#fellas may i reintroduce you to | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

violetwolfraven · 5 years ago

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Touch x5

No one asked for this but y’all can’t stop me. Basically 3 people who experience the Newsies habits involving physical touch, (and why specific individuals touch each other) 1 who is reintroduced to it, and 1 who completely misreads what it means.

Warnings: Uh... period-typical homophobia/internalized homophobia, referenced physical abuse, PTSD, brief mentions of injuries I guess?

...

Les thought the atmosphere that was created by most or all of the Manhattan Newsies (plus a couple of Brooklyn boys, occasionally) was exciting.

He’d always had friends back in school, but his old buddies weren’t like this. They didn’t randomly jump up against a building to vault off it and do a backflip just to hear the cheers and laughter of their friends. They didn’t check each other over carefully whenever someone was hurt. They didn’t take a second to stop and ask if you were okay if you did anything that indicated you might be sad.

But mostly, Les’s old friends didn’t touch each other as much as his new ones did.

Back in school, it had always been ‘hands to yourself,’ except when they were playing tag or football. But with the Newsies, it was a constant stream of friendly touches. Les was always getting his hair ruffled or his shoulder squeezed or his arm punched in a friendly way and he loved it. He even loved the way one Newsie would take his hat off so another could slap him with theirs if he said something stupid.

Les was well aware that in school, it wasn’t that way because... well, that would be weird. You didn’t just sling your arm around your friend for an entire conversation or jump on their back and cling there until there was a risk of falling over just to surprise them. You just didn’t.

But you did with the Newsies. You didn’t question it. You just did.

Les thought it might be about the way everyone reacted after the strike, when everyone was in pain and those who were in a little less were helping those who were in a little more. Les vaguely remembered Race rubbing his arms to try to calm him down and flicking his nose in a friendly manner before quickly setting his broken wrist with a stick and some stray strips of fabric and telling him not to take it out of the sling until it didn’t hurt anymore, plus a day, just to be safe.

And after he was okay—well, not crying anymore and more okay than a lot of others were—Les noticed how even when all of them were covered in cuts and bruises that would probably just hurt more if touched, the stream of physical contact didn’t end. No, it just got a little more gentle, taking away the fearful adrenaline and helping everyone feel safe.

Kid Blink still leaned against Mush’s knee despite his bruises, sitting in front of the crate the other boy was on. Les knew that the only people around to see in the alley all the Newsies were clumped together in between some dumpsters as they patched each other up enough to move back to the Lodging House were each other, but that didn’t make it any less surprising when Mush stopped stroking Blink’s hair and leaned down to kiss the top of his head.

Les knew even most of the other Newsies didn’t touch each other that way, so he guessed maybe ‘best friends’ wasn’t a term that applied well to the pair.

Well, confusing as that may be, Les didn’t see how it could be anything but natural in a group that made each other feel safe even while most of them were hurt.

...

Sarah knew not a lot of girls sold newspapers, and sometimes she asked Davey to go grab her papes to avoid the Delancey brothers’ comments, but she certainly enjoyed this more than her old factory job, and besides, now there was room to make friends.

All of Davey’s new friends were fun, but at first Sarah thought they were a bit handsy, with the way someone was always clapping her on the back or bumping her shoulder or grabbing her hand just to squeeze it before running off to their spot. But then she figured out that they acted like that with everyone, and they always stopped if she asked them to, and it wasn’t just because she was a girl around their age.

It took some getting used to, but Sarah eventually found it just another part of her day. It became routine; block Jack’s hand before he could mess up her hair, let Mike and Ike adjust her form when they teach her some self defense, throw her arm around Jojo to stop girls from flirting with him so he doesn’t get uncomfortable... it was easy. Physical contact was written in everything the Newsies did. It was as essential as breathing.

And then there was Katherine, and Katherine didn’t have as much time to hang around the group, but she’d joined it around the same time Sarah did, and was just as new at all of this.

