Well, there's that! More Javid to satisfy my needs. Damn, I do a lot of hurt/comfort. I guess that's kind of my thing, though. Hey, I honestly need somebody to tell me if you think my plots are getting too similar, cause I keep feeling like I really need to come up with something new every time I write a new oneshot, especially for Newsies. I don't know. Oh, and you know I love reviews, they make me happy! I'll get back to you all soon, but school is kind of consuming my life right now and my family... don't even get me started on my family... But I'll be back. Love to you all!

Emily

Some Things Are

Jack's always covered in paint. All his clothes, no matter how hard he tries to keep them clean, always end up with splatters of color. When he comes in to school in the morning, dark circles streak under his eyes from tiredness and dried, cracking paint is always under his fingernails, on his arms.

The guys have learned, over time, that he's a very color-oriented painter, and that whatever theme of colors dash his arms and hands is what mood he's most likely to be in that day.

But I don't really notice it - I notice the paint, of course, but not that it has anything to do with his moods. So when Racetrack pulls me aside one day, all concerned-like, I don't really have any clue what's going on.

"Whoa, Race! What? Ow! Careful on my shirt, I've already had to replace enough because of you."

He lets me go and steps back with a grimace.

"No, don't say things like that. Just don't."

I start blushing madly, thankful that there's nobody else in the tiny, unused hallway to see us. Nobody even walks by the entrance.

"Yeah, okay. What's with the slamming me into walls."

"That either, don't say things like that. Just don't say anything. You're making this more awkward than it needs to be." I raise my eyebrows, but don't say anything else and motion for him to talk. "Jack doesn't have any paint. It was blues and blacks yesterday, and reds before that. But today he doesn't have any paint."

"What?"

He shakes his head, openly gaping at me. "What do you mean 'what'? Jack doesn't have any paint! How can you not have noticed?!"

He gestures to his arms and his hands and exaggeratedly picks at his fingers.

"Racetrack. I have no idea what you're talking about."

"But you're his best friend! How can you not know what I'm talking about?"

I lift my hands in surrender. "He's been friends with you guys for longer. There is no way I'm his best friend."

I didn't think it was possible for his jaw to drop any further towards the floor, and it's a little weird to think about Anthony "Racetrack" Higgins at a loss for words.

"You... You..." He takes a deep calming breath, holds up a finger to me and turns away for just a moment before looking back to see if I'm joking. I'm not. "How can you been this high school's stop student and you can't see anything that's right in front of your nose?"

I shrug. "Don't know. Must have left my reading glasses at home. Okay, Race, get to the point. You didn't slam me against a wall just to tell me I'm clueless - I already know that. So unless you have something very important to tell me or you were planning on making out with me - please don't - then can I go, please? I have studying and homework to get done."

He hold his hands right at my neck as though he's making to strangle me. "HE HAS NO PAINT!"

I smack his hands away and shout back, "I STILL DON'T KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS!"

He sighs and starts talking so rapidly and using his hands to gesture so much that I almost can't understand (though I don't risk asking him to slow down out for fear that he might explode out of exasperation): "Jack always paints in the morning before school, that's just how it is and we've all just kind of learned that whatever colors are on his hands or his arms or wherever is what mood he's gonna be in all day, or at least for a while."

"How does that follow?"

"He does a lot of cartoons, and he likes to do them in color and we can almost always tell how he's gonna be because he uses different themes to portray different emotions, in that artistry way, you know?"

"Not really, but okay."

He growls. It's the scariest thing I've ever heard in my life.

"Well pretend to know, because he has no paint today and he had blue yesterday and red before that and so therefore it has to do with you and so you're the one who's going to talk to him."

I make a sound that's somewhere between a scoff and a laugh. It's become a bit of a signature sound, I guess. "But what does blue and red and no paint mean?"

