Title: Coming to Terms
Author: Olive Wednesday (Cowboy Superhero is temporary)
Rating: K+
Fandom/pairings/characters: Newsies/Javid, Blush, Sprace if you like/all those plus Denton, mentions of and one-liners from a few others
Summary: "It was Mush and Blink that made him wonder." It takes weeks and months, but David begins to realize a change within himself - and finds how to come to terms with it. slash, JackDavid/Javid, 1899 'verse.
Awards: None
A/N: Hey all! Here's the Javid fic I promised. Sorry about the username change; as I said, it's temporary, just until a few IRL things blow over. In the mean time, you can still address me as Olive. Also, I'm experimenting with a new A/N set up, to give more info before starting the fic. You like? About future fic: I will get up the next chapter of Elevator when it is finished, though that will be awhile. I also owe people some HP fics (why do they keep asking me for HP fics? It's not even one of my fandoms), but I have some Sprace drabbles I may throw up here to fill the gap until all that. Enjoy and review, my lovelies! No really, review please. I'm not sure if I actually have readers or if I'm just talking to the wall.
It was Mush and Blink that first made him wonder.
It had been a cold December morning. Those few that could afford it stayed inside, but most of the newsies had to go out and sell. David's mother had tried to keep him at the tenement for the day, but, knowing they needed all the help they could in the dead of winter, he grabbed his winter clothing and headed to the Distribution Center. By midmorning it was snowing, and by lunchtime there was no one left on the streets.
The boys had all gathered in Tibby's for hot food and an escape from the unnaturally cold weather. Usually they would give into their more childish impulses and play in the white fluff that covered the city, but today was so cold that even the bravest and most snow-loving newsies couldn't stay out in it. Needless to say, no one would be sleeping in the streets that night.
The afternoon was dwindling down into evening, and the owners of Tibby's, kind and tolerating as they were, were beginning to tire of having so many rowdy boys in their restaurant for such an extended period of time. The newsies figured it was time to leave, so they grabbed their coats and scarves and mittens while Jack did a head count.
"We're four short," he announced a few moments later. "Anybody seen Skittery, Snoddy, Mush or Blink?"
"Skittery and Snoddy headed back to the lodging house a couple a' hours ago," Itey supplied. "Somethin' about not havin' enough money for tonight and sneakin' in the back early. Kinda stupid, if you ask me. I woulda lent 'em."
"Alright, thanks, Itey," Jack said in response. "So what about Mush an' Blink?"
Most of the boys just shrugged, completely at a loss for the whereabouts of the two newsboys.
"I think I saw them go out the back together, maybe to grab a smoke," Swifty said, partly to himself, "but that was a long time ago."
Jack nodded and told Bumlets to go see if he could find them. Newsies usually travelled alone or in small groups, but today Jack wanted to make sure everyone got home okay.
"Oh my God!"
The boys whipped their heads around to see Bumlets running back inside, Blink and Mush close on his heels. There was a pleading expression on their faces, like they were begging him not to do something.
"Bumlets," Mush began, begging, "please, don't-"
"They were KISSING!" Bumlets' face was full of hatred, and just a little fear. "I walked out back to find them and they were KISSING!" The expressions of the boys changed from blank and confused to socked and infuriated. David knew he should be disgusted, knew he should hate them, but he couldn't. Instead, he wondered what it felt like. Wondered what it felt like to kiss a boy. He looked over at Jack, who happened to be the boy he had imagined kissing. Unlike the others, Jack's face wasn't full of hate or fear or shock. His face was unreadable.
As the others began to hurl insults and threats at Mush and Blink, Jack held up a hand. "QUIET!" he demanded. When he got his wish, Jack looked over at the pair. "Mush, Blink, I think you should go." The tone was calm, even, without emotion. Or was that a hint of sympathy and regret David heard in his voice?
Blink looked lost. "But, Jack-"
"I think you should go, Blink," Jack repeated, this time a little louder. "You got money, don't ya? Take it and go. Queens, Brooklyn, Harlem, hell, I don't care, anywhere but here. Take it an' get your pansy asses out of Manhattan."
