The Experiment || Newsies AU

Chapter 75

TW: Mentions of abuse.

"Why did you drag me here?"

Jack was not happy at Spot and based on the amount of curses he had called Spot when he was being dragged, Spot got the picture.

"As much as I hate you right now, the Newsies need you and if we want this whole fiasco to be over we need you," Spot explained, making sure to give Jack plenty of death glares.

"Have you gone soft Spotty?" Jack joked.

"Don't call me that."

"You let Race," Jack pointed out.

"He's my boyfriend," Spot retorted.

Jack shrugged his shoulders in resignation, knowing it'd be pointless to argue with him.

"Why did you do it?" Spot asked after they'd been sitting there for a while.

"Do what?"

Jack decided that playing the dumb card would be his best bet for the circumstance.

"You know very well what I'm talking about so spill the tea," Jack snorted at Spot using slams that he would have only learned from Race.

"Have you ever considered that you spend too much time with Race?"

"Have you ever considered shutting up before I punch you?"

They went on like this for the next while while Jack was trying to find the best was to slip in the news.

Eventually after what felt like a million years for the pair of them but was only two minutes Jack decided that his best option was to just say it.

"Pulitzer made me do the speech," he blurted out suddenly.

"What?" Spot had suspected that Pulitzer played some part in it but not the main part. "Why didn't you just say no?"

"He threatened all the Newsies."

Spot looked at him with a face Jack would have ordinarily laughed at but given the circumstances he really couldn't have.

"He threatened to give all the Newsies to Snyder to do whatever he sees fit with them," Jack explained, looking down at his hands.

"Snyder? Like the detention dude? How bad can he be?" Spot really couldn't understand what was so bad about Snyder, sure he was in charge of detention so that was somewhat bad but it couldn't get much worse than that.

"He runs this jail fo underage kids called the Refuge and the more kids he has the more the city pays him. To take care of them and stuff. But he puts that money straight into his own pocket," Jack explained.

Spot nodded, sensing where he was going with this.

"He's supposed to take care of the kids but he rarely ever feeds them and will- he'll beat the kids if they misbehave or do basically anything."

Spot didn't know how to respond. He just stood there for the best part of a minute opening his mouth before closing it again quickly.

"That's why you did it," he whispered to himself after he finally processed it.

Jack nodded and looked down at his hands.

"Look, I'm probably never going to admit to saying this to you but you're not terrible and we all think of you as an older brother, except for Davey obviously," Spot started to trail off when Jack interrupted him.

"Thanks, Spot."

"You should probably go talk to them, they're in the common room."

Jack nodded and left with Spot trailing behind him.

~~~
550 words