"Reds, obviously, are usually angry, or he's thinking about Santa Fe. I mean, unless he comes in the next morning talking about the cheerleading squad and flexibility, in which case that's entirely different. And blues are usually sad, unless he comes in talking about birds, in which case that means he's still thinking about Santa Fe. And red and blue together, or, you know, in the same time frame, means he's thinking about you. But no paint? No paint? That's... That's... A Jack Kelly that hasn't been painting is the eighth deadly sin."

I roll my eyes. "I don't think that means what you think it means." His words catch up with me. "Wait, what do you mean red and blue equals thinking about me?"

"I don't care if it means what I think it means!" he says, disregarding my last remark. "There is still the issue that Jack did not paint this morning and he was thinking about you beforehand and so you need to go. Talk. To. Him!"

He's shoving me down the hallway, both hands on my back, pushing me towards the door so fast that I don't have time to pick up my feet, so I kind of end up just sliding down the hall on the soft, worn soles of my shoes, leaned back against Race's hands as he pushes me with unexpected strength. Everybody gives us odd looks as we pass, but as soon as they see that it's Racetrack, they all sigh and shake their heads and look away because, really, this isn't even that strange compared to any of his other antics.

I stumble and nearly fall when we get out the door - some kind freshman had seen us a good twenty feet back and has been holding the door open - and onto the concrete, where I no longer slide. My bag full of books flips over my shoulder and onto the ground with a heavy thump, just narrowly missing my foot.

I pick it up and sling it back over one shoulder, standing upright once more and turn to face Race, who is pointing very determinedly in the direction of Medda's, where Jack will undoubtedly be.

"They don't call you the Walkin' Mouth for nothing," he says.

# # #

Medda's like an aunt to all the guys, always has been, but she's practically a mother to Jack, especially since last year when she managed to get him away from that wretched foster family and into her care.

She gave him a room downstairs in the basement, just below the stage, though he doesn't seem to mind that much, and she let's him use the studio upstairs down the hall from the dressing room (we're all pretty sure he sleeps in there more often than his own room) where he stays all day every day when he can, and he paints. He's making good money selling them. And Medda pays him for backdrops, I know, and sometimes I wonder what he plans on doing with the money other than buy more paints. Crutchie tells me he's saving it up - he's seen the jars of crumpled bills and jangling coins just as often as the rest of us - but not even he knows what it's all for.

Medda's lounging on the tiny little porch squeezed onto the building that seems to take up so much space in the even tinier back alley (it's really just a very large top step, but it's the biggest porch we've ever seen in New York City) and she's got a cigarette dangling from her fingers and smoke blowing out through her nose, somehow, when I walk to the back to the entrance both she and Jack prefer that we use.

Her expression flips through a range of emotions when she sees me, but it ultimately becomes very sad and hopeful all at the same time.

"Oh, darling, I'm so glad you're here! He's up in his studio, as he always is, you know, but he really needs to talk to somebody. I've tried but… I think you'll do better."

"You and all the others, apparently."

I pass some of the Beauties on my way upstairs, trying not to blush so heavily, and I don't think they notice, though one throws me an air kiss (or something, I don't even know) over her shoulder. I'm reminded of Les the first he saw them all made up and in full costume, and I smile bitter-sweetly.

I've always loved his studio. It's all windows on one side, and giant drapes Jack's made out of canvas somehow are roped over to the sides in the afternoon so he can catch the best light. The floor is hardwood and there's paint everywhere, splattered all over like a Jackson Pollock painting, and in some places there were even notes that Jack had written in sharpie for himself: "Look up this" or "look up that" or "call Specs to bring Chinese takeout when he's on his way home" and none of us really know how he keeps up with them all - none have ever been crossed out, though they sometimes get dripped on.

There's very little furniture: a bookshelf in the corner that's crammed with technique books, most of which he's never used, and one section dedicated to the school's textbooks we all get to leave at home for studying and homework, none of which he's ever used. There's a couch, too, and a little desk covered in brushes of all sorts and pencils and pens, and it's so full of these that you can't really even tell that it's a desk. Oh, and about seven different easels, multiple stacks of unused canvases leaning against the walls in the corners, and of course even more that are painted and ready to go wherever they're going, whether that be up on his own walls or sold for somebody else's.

