Archive of Our Own ^omega

All he'd wanted to do was get away. 

They'd dragged him in, kicking and screaming, and thrown him into the basement as soon as they got him through the door — a truant, the son of a criminal, a thief and a runaway — but they'd underestimated the tenacity of the boy now named Jack Kelly. The basement may have been dank and wet and crawling with vermin, but he'd been trapped in it before, and knew all the weaknesses he hadn't gotten to exploit in his first visit. Nobody had bothered with making the walls strong or shutting the windows, so he'd broken his nails and worn dirt and rot like a second skin in order to dig a hole around one of the small windows that opened onto the street. The moment it was big enough for a scrawny 10-year-old to crawl through, he'd kicked off his shoes (no use for those, he could get a better grip with his bare feet anyways) and hauled himself through the opening to freedom.

Of course, they'd noticed he was gone almost immediately — they only brought food to the basement every two days, and it was just Jack's luck that he escaped less than an hour before mealtime. He'd taken a short break to breathe in the smell of clean air, savoring the feeling of rain on his face and cool water between his toes, and before he knew it the Refuge bell was clanging and the sound of boots pounding on the floor was audible even before the door flung open.

He ran.

It wasn't too hard to lose them — he may have been malnourished and exhausted and still aching from old bruises (and other, older wounds from the time before he was Jack Kelly), but he was a street rat through and through and could run with the best of them, darting through alleyways and behind trash bins, even climbing fire escapes and running across rooftops faster than grown men could follow. By the time he touched down in a back alley somewhere off of 45th Street, splashing his bare and possibly blistered feet in one of the puddles there and pushing now-drenched hair out of his eyes, there wasn't an officer or enforcer to be seen. In fact, as he made his way out onto 45th Street proper, there was hardly anyone outside at all.

To be fair, it was a bit past mid-day, and most working kids and adults were— well, at work. Newsies would be trying to find awnings and shelter where they could hawk their papes without the rain ruining the newsprint, factory workers would be dry and toiling inside their buildings, and high society folks would be indoors or in carriages. The few people that were outside were in a hurry, umbrellas or books held over their heads to protect from the rain as they made their way from point A to point B, and none of them payed attention to the grimy street rat as he stepped casually onto the street to join them.

Jack thought the rain was beautiful. It changed all the colors of the city, tinting everything with a cooler gray than usual and breathing life into the plants and flowers breaking through the industrialization at every opportunity. He could feel it washing the dirt and blood from his skin and clothes, and if he'd been a more carefree boy he would have allowed himself to laugh and dance in it, reveling in the feeling and the scent of the air.

As it was, he found himself so enraptured by the rainfall that he didn't notice the person laying on the ground until he'd tripped over them and planted himself face-first on the ground.

"Hey! The hell are you layin' on the ground for, you stupid sonofa—" Jack's furious exclamation died in his throat as he turned around and got a good look at the person he'd tripped over. The boy on the ground was tiny, smaller than Jack in both stature and girth, with a mess of shaggy brown hair plastered to his forehead and freckles dusted across his flushed cheeks. A battered metal cup was grasped in one hand, a few meagre pennies spilling out onto the ground beside it. Even from where he sat, a full foot away, Jack could all but feel the heat radiating off of the boy's body — he was running a fever, probably a high one. 

Jack could leave him there. From the look of it, the cup and the pennies and the fact that the boy's feet were bare of both socks and shoes, the kid was just a beggar — probably would died sooner or later anyways, without any intervention from Jack or the rain. Maybe some rich hobnob would come by and take pity, nurse the kid back to health and raise him as their own — he had a cute face (a bit of an odd nose, but it worked out), he could probably pull it off. Taking a sick kid back with him would put him at risk, would put everyone at the Lodging House at risk, might make it easier for Snyder's bulls to catch him and lock him back up. It would probably be in everyone's best interests if Jack just kept walking.

"You'se better not die on me, kid." It was almost pathetically easy for Jack to hoist the kid (clearly unconscious, from the loll of his head and the limpness of his limbs) onto his back, hooking his arms under the small boy's knees and draping the kid's head over his shoulder. "Or the fellas'll have my head and my pennies, both. Speakin' of which—" He scooped up the kid's pennies and cup, dropping the coins into one of his pockets and grasping the cup's warped handle with two hooked fingers. "—I'd wager these'll pay your rent for a day or two, just in case."