Katherine’s red hair shined in the sun and her hands were always gentle when she helped a little one patch up a scraped knee and Sarah really wanted to hold her hand but she wasn’t sure if Katherine would be okay with that, with how the reporter often brushed away Jack’s and Romeo’s touches as annoying.

And since Sarah spent practically every day with the Newsies, she knew their gossip better than Katherine could. She knew that several pairs of them were... more than friendly, even being the same gender, and while it wasn’t safe, the group didn’t care. Sarah had no intention of telling anyone that she was attracted to girls, but she was. She understood what they felt but didn’t know if Katherine would even want to be her friend if she knew.

But then one day, Katherine was hanging around the girls’ corner of the Lodging House, where Sniper and Smalls slept and had a couple spare blankets to drape down from the top bunk so the boys couldn’t see them change, and Sarah found out that the reporter didn’t mind at all.

Sniper was leaning upside down over the edge of the bunk, trying to win a bet and shoot a can set up on one of the boy’s beds, when Smalls very suddenly kissed her, making her miss her shot, though Sarah noted that Sniper didn’t seem to mind that much, just content to keep doing what they were doing.

Katherine’s only reaction was to roll her eyes and smile, swatting Smalls with a newspaper and complaining that she’d cheated. And when the short brunette fell backwards next to Sarah sitting on the next bunk over, Sarah was glad that it was acceptable to reach over and squeeze Smalls tightly in her excitement.

...

When Katherine first started hanging out with the Newsies, she’d figured out pretty quick that touch was their love language, and not even in a romantic way, for the most part. Touching each other was how they made sure each other were okay and how they showed their brotherly bond. It was beautiful to Katherine, if very different from how Bill, Darcy, and all the other men she’d grown up with expressed affection.

For the Newsies, it was the most natural thing in the world to celebrate a good headline by grabbing the nearest friend and dancing a messy little do-si-do, or to huddle together on a cold day. Not a one of them bothered with social conventions that men weren’t supposed to show affection, and definitely not by touching each other constantly.

But that was how the Newsies worked, and Katherine couldn’t say she was sorry that they adopted her effortlessly, incorporating her into their existing friendship like she’d always belonged there.

Katherine liked waking up early to meet them at the gates for a bit of hangout time before work started. She liked meeting Davey halfway for a one-armed hug, or dodging Jack and Romeo’s joke-flirting only to let them clasp her shoulder in greeting, or making up a new secret handshake with Race because they both forgot the one they made last time.

Actually, it was through Race that Katherine learned how some of the touches between certain Newsies weren’t just about friendship.

She was meeting him over at Sheepshead, since supposedly he had a scoop on one of the trainers sabotaging other people’s horses, though Katherine was a little skeptical about if he’d actually found anything or was just over-dramatizing things.

She’d turned a corner to the place under the stands where Race usually was when he took a break from selling, only to find not only her good friend Racetrack Higgins, but Spot Conlon, and well... even for the Newsies, being pinned against a wall while someone kissed you senseless wasn’t a platonic gesture.

The two jumped apart the second they saw Katherine, and Race tried to say that it wasn’t what it looked like, but Katherine assured them that she wasn’t going to tell anyone, but wanted to know if the Newsies were okay with that kind of thing; being in a relationship with someone of the same gender.

Race was puzzled, but responded that, yes, the fellas were fine with it, and that various combinations of their group had courted at one point or another, with several pairs currently together. Spot chimed in to report that even a few inter-borough relationships happened, his and Race’s being one of them.

That fact known, Katherine felt absolutely no guilt when Medda put on a special show after hours just for the Newsies as a one-time thing, and Katherine put her arm around Sarah near the beginning of it, the two of them more or less cuddling for the duration of the show. And she definitely wasn’t complaining when a love song came on, and Sarah gently turned her face up so her lips could meet Katherine’s.

Somehow, the fact that Jack had seen and told pretty much everyone didn’t embarrass Katherine too much. Or maybe she just enjoyed the playful camaraderie of her friends coming up to congratulate her with a handshake or a slap on the arm.