They walked through the group of newsboys and out of the restaurant, getting shoved and glared at and spat on as they made their way through what used to be their friends. Blink still looked lost, and Mush - well, David had never seen Mush look as devastated as he did now. He looked as if someone had stuck a knife in his chest and twisted.
And then they were gone, swallowed by the swirling white outside. David wouldn't be surprised if he never saw them again. He watched the spinning snow for a long time after he couldn't see them, feeling sick to his stomach.
It was Denton who helped him realize it.
"Two men dead in Brooklyn."
David wasn't listening, and hadn't been for awhile. But instead of his silence being accepted as a wish to move on to the next headline, the voice continued. "Two men were found dead in Brooklyn last night in what's believed to be their love nest."
Snapped out of his stupor by 'love nest', one of the words Jack had deemed made a headline good, David jerked his head up to look at Denton. They were in his office, sorting through piles of reports from Denton's contacts around the city. David's mind had been drifting, drifting to thoughts of Jack. Thoughts he should not be having about Jack. He kept trying to ignore them, and they just kept coming back. It wasn't the thoughts themselves that worried him. What worried him was that he didn't really mind.
"Did you say 'love nest'?"
Denton nodded. "I did."
"Did you say 'dead in what's believed to be their love nest'?
Denton nodded again. "I did."
David bit his lip. "Two men."
"Yes."
But, a love nest, with two men... "I don't understand."
"They're, what do you boys call them, pansies. Men who kiss other men. That's probably why they're dead, someone murdered them."
"You think someone murdered them?"
"More than likely. People think being a pansy is wrong. They fear it and they hate it. And people try to destroy what they fear and hate."
David looked down at the desk, letting what Denton had just said soak in. He looked up at the reporter. "Denton?"
"Yes, David?"
"What makes someone a pansy?"
Folding his hands on the desk, Denton leveled is gaze at David. "Someone is a pansy when they don't want to kiss girls; they'd rather kiss other men. All it means is that a man prefers his own gender over the opposite one. It's a stupid thing to hate someone over."
"But people do?"
"Yes, people do. A lot of people do."
David though for a minute. He imagined kissing girls, and no he definitely didn't like that. But when he thought about kissing other boys, he didn't like it either. Not unless he thought of one boy in particular.
"Denton?"
"Yes?"
"What if someone didn't want to kiss girls, but they only wanted to kiss one man? Would they still be a pansy?"
"I suppose. But like I said, David, it doesn't really matter. It is what it is, and love is too beautiful a thing to waste."
David nodded then picked up another possible headline, not really seeing it. He was a... God, he couldn't believe it. But he was, that was plain as day. Jack wasn't though, and that was plain as day, too. His thoughts were once again taken over by Jack, and now he knew why.
It was Spot who confronted him on it.
"You got a thing for Jacky-boy?"
Spot's query caught David off-guard. He, Spot, and Race had been playing poker with the other boys, but now it was just the three of them at the table. Everyone else had left the room and gone across the hall to bed - Race, Spot and David had cleaned them all out. David hadn't thought of himself as a poker player, but he supposed his prowess was due to his affinity for numbers and knowledge of a deck of cards. Race and Spot were just natural-born talents.
After a few deep breaths, David finally managed to reply in a voice that was only a little shaky. "What?"
Spot's face darkened; he didn't like repeating himself. "I said, you got a thing for Jacky-boy?"
David bit his lip and glanced over at Race, wondering why Spot hadn't waited to bring this up when they were alone. But he supposed it wouldn't have made a difference; Spot probably would have told Race anyway. They were very close and seemed to have no secrets between them. They trusted each other more than anyone else in the world - the two had an unbreakable bond that was Mississippi deep.
Looking back over at Spot, he shrugged. He was just going to leave it at that, but the way Spot was looking at him, staring right into his soul, made him come clean. "I..." he put his head in his hands and mumbled, "yes."
Spot merely nodded, but it was Race who spoke. "Could be worse."
David lifted his head. "How?"