My favorite thing about it, though, is how alive it always looks. Especially when Jack's painting.

But now.

Now.

Now, he's sitting on that couch with his legs crossed and his back so hunched and his head hung so low that it almost looks like it's not there from the back. His hands are clenched together and his elbows rest on his thighs and he looks like he's trying to break his own fingers where they lay tensley in his lap.

Now, the room looks dull, black and white, no color at all. All his paintings have been covered in plain white tarps, taken down off the walls and placed onto the floor, all of them lined up against the wall under their fabric covers. The makeshift curtains are drawn and there is only one light on in the corner of the room, behind Jack, by the door, casting shadows all over the empty hardwood floor.

And perhaps the most depressing thing is the massive (and I do mean massive) blank, white, completely untouched canvas propped on the biggest easel he could find, right in front him. He doesn't look at it.

"Hey, Jack," I say as quietly as I can while closing and locking the door behind me.

He makes a noncommittal grunt in return, which I'm surprised to even get out of him at all.

I go to the couch and sit down next to him and set my bag at my feet, trying my best not to stumble and fall off the cushions with the shadows messing with my depth perception.

"Racetrack said that I should… I thought that you might…" I sigh. "We, Racetrack and I and the rest of us, noticed you hadn't been doing too well the past few days." He doesn't say anything, doesn't move a muscle. "You want to talk about it?"

Maybe it's a little awkward and not at all something Jack Kelly would ever do (talk about his feelings? With another guy? With me?) but I'm hopeful anyway. And perhaps what I receive is something even better than what I asked for.

He takes his one hand and untangles it from the other, then frantically darts it around on the couch cushion next to my leg, searching for something, until I put my own hand down within his reach, with slight hesitation, and he immediately weaves our fingers together and holds on tight. His face gets buried in the other, like he's embarrassed but really not, and he tugs gently at our fingers so I move just a little bit closer and our legs are right up against each other's and I get this feeling in my stomach, this seed of hope in my mind and these stupid, almost innocent fantasies in my short daydreams.

So maybe it's not just me.

"Nah," he says, roughly, like he's been crying. Ludicrous. Jack Kelly doesn't cry. "I don't want to talk about it yet. Just stay here, okay?"

I shake my head, forgetting he can't see. "I won't go anywhere." I have a feeling I'm not going to get the chance to ask him what Race meant about the reds and blues and what they have to do with me. At least not today, not right now.

I manage to switch which hand he has his grip on and I place my other arm around his shoulders and he leans into me like it's the most comfort he's ever gotten in his life. Is it? The thought saddens me and I hold him to me just a little bit more. He doesn't mind.

Eventually, after a while and I can't feel my fingers anymore and my arm is tingling, I ask, "So, the canvas?" and it doesn't actually take him too long to answer.

"I saved up all those tips from the restaurant, waiting tables you, know, and I bought it. It's a 48" by 72" and it was $523, including tax. And I have absolutely no idea what to paint on it."

He spent all his hard-earned money on this one big canvas, all those jangling jars of coins and crumpled bills, and he has no idea what to paint on it. The idiot.

I squeeze his hand once. "That's alright. You'll figure it out, just give it time. In the meantime, how about letting in some light? And Medda left you some food, I guess, over here."

I manage to free myself from his side and he obliges. I go to the windows and draw back the curtains, tacking them to the walls aside. The sun has already begun its journey from its high perch in the sky and is now much lower, and having dipped below the thin layer of clouds above it now rest directly behind the tallest buildings on the visible skyline. It throws a bright, white-yellow light into the room. Both Jack and I have to blink and shade our eyes for a while to adjust to the new brightness.

"There you go. You want something to drink? Or how about trying to eat something. Medda left a cookie. It's chocolate chip, I think."