...

Crutchie had always known that his friendship with the other Newsies worked differently than a lot of friendships, but he’d never really registered how differently until he was forced to go without it.

In the Refuge, there was no Jack helping him get down a ladder, or Romeo offering a one-armed hug as a good morning, or Finch ruffling his hair when he predicted the weather. Even being new, Crutchie noticed the sore absense of any kind of positive contact between anyone. Even boys who claimed to be friends never touched unless they absolutely had to.

No, contact was limited to Snyder and the guards giving a beating, or someone roughly shoving their way down the hallway because they judged those in front of them too slow, or a hard slap against a limb to try to jostle for more space on the bed or get someone’s foot out of their face.

The only remotely positive interactions Crutchie got were sympathetic grimaces from a boy who saw his bruises, or an only slightly grumpy hand handing him his crutch, but those things were not even close to what he was used to and not nearly enough after years of nearly constant friendly contact from boys he considered his brothers.

Then Crutchie was released, and he got back that contact he’d been hanging onto the memory of, but somehow it wasn’t how he remembered it. He suddenly couldn’t let Race throw an arm around his shoulder to greet him in the morning. He couldn’t accept a double-hug from Mike and Ike when there was a good headline or keep from flinching when Jack tried to make sure he didn’t fall on the way down from the Penthouse.

Crutchie didn’t understand. He’d spent his time in the Refuge missing this and now he could barely take any of it? It didn’t make sense.

When he tried to explain to Jack, the older boy just smiled sadly and nodded in understanding. He said that he’d gone through that when he first got out; not being able to let anyone touch him for a while. Jack still couldn’t handle people touching his left shoulder unexpectedly, but they all had little triggers like that. Random touches or tones of voice paired with specific words that couldn’t be used. Crutchie just didn’t understand why he seemed to be triggered by practically everything.

But Jack said to give it time. To let this get better with time and just try to be patient with himself.

And slowly, with help from the other Newsies, all of whom were willing to do whatever they had to do to help as best they could, Crutchie did get better.

Maybe not all of his scars could completely heal with time, but Crutchie was getting better. Now, when Davey patted his shoulder before they parted ways selling or Romeo leaned up against him while dramatically describing his latest failed romantic venture, most touch could feel as normal as it had before he’d gotten taken.

...

Davey had noticed the Newsies as very physically connected people even before he’d been one of them. That was to say he’d noticed them playing around, putting each other in headlocks and even one guy casually riding on another’s shoulders from the first morning he’d started selling.

And as much as Davey enjoyed this dynamic once he started getting included in it and got used to someone always touching him, it made it that much more painful, knowing that a certain friend of his touched everyone he cared about like that.

Davey had never fallen in love before, so he kind of missed that he did at first, before realizing that what he was feeling for one of the Newsies was everything he’d read in books that involved love. From thinking about him constantly to getting butterflies whenever he saw his smile, Davey couldn’t deny that he felt something more than simple friendship.

Unfortunately, Jack Kelly happened to be a boy, which made him completely unattainable, even if it made Davey felt like sparks were flying every time he touched him, and he had to remind himself that it didn’t mean a thing.

It didn’t mean anything that Jack practically picked Davey up in his excitement when there was a really good headline and he hugged him and spun around. It didn’t mean anything when he grabbed Davey’s face to check him for injuries after they got out of a fight. It didn’t mean anything when there weren’t any spare chairs in Jacobis and Jack chose Davey’s lap instead of the table.

After all, he’d seen Race hug Spot much tighter when he got excited. Sniper always looked that worried when she checked Smalls over after a fight. Kid Blink sat on Mush’s lap even when there were free seats.

And it wasn’t like Albert didn’t kiss Finch on the cheek some mornings before mock saluting when they went off on separate selling routes, or laugh loudly when the taller boy sometimes pulled him back to whisper something in his ear while keeping one hand on Albert’s waist.