"You could've fallen for someone not nearly as worth your time," Spot answered for him. It was strange, the way they kept speaking for each other, but it was Spot Conlon, so David didn't say anything. "Jacky-boy's as good as they come."
"And he could care." Race chewed on his cigar as he said this.
It confused David a little. 'And he could care'. Leave it to Race to be cryptic. Who could care? Jack? About what? Why couldn't he just be straight with David?
"So ya see, Mouth, it could be worse. Cowboy ain't a half-bad choice." Race nodded his assent to Spot's conclusion.
"What are you guys talking about? Are you saying I should tell him? Because that's a horrible idea. He'd soak me. He'd never talk to me again. He'd probably hate me for the rest of his life."
Spot leveled him with a stare, that one that pierced David like a needle."I think Jacky-boy's more of a man than you give him credit for."
David had no idea what Spot meant by this, and it unnerved him a little, but in a strange way it comforted him, too.
But it was Jack who made him truly come to terms with it.
It had been a couple months since David came to realize he was a pansy, and only a few weeks since Spot and Race made him really think about it. Otherwise, he had tried to avoid dwelling on it that much; a part of him still couldn't accept what he was, even though deep down he knew it was true.
Not thinking about it didn't mean he didn't think about Jack, though. He still did, every night. He just tried to ignore what that meant.
"Dave, ya usually sell more papes when you call out headlines." Jack looked at his selling partner and smiled that signature smile of his, the one that made David melt into his boots. "You can't sell nothin' if you look like your out to lunch."
David glared at Jack and smacked him with his papers. "I was not 'out to lunch', and I can sell just fine without you telling me what to do."
Jack smiled again and threw an arm around David's shoulders. "I know ya can, Dave, and that's why I keep reminding ya: so ya don't get cocky on me." He removed his arm from David's shoulders and went back to hawking headlines.
A few minutes went by, Jack hawking headlines and David trying to stave off thoughts that were preventing him from doing the same. Every so often David would glance over at Jack and then quickly look away, because looking did not help get rid of the thoughts.
Within a half hour, Jack had sold all his papers and had started in on David's, despite multiple protests. David just stared at his feet and listened to Jack's voice straining to be heard above the din of a New York street.
Jack's voice stopped, and David looked up to find Jack looking at him thoughtfully. "You okay, Dave?"
David nodded. "Why wouldn't I be?"
"I dunno, you just haven't seemed quite like yourself lately," Jack told him, no smile on his face to lighten the comment. There were few times when Jack was so serious he didn't smile.
Shrugging, David turned his attention back to his shoes. When he looked back up a few seconds later, Jack was disappearing into the crowd.
David hurried to follow Jack before he slipped into the river of people and was lost. They weaved around people and between stands, at one point narrowly avoiding being run over by a horse drawn carriage. They turned street after street until David was more lost than Goldilocks, finally stopping at an alley. Jack turned down it and walked to the end and David followed.
Jack gave no warning before turning around on the spot, causing David to run into him. Jack caught him and held his arms so that David had no choice but to look into Jack's eyes. "Why ya so upset, Dave?"
For a second David couldn't answer, because dear God, Jack was close. Those brown eyes were staring at him, waiting, pleading, breaking down every one of his defenses like they always did. There were two pairs of eyes David couldn't lie to: Spot's, because no one lied to Spot Conlon, and Jack's, because Jack knew him better than anyone else, even his family. And he surrendered.
"I'm scared, Jack." And he was, though he hadn't realized just how scared until now, when he might lose Jack over what he was going to tell him. When it meant he would finally have to admit it to himself. "Real scared. I've been living a lie my whole life, and I only realized a few months ago. And it's bad, Jack, it's a lie I can't go on living, but I've got to, because if I don't, God, if I don't, I'll end up dead, Jack, and-"
David felt something warm and soft on his lips and found himself staring at Jack Kelly's eyelids, mere centimeters from his own. And then the warmth was gone and he was looking into Jack's eyes.
"Ya shouldn't worry so much, Dave."
Again he kissed him, and if David had ever had any doubts, now they evaporated in the heat of the midday sun.