He set off for the Lodging House at a jog, now acutely aware that the less time he kept this sick kid out in the rain, the better. It took him a good few minutes to orient himself once he got out of Hell's Kitchen, but not much longer after that to find his way back to the building that was slowly becoming 'home' in his mind. Judging by the time, he didn't expect any of the other newsboys to be inside — if they weren't still selling papes (which they probably were — rainy days always took longer to sell out), they'd probably be taking shelter inside a deli to chat or otherwise going off on their regular afternoon adventures. The Lodging House might be where most of them lived, but it was hardly the sort of place a kid would want to spend most of his day.

Sure enough, Jack was greeted by an echoing silence when he pushed open the doors and stumbled inside. It took a couple tries to haul his burden up the stairs to the room he shared with Specs and Eggs, but eventually he arrived and immediately all but dropped the boy onto his bed (Jack was the one who brought him here, so he may as well sacrifice his own bed. He could probably sleep with Specs later, the older boy seemed to like him well enough). They were both fairly soaked from the rain, however, so he darted down the hall to grab a one of the worn towels from the bathroom and tossed it onto the bed before fishing out the stash of stolen clothing he'd been keeping under his bed. He'd planned on giving it to kids in the Refuge (nobody gave them changes of clothes there, and some boys were in long enough that they'd outgrown what they came in wearing), but he didn't want to sit around in wet trousers and he was pretty sure it would be bad for the sick kid to stay in the clothes he had on.

If he were a different person, Jack might have felt even a little bit embarrassed about stripping down another fella, but he'd seen just about all there was to see while he was in the Refuge, and he figured as long as they both ended up dry and clothed it didn't really matter either way. The kid he'd brought in was scrawny, with the look of having not eaten much (or anything) in a while, and Jack quietly resolved to break into his stash of stolen food (so Snyder may have been right about him being a thief, but it was for the right reasons so he really didn't care) to make sure the kid got enough to eat while he was here. He had a slight hang-up trying to get dry trousers on, because the kid's right leg seemed stuck at an odd angle and twisted, and wouldn't quite move the way legs normally do, but soon enough they were both in fresh clothes with the wet ones hanging off of the bed-frame to air-dry, and Jack could towel off his hair and face before doing the same for his new acquisition.

Once that was all done, he returned the towel to the bathroom and sat down at the foot of the bed, one eye keeping watch over the sleeping kid. He couldn't have been older than seven or eight, and even though he was dried off and out of the wet, the poor guy was shivering like a leaf in the wind. Jack tugged the threadbare blanket from his bed over the boy's shoulders and, after a moment of thinking, darted across the hall and grabbed Minty's blanket too— the guy was always sleeping in Bull's bed anyways, he wouldn't need it. 

The two layers seemed to help with the shivering a bit, and Jack settled himself onto the bed beside the kid and leaned his back against the wall, taking a moment to finally breathe and let himself relax from the ordeal that was the Refuge. It had been his own mistake he got caught — he'd gone back to talk to some of the other boys there, Billy and Tux and Greenie, and the guards had caught him on the way down from the windows — but knowing that didn't make the experience any easier. At least this time, he'd only been in for five days — a blink, compared to the months he'd endured when he went in for the first time.

"Jacky? Man, where's you been? It's been five days, we's was ready to give that bed away—" Specs skidded to a stop in the middle of the room, all twelve years and gangly limbs and wide, extra-magnified eyes turning to stare at the strange bundle on Jack's bed. "—Who's this? You bringin' back strays now? We ain't no charity, you know."

He blinked a few times, startled by the revelation of how much time had passed while he was thinking (it was almost dark out, how had that happened), and shrugged. "Kid's running a fever, and he was alone an' beggin' on the street. I couldn'ta just left him there, Specs."

"Right, but I'd betcha it didn't take you five days to drag him back here, kid looks like he's made of twigs."

"Oh. Uh, Refuge."

Specs gaped for a few moments. "What, for only five days? You'se jokin', Jack Kelly—"

"I broke out! What, you think I wouldn'ta been able to?" Jack crossed his arms indignantly, huffing. "They stuck me in the basement, but that building's got a real shit basement, so I just dug a hole an' climbed out onto the street. Just took me a little while to do it, though, since I ain't had no tools but my hands." 

After another tense few seconds, Specs sighed and deflated, climbing over the unconscious boy to curl up next to Jack and tug the younger boy into an awkward hug. "I'se sorry, kid. Jesus, the Refuge— most boys ain't in there more'n once, and you'se already made it out alive twice. It's real good to see you back." They remained like that for a few minutes, leaning against each other's bony shoulders and matching up their breathing as they listened to the rest of the boys trickle in through the front door and the Lodging House slowly fill up with noise and laughter.

A few sets of footsteps echoed up the stairs, and the door pushed open to reveal a vaguely familiar face. "Specs? They'se sayin' there'll be some food soon, an' I didn't wanna..."