All that was to be expected of Newsie friendships. None of it was weird with them because... well, it just wasn’t. The fact that he loved those friendships so much was why Davey could absolutely not tell anyone that he’d fallen for his best friend. They would never understand. The others would hate him if they found out, not that Davey could blame them. Guys weren’t supposed to love other guys. Davey knew that, so as long as nobody ever found out, those friendly touches and friendships wouldn’t change and Davey would never lose them, right?

Wrong, apparently.

It wasn’t common that the entire group wasn’t together after a day of selling, but when one of those days came, Jack was painting a backdrop for Medda, and the rest of them were hanging out in the Lodging House, Davey personally watching Race beat everyone at poker.

“So, when is Jack getting back?”

It’d been an innocent question. Fair, for a best friend. Davey didn’t think anyone would suspect anything.

Instead, Race turned around to give Davey a smirk, “Why? Only been a few hours since sellin’ time! Missin’ ya boyfriend already?”

“What? My—“ Davey sputtered, “Jack is not my— why would you think—?”

“Please,” Spot said nonchalantly, “As if we all couldn’t see how you’se been crushin’ on him since day one.”

Davey’s breathing sped up as he realized what they were saying. They knew. They all knew.

“Whoa, Davey, are you okay?” Mush’s voice asked, sounding far away.

Davey couldn’t breath. He was going to lose them all. He didn’t have any other friends and now he was going to lose the ones he had. Everything felt like too much, from the press of the bedpost where he was gripping it probably too tight to the others voices, all overlapping and sounding too loud and too far away all at once. Davey sucked in breath as fast as he could but it didn’t seem to be enough. He still couldn’t breath. He couldn’t get enough air.

One voice cut through it all.

“Whoa, whoa, what’s wrong? Davey! Davey, are you okay?”

Davey flinched away from Jack’s touch, and the other boy stopped trying to grab his shoulders, his hands hovering halfway between Davey sitting on the bed and Jack crouching in front of him.

“Davey, I won’t touch you if you don’t want me to, but you need to try to breath, okay? Just take a deep breath with me. In... and out.”

Davey did his best, breathing in and out as Jack instructed, slowly managing to come down from his panic.

Jack looked around accusingly at the fellas, “Alright, who did this? What did alls you’se do?”

“We didn’t do anything!” Spot protested.

“Spot mentioned things ‘bout Davey bein’ queer,” Smalls said.

“Smalls!”

“What? I tells the truth, unlike you!”

Jack looked back at Davey, and found that the other boy wouldn’t look him in the eye. Why would he? Davey certainly didn’t want to look at the boy he loved whilst getting kicked out of the friend group.

“Don’t worry about it,” Davey mumbled, “If it’s okay with you, Les’ll keep selling, but I’m sure I can find other work.”

“What are you...” Jack seemed to realize something, “Dave, can I touch you?”

Davey was surprised he wanted to, but nodded.

Causing even more surprise, Jack didn’t put his hand on Davey’s arm or hand. Instead, he grabbed the taller boy’s chin gently and forced Davey to look at him.

“Dave, what do you see when you look over there?”

Davey looked where Jack was gesturing with the hand that hadn’t moved to Davey’s shoulder. He didn’t understand, but he looked.

Blink was sitting in the poker circle, on Mush’s lap as he leaned back against the other boy’s chest, somehow neither of them having looked at each other’s cards.

Smalls was on a bunk behind them, laying back with her head close to where Sniper was sitting, who was softly smiling as she stroked Smalls’s hair. Smalls was playing, but Sniper wasn’t.

Race had his legs tossed across Spot’s, and he occasionally leaned over to try to get a look at his cards, though the King of Brooklyn always pushed him back with a fond smile.

Finch was playing as a team with Albert as they didn’t have enough cards for everyone, and the latter was between the former’s legs as Finch rested his chin on top of Albert’s hair.

Katherine wasn’t playing poker, but she was perched on a bunk nearby, sitting very close to Sarah, who was looking at Davey like he was stupid for some reason.

