Matthew Kai stood in the waning afternoon sunlight, with his shirt sleeves pushed up to his elbows and his suspenders hanging around his knees, scowling. He was holding an open pocket watch in one hand and an envelope in the other.
"I am not Jack Kelly's delivery boy." Matt threw the letter down as Cam stepped into the workshop.
"It's all very romantic." She mused slipping her hands around his torso, under his arms, holding a roll of garlic bread. Matt's shoulders rolled impatiently but Cam ignored him. Pressing her forehead into his shoulder blade and dropping her hand to grab the letter.
"If being forced to send letters all over the city because Audrey has managed to be restricted from receiving them due to running off is romantic." Matt growled a bit, shoving the roll into his mouth.
He didn't like admitting it, how much peace and calm he still found in this one workshop with this one old man and this young woman. Her presence, the way she smelled of pasta and garlic, and how she felt against him, was everything the newsboy thought of as home. It brought him back from the airs of being in Brooklyn.
"Running off, headlong into trouble seems to be a family trait." West teased as he leaned out from a standing grandfather clock. He was wiping grease from his hands as the grandfather began to ring the hour.
"You can get her this letter?" Cam asked, still turning it over in her hands. Matt shrugged uncommitted to the prospect and focused on the tiny gear that was catching in the pocket watch.
"If he will not, I can deliver it to the girl." West replied casually stepping over to take hold of the watch in Matthew's hands.
"You?" Matt snapped his attention up to the old man. The creases around his eyes deepened, his chin popped up, every muscle in his shoulders became taunt and ready for a fight. The Brooklyn creeping back without his permission the way it did increasingly these days. West nodded, picking up the eye glasses on the work table to examine the gears closer.
"Yes." West tinkered with a tool for a moment before the pocket watch started ticking. The old man wasn't fazed as if maybe the way Matt suddenly shifted was all too familiar. Matt let out an exasperated sigh, running a hand through his hair and untangling Cammie from him. Loosening her grip from him, as if he could do it easily.
"How would YOU, come to see Miss Audrey Kai the charming ward of Thomas and Casey Longfellow of the upper west side?" Matt glared. He knew. He had been told that his cousin could often not be found in her regular spots. She slipped from view, she stepped out of the conversations, she vanished into the thin air.
"The young lady came to see me, just last week." West murmured clicking another gear into place.
"She came here?" Matt slammed his hand upon the work table, a furious glare upon on his face. "Into Little Italy, alone?"
"Well, Matthew, your cousin is a Kai, you can hardly be surprised." West eyed the hand, a slight censor in the look. Matt ignored it, use to it and unperturbed. He twitched, in a manner that either betrayed concern or distress though if at the thought of his cousin in danger or his lack of knowledge of it West couldn't be sure. It seemed Matthew had grown rather accustomed to his army of informants.
"I thought she was never alone?" Cammie asked danced around to stand in front of Matthew. Focus his attention. The movement flickered a memory of his parents, had his mother done that for his father.
"She isn't to be," Matt began impatiently licking his lips, trying to remember any of the whistling tunes that Bottle Cap used. Cammie noticed the impatience, the way the irritation flashed in his eyes and flushed in his cheeks. She bounced on her toes, popping up to kiss Matthew once, softly in a mostly chaste manner. Just enough to distract the boy entirely.
"Would you write to me if you went out west?" Cammie smiled.
"Why would I ever leave New York," Matt leaned down to kiss her, "Or you?"
Giving in to her the way he always had, the way he was beginning to realize he always would.
West allowed the demonstrative shows of affection for as long as it took him to seal up the pocket watch Matthew had been trying to fix. Then the older man knocked the work table with one of the tools, loudly and pointedly.
"Matthew, if you don't get on your way that shadow of yours will coming looking for you." West warned.
"Bottle Cap is likely heading here now." Matt shrugged undistributed as if he expected the other boy. He reached out and pulled playfully at one of the dropping curls form Cammie's hair. He wanted to pull the comb loose from her hair, knowing he shouldn't or even that he wouldn't.
"Stop that." West grunted.
"Stop what?" Matt asked innocently.
"You know what, boy."
Cammie stepped away immediately, never willing to cause a fight. She picked up the letter again and frowned at it.
"You don't think they are an epic love story?"
"Who? Jack Kelly and my cousin?" Matt began reaching for the suspenders at his knees. He didn't often think of them, he had never paid them much attention. Audrey was Laces, and Jack was Manhattan, in a way that never allowed much room for them to be anything else. But he did find it impossible to remember one without the other.
"Yes. I saw them together, I saw the way they were… I hear things," She frowned.
"From who?" Matt demanded.
"Probably from me." Bottle Cap's voice boomed and echoed before his head popped in from the back of the shop, as if he was stepping down the steps from the living quarters. Matt glanced at his constant companion, idly wondering if the boy had been asleep on a rooftop somewhere before slipping in through a window.
"I think you don't choose to leave the ones you love." Matt shrugged impatient again, as if the calm of the clock shop was slipping from him and the Brooklyn air was rushing back. He was harshly pulling his shirt back on, doing up his buttons with a violent tug on each, ready for any slight to bring his fist to a close.
"Sometimes you let the ones you love go." Bottle Cap frowned.
"And sometimes life is hard for no reason at all." West nodded knowingly at Cammie. Cammie sighed, placing a calming hand on Matt's chest and smiling at him.
"Take her the letter?" She begged. "She just started writing him back."
"Why?" He demanded.
"If you wrote to me," Cammie pressed her hand deeper into his chest. "Would you not want me to receive your letters?"
Matt inhaled one second at a time, letting his eyes close carelessly trusting of his surroundings. Bottle Cap leaned away from the scene, catching with his all too curiously roving glance a familiar looking pocket watch that West slipped into his work belt. Bottle Cap had learned long ago that not all pocket watches were the same. This one had a tarnished crown and a sharp dent along the back. Unmistakable details made unavoidably when Jacob Henry Canterbury had a nervous twitch. Audrey, West had mentioned, had been here.
"What tales have you been telling her?" Matt looked over Cammie's head at Bottle Cap.
"Just of cowboys and princesses." The other boy shrugged. He believed in those wild tales, the ones in the dime novels, but he knew better than most how things changed.