt far warmer than I should have in the icy rain.
"Don't walk all the way home in the rain, Dave."
"But, we're getting just as wet out here."
A good point, on my behalf. But I still gave in to you. You convinced me quiet easily that since it was raining so hard, I should stay for the night.
I had slept at the lodging house for newsboys before. Just one other time, but this time was different. It was crowded from all the boys needing in, out of the rain. Bodies packed into bunks, two or three small boys in one space. No one commented on two large boys sharing one small bunk space. Or the way those two nameless boys slept, bodies and limbs entwined around each other, squeezed into that space without complaint.
And now I'm melancholic. My blankets feel empty. Though strangely, my cheeks feel warm, a perpetual blush blooming since that night.
Yes. Stranger things have happened at 1:03 in the morning, strange things that since then have clamored to be re-lived, and yet refused to be spoken about.
I am alone, with nothing but the murmuring form of my brother next to me to remind me that I am still me, still Dave. Because I feel so different. My dreams have run away with yours.