I hold it out to him, and when he finally looks up from his hand it's right in front of his nose. He stares at it for a minute, then looks up at me. His eyes are red. He has been crying. He looks back down at the plate with the gooey mess on it, takes it in his hand and sets it down on the floor, then, much to my surprise, yanks me back down onto the couch right flush against him. Every inch of our skin that touches, which isn't much due to my rolled-up sleeve, burns. He folds his hands together around my neck and rests them on my shoulder, then turns completely and pulls his feet up behind him so that he can lay his head against my chest.

There's an awkward moment where he just breathes, quite contentedly, and I have no idea what to with my hands, but I eventually end up wrapping my arms around him as best I can without shifting our position too much.

"Jack," I whisper, still quite surprised and very confused, "what are you doing?"

"You gotta stop, Davey," he says.

"Stop what?"

"Being such a dumbass."

I glare at the top of his head, and his hair, now much longer than I had noticed it being before and a much darker shade of brown (maybe that's just the light), tickles my nose.

"I can leave."

I mean it moderately teasingly, but it's absolutely the wrong thing to say to Jack Kelly. Well, not to Jack Kelly in particular, but to this day's Jack Kelly. This moment's Jack Kelly, who holds himself even tighter to me at words, who lets out a soft whimper, and this moment's Jack Kelly who's palms begin to sweat and I can feel it through my shirt, who very clearly feels vulnerable and… alone.

"No, Davey, don't leave. Please don't leave. Everybody's leaving me, please don't go. I don't want to be by myself…"

"What? No, Jack, who do you think is leaving you? The guys? Medda? Everybody loves you and wants be around you all the time, Jack, why would they leave you?"

"They just will. It always happens."

Fosters, I realize. Foster homes. He thinks we're just another makeshift family and we'll pass him on to another one that will leave him eventually, too, just as all the others have. So now I've had this realization, but I have nothing to do about it. What can I say to that?

"Well, absolutely for certain, I won't go anywhere. I'm right here, okay, and you'll come into school tomorrow morning covered in paint like usual and everybody else with be right there, too."

He sniffs. He's started to cry again, and in all honesty, it freaks me out more than any horror movie ever will.

"You mean it? Really?"

I smile a bit and push my face into his hair and he nestles just a little bit closer to me, however impossible that may seem by now, and turns his face into my shirt.

"Absolutely."

"Hey, Davey?"

"Yeah?"

"Thank you."

It's muffled and he says it quietly and so it takes me a minute to figure out what he's actually said, and when I realize just what it was I also realize how hard it was for him to say.

"No worries."

He nods a bit, and then he starts moving his head up, still pressed against my chest and so my shirt kind of inches up where he pulls on it, until it falls back into its more-or-less original place when he rests his chin on my other shoulder, the one his hands aren't sweating on, and he puts his mouth right next to my ear.

"Love you, Davey."

And I can completely understand him this time, even if he only breathes the words, even if he loses his confidence on my name and just kind of holds his breath, waiting for me to shove him off, away, get him out of my life, but… why would I do that when it hits me that this all I've really wanted for the longest time? How could I?

So I turn my head a little bit, too, and say in just as quiet a tone, "I love you too, Jack," as if the words are so life-altering that only the two of us need to know they have ever been spoken and actually, yeah, they are. For now, at least.

He moves again and puts a soft, tender, hesitant kiss right on the corner of my mouth, but I'm not having that, and so the most risky thing I think I'll ever do in my life is kiss him in full, right on the lips, before he has the chance to pull away.

He stays, and he kisses me back without delay, and here I am, kissing Jack Kelly, and here we are and he's kissing me back and he loves me and I love him and everything is perfect.

We pull apart a fraction, and so that's that.

"You'll stay?"

I open my eyes and he's staring at me. It makes me go just a little bit dizzy, and would more than likely have made me go weak in the knees had I not been leaning back against the couch with him practically in my lap.

"We already talked about this."

"No, will you stay while I paint? I want to paint."

I grin, and it is, without a doubt, the first time I've smiled so big in ages. Then I kiss him again, and it is, without a doubt, just one of the first of many.

"Yeah. I'll stay."