Strikes and Ladders

Chapter Twenty: Catharsis

Davey pushes haphazardly through the crowd of newsies, searching for Katherine. What he finds, after making almost a full circle around the theatre and backstage area, is his friend and his sister sitting together in one of the dressing rooms not already occupied by Race and Spot.

"Kat, I am so glad to see you."

Sarah pipes up. "Wow, thank you dear brother for paying so much mind to your favourite sister."

"Ah, sorry Sarah, I just don't think this fits into your area of expertise."

Katherine smirks. "Boy troubles, Jacobs?" She teases. His silence speaks more than his words could and he blushes up to his ears. When she tells him to sit, he does. "Which one?"

"...What?"

"Which boy? Spot or Racetrack?"

He gapes at her before pressing his face to her shoulder and groaning. "Both."

Katherine places a friendly arm around him and he leans further into her. Before he can say anything though, Race pushes into the room with his normal grin. It drops once he sees Davey, who is close to tears. "Spot! Get in here! I found him!" He calls to his boyfriend, who soon appears behind him.

"Woah, you doin' alright, Mouth?" Spot asks as he pushes into the room.

Davey, holding back a sob, starts to say something but is interrupted by Katherine. "Maybe you two should head outside for a minute. I think Sarah and I have this for now. We'll tell you when he's feeling better, right Sarah?"

Sarah hesitates for a moment before nodding quickly a few times. "Yeah. Let us just talk to my brother for a bit, then he's all yours."

Spot says nothing, but Race is all righteous anger. "No way! He's our friend too, Katherine, and we's got as much right as either of you's got to comfort him." This quickly devolves into an argument, with Race close to yelling and Katherine spitting out thinly veiled venom through her teeth. It starts quiet, but gets louder and louder until the people in the dressing room can hardly hear the party still going on outside of it.

Everyone's attention is on the two hotheads sniping back and forth at one another, except for Spot, who is staring straight at Davey. The boy is slowly curling further and further into himself, tears pricking at his eyes. His first attempts to calm everyone down go mostly unnoticed, despite trying several times. It isn't until he has hot tears rolling down his cheeks and his hands pressed against his ears that he brings himself to shout, "Enough!" and the room goes silent. "Enough..." He says again, though this time it comes out as a defeated whisper rather than a rageful scream. Everyone but Spot, who had known this was coming, stares at him in shock. Without another word, he pushes past the group and out into the main hall to find another quiet place to sit.

What he finds is a dark costume closet. He sits on the ground and assumes his previous position, knees brought to his chest and forehead pressed against them. Quiet sobs escape his lips and he doesn't know how long he sits there, but after a while, he hears uneven footsteps approaching and a quiet rapping on the door. It opens just wide enough for the silhouette of Spot to be visible. The boy slips in and gingerly sits on the floor with him, bad leg stretched out in the barely big enough closet. A few moments pass, and Davey finally manages to speak, throat raw from weeping. "Spot, I..." He can't see it in the dark, but they're as close as they can be without touching, so he feels Spot shake his head.

"Obviously, if you wanna, you can tell me what's goin' on. But I ain't here for that. I'm here for you. You're clearly upset, and I don't want you to be alone."

"I... I can't tell you what's happening. Don't think I could if I wanted to."

"That's fine. Some hurts, some secrets," Spot paused, as if thinking of his own secrets, "they're ours to keep. I'll be here for you if and when you wanna share, but I'll also be here for you if you never wanna say a word about this."

Davey finds himself wishing he could look Spot in the eyes and confess right there. Instead, he settles for grabbing his friend's hand and bumping their feet together in the dark. He knows that it's selfish, to be holding on like this when his feelings for both of his friends still bubble angrily in his chest, when all he wants to do is stand up and scream that he loves them, even if it would hurt all three of them, but he can't help it. He relishes in the small bits of contact, ones he doesn't normally have access to from the touch-averse Spot, and he cries in the dark. Spot's thumb moves slowly over his hand in a soothing caress, and Davey hopes he doesn't notice when this makes his cries deepen.

It all piles up in his mind, every moment spent staring a little too long at Race's grin or Spot's smirk. The countless times he's become enraptured with Spot in charge of the Brooklyn newsies, all harsh words and power underlined by care and love for his kids. All of the days selling with Race, listening to his clever quips and watching his sleight of hand. Every single taste of them that he's gotten and all of the ones he never will. It occurs to him, right in the thick of it, that all of this might be silly. He's weeping like a widow over a relationship that never was, grieving over what most would view as silly teenage romance. But a louder, smarter voice speaks over it, saying that it might be a silly teenage romance, but he's a silly teenage romantic, and if he wants to cry his eyes out over it, it's damn well within his rights.

This, the sheer audacity of this thought, startles a laugh out of him, the first non-sob out of his mouth in quite a while. Then another. And then he just keeps on laughing. He can practically feel the confusion radiating off of the boy next to him, even though their hands are still locked together. He's still sad, still has that ache in his chest that he's come to know well as the feeling of unrequited love, but he just can't help himself from laughing until his stomach hurts. When it dies out, he looks over to Spot. "I'm sorry about that..." He wheezes, aching from his levity. "I've been hit with an arrow of irony."

Spot's bewildered voice comes quickly from the shadows. "I'm not sure I know what you mean, but I take it you've figured out your problem?"

"Oh," Davey says as he stands up and opens the door, getting out. He holds out a hand to Spot and hauls him off of the floor of the closet. They're almost chest to chest and their closeness strikes him painfully, but he's high off of tears and giggles, so he grins anyway. "Not even close."