Sarah only gave him that look when she was genuinely frustrated with him, and Davey stared his twin down, not sure what she was trying to get at, here as they tried to communicate with just their facial expressions.

“Uh, what’s going on there?” Jack asked.

“It’s a twin thing,” Mike answered.

“You wouldn’t understand,” Ike agreed.

Davey gave up trying to get whatever Sarah was trying to communicate and turned back to Jack.

“What am I looking at?”

Jack made a small noise of disbelief, “You really don’t see it?”

“See what?”

Jack huffed and dragged his hands through his hair, “So, why do you think we wouldn’t want to be friends with you anymore?”

“Because I’m... I like boys,” Davey admitted, “Why would you want to be friends with someone like that? You’re all such close friends, and—“

“You think we’re all friends?” Albert asked, sounding disbelieving.

“Of course you are. Why else would you be—“

“Davey,” Mush cut him off gently, “That’s not... we aren’t...” he made a frustrated noise, “I don’t do this with my friends.”

Davey was fairly certain his brain short-circuited out of surprise as Mush leaned down and full-on kissed Blink on the lips. Sniper wolf-whistled, but other than that, nobody had really any reaction.

As they separated, Blink shrugged with a smile, “He does that with me, though.”

Suddenly, a lot of things made a lot more sense, and Davey wondered how he’d never seen it before. Even Sarah... oh, God, how had he never noticed?

“Yeah, we don’t much care if ya like Jack’s ass,” Spot summed up.

Davey froze. He’d just accepted that the fellas were okay with him liking boys, but that didn’t mean he wanted Jack to know he liked him.

Especially since... especially since even if Jack didn’t care, he’d been with Katherine a while back, and Sarah for a bit afterwards. He liked girls. He wasn’t one of the ones like Davey.

But Jack just stifled a laugh, “You like my ass?”

“I wouldn’t put it like that,” Davey mumbled, “But yeah, I... I have feelings for you. I have for a long time. And it’s okay that you don’t feel the same.”

Davey made a point not to meet Jack’s eyes. He didn’t want to know what the other boy’s expression was, because even if he wasn’t disgusted by Davey liking boys, he might be by Davey liking him specifically, and even if he wasn’t, he might feel guilty for rejecting him, and Davey didn’t want him to hurt like that or at all and—

“Why would you think I don’t feel the same?”

Jack’s words were soft in a way Davey had never heard before, and gentle in a way that he had never expected to have meant for him.

Davey looked up in surprise, meeting Jack’s eyes and finding that his expression was gentle and almost... loving?

“You were with Katherine,” Davey stuttered, “And... and Sarah. You like girls.”

He was finding it very hard to think as Jack ever so slowly leaned closer, laughing lightly.

“And that means I can’t like boys?”

“Well...” Davey’s brain melted as Jack leaned his forehead against his own, the gentle pressure sending fireworks through his mind.

“It just so happens, I like you a lot, too,” Jack said quietly, “And in case you still don’t get it...”

Jack pressed a small kiss to Davey’s lips and Davey felt warmth pass through him in a flash.

“I love you, Davey Jacobs.”

Davey took a shaky breath, not quite believing his ears, but responding anyway.

“And I love you, too, Jack Kelly.”

This time, Davey kissed him first, and he certainly didn’t feel Jack protesting as the shorter boy kissed him back.

It wasn’t until Sniper wolf-whistled that Davey remembered there were other people in the room. He hid his face in Jack’s shoulder as the room full of their friends actually applauded.

“Okay, okay!” Jack called, waving his hands around for emphasis, “You’se can collect ya bets now, but leave me and my boy alone, hear? We’ll be in my Penthouse if anyone needs me.”

As they left the room, several Newsies clapped Davey on the shoulders or ruffled his hair in encouragement, all calling out their congratulations.

Yeah, Davey decided that in a sea of friendly touches and a few more than friendly touches, he was happy.

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