"Sure, I'll be there in a sec. Jack, you remember Romeo, yeah?"

Right, that was where he recognized this kid. Newer to the trade than even Jack (and Jack was pretty new), Romeo had taken to selling papes whenever his deadbeat father disappeared from town. The old man always came back, sometimes with money from this or that job, sometimes with nothing but beer on his breath, and Romeo disappeared from the streets whenever he did — but while the guy was gone, the kid was out with the rest of the newsies like always. He was a decent kid, with a wide grin and a bad habit of flirting with any attractive person to cross his path, and he and Specs had hit it off like a matchstick and kindling when Robin introduced them. 

Now that he had a name to put to the face, Jack grinned and waved at Romeo from across the room, eliciting another ear-to-ear smile from the other boy. "Sure do. You'se gonna be staying with us tonight, Romeo?"

"Ain't no food at home, so I may as well — Specs offered me his bed, such a fella!" He winked, then broke into delighted laughter when Specs clambered over Jack and the unconscious kid to grab him in a loose hold and rub one fist against his head. "Ain't he such a sweetheart, Jacky?"

Jack snorted at the appalled look on Specs' face. "What, you'se lettin' this womanizer inta your bed? Specs, I thought you'se got standards!"

"Oh, screw you, Jack! I'se just sharin' since no-one else wants to get near this damn octopus!"

As if to prove a point, Romeo slipped out Specs' hold to wrap his arms around the taller boy, curling his legs around one of Specs' until he was hanging off of his friend like one of those odd creatures in the zoos they'd hawked an article about last year. The older boy made a few half-hearted attempts to dislodge his new passenger before sighing and turning to leave the room, glancing back at Jack with a resigned half-smile. "Want me to grab you and your new buddy a bite?"

"Don't think he'll be up, but I ain't had food for a few days, so please."

Specs winced and nodded before walking awkwardly out of the room, Romeo still clinging to his side with a grin just this side of impressed. After a few minutes, Jack heard the tell-tale thud of two boys tripping and falling, and winced sympathetically while crossing his fingers and hoping it had been at least before they got to the stairs — falling down those would be pretty unpleasant. He could hear them bickering at each other, though, so it sounded like they were pretty much alright. It would probably be a little while before they came back — eating might not take long, but they'd surely get pulled into conversation and banter, and who knows how long that would take — so he settled back against the wall and stifled a yawn. He hadn't slept last night, and only minimally the night before, so he was all but ready to curl up and drift off.

There was a groan beside him, and the blankets by his feet shifted just a bit as the unconscious boy seemed to stir and return shakily to consciousness, shifting as though uncomfortable and turning fever-hazed eyes towards Jack. He opened his mouth as though to ask something, brows furrowing in muzzy confusion, but all that came out was a series of weak coughs and a pained whimper.

Jack grimaced — if he was sick enough to be in pain, it must be pretty bad — and leaned over to wrap the blankets back around the boy's shoulders where they'd gotten dislodged as he moved. "Hey, hey— shh, don't worry. Hey, don't worry, kid. You ain't out there now — I gotcha, I'se gonna take care of you, yeah?" As he spoke, he realized that— well, that was the truth. He was going to take care of this kid as best he could, until the kid either recovered or died, and that was that. "You'se safe here, don't you worry. I'se got you."

The boy stared up at Jack with wide eyes that still seemed unable to quite focus on his face, but apparently at least some of what he'd said got through, because after a few moments tears started welling up and rolling down the boy's cheeks and he reached out weakly with his arms like a baby asking to be picked up. As soon as his hands managed to make contact with Jack — well, with his shirt, at least — the boy pulled himself closer to tuck himself against Jack's side, coughing weakly through his tears.

For a few moments, Jack wasn't sure what to do — he wasn't exactly the most comforting person, not with how he tended towards anger instead of kindness, so most of the really little kids preferred to go cry on Specs or Bull instead — but after a time, he wrapped one arm around the boy and tugged him the rest of the way against his side, using his free hand to pull the blankets over both of them because sick folks needed to be kept warm, even he knew that. After a moment, he noticed that the boy's weird leg was still stuck at what looked like an uncomfortable angle, so he reached forward and tugged that into a position that looked a bit less painful as well.

Jack wasn't too worried about catching sick — he'd been a street rat (or good as) for a long time, and never seemed to catch ill as often as other kids — so he didn't say anything about the boy coughing on him or the fever-sweat soaking into his shirt. Instead, he just tugged the lumpy pillow over to cushion his back, leaned his head against the wall, and closed his eyes. Just for a little bit, he'd open them back up when Specs came back with food, or if the boy started getting really bad, so he wasn't really going to sleep.

Just... resting.