FIC: The Minor Fall, The Major Lift (Newsies)
[mood| 
bored]
[music| where i want to be - chess]
Title: The Minor Fall, The Major Lift
Author: chicafrom3
Fandom: Newsies
Pairing: Spot Conlon x Racetrack Higgins
Theme set: Alpha
Rating: PG-13; language, underage sexing, smoking, drinking, abuse of the English language
Notes: Non-chronological order. Vague spoilers for throughout the movie.
#01 - Comfort
When Race got soaked bad by a bookie he'd failed to pay on time, Spot didn't offer words of comfort, didn't put an arm around him and promise that it would be all right; instead, he rounded up his boys and they roughed up the bookie in return, and for Race that was close enough.
#02 - Kiss
Race was drunk, and Spot had it in mind to take advantage of that; they kissed behind Tibby's for the first time: afterwards, Race passed out from the alcohol, and Spot stole his cigars and walked back to Brooklyn whistling.
#03 - Soft
There was nothing soft about the King of Brooklyn, 'cause if there ever was it got beat out of him a long time ago, but Race didn't care, he just loved him anyway.
#04 - Pain
"Love ya," Racetrack mumbled late one night, and then bit his tongue and waited for an answer that he knew would never come; Spot disentangled himself and walked away.
#05 - Potatoes
Spot was sitting on the bridge, carving up a potato, and when Race walked up he found himself with a face full of potato peel and a hysterically laughing Brooklynite.
#06 - Rain
"Damn you," Spot said, and wouldn't look at him, "I don't need nobody, 'specially not a 'Hattan gambler"; outside and inside, it was raining.
#07 - Chocolate
A stolen moment at the Sheepshead, a stolen bag discarded by their feet, and Racetrack was convinced that chocolate tasted better out of someone else's mouth, particularly when that someone else was Spot Conlon.
#08 - Happiness
He couldn't bring himself to actually touch the boy sleeping peacefully beside him, but his hands ghosted over the lines and curves of his form, mapping him out without ever quite making contact, and he decided that there was no place else he'd rather be, no matter what the nuns said.
#09 - Telephone
It goes like this: Spot's second in command, Skids, sends one of the littler Brooklyn boys, a kid by the name of Noise, to Manhattan; Noise is hardly past the Bridge when he runs into one of Jack Kelly's boys, little Boots, selling papes, and passes on the message; Boots runs to the Cowboy and the Walking Mouth's usual selling spot to let them know; and an hour after Spot Conlon is shot, Racetrack Higgins is running for all he's worth towards Brooklyn.
#10 - Ears
His little birds showed up from all over New York-Harlem, Queens, all over-to drop the news in his ears, but the one he was waiting for never did, so, okay, maybe he was being a little spiteful about that when he told Jacky-boy not to count on any help until he showed he was serious.
#11 - Name
They called each other Sean and Anthony, but the names sounded strange and foreign on their tongues, and it was obvious they weren't used to them; when they left, someone overheard Anthony say, "Damn, Spot, let's not do that again."
#12 - Sensual
Spot was convinced that watching Racetrack smoke a cigar and deal a new hand of poker was the most sensual fucking thing in New York.
#13 - Death
"He's dead," Jack says, "There's nothing to do, he's dead," and Skids and Noise don't grieve because Brooklyn boys don't grieve, they just get pissed; Racetrack shuts down and refuses to hear and keeps trying to wake Spot up, even though he's cold, and motionless, and covered in blood.
#14 - Sex
"It's just sex," Spot said, lighting up a cigar and shaking the match out, "That's all, just good sex," and Race tapped his harmonica against his leg and nodded and said, "Right, it's just sex," and looked the other way.
#15 - Touch
They touched each other freely, unafraid of getting caught out; after all, the Manhattan boys were always grabbing on to each other and hugging and throwing arms around one another, so no one really noticed that Race had a little more heat behind his movements when he hung on to Spot Conlon.
#16 - Weakness
Spot Conlon didn't have weaknesses, or if he did no one would dare to mention them to his face; Racetrack Higgins had his own weaknesses: the Sheepshead Racetrack, good quality cigars, and the King of Brooklyn.
#17 - Tears
He didn't cry at Spot's funeral, or before, or after; he didn't cry, because Spot would've wanted him to be tough, like the Brooklyn boys, like Spot himself; he didn't cry, and if his face was wet, it wasn't from tears.
#18 - Speed
"Come on, come on, come on, come on," Race chanted under his breath, "You can do it, come on, come on-" and when Cloak And Dagger blew past the finish line in a blaze of glory and speed, he screamed in joy, spun around, and kissed Spot until they were both left gasping and grinning.
#19 - Wind
"Feel that wind, Race," Spot called, balancing himself on the railing of the Brooklyn Bridge, "Ain't that just the best feelin' in the world?" and though all Race felt was cold, he nodded and grinned, watching as Spot proudly surveyed his kingdom.
#20 - Freedom
A newsie's life was freedom, of a sort: roaming the streets at will, free to go wherever you liked; gambling the day away at the racetrack or the poker game was another kind of freedom: choosing your bets, choosing the players; sex with Spot Conlon was freedom of another sort, and Racetrack never could quite make up his mind which of the three gave him the most.
#21 - Life
"Lookit me," Racetrack shouted drunkenly, "I'se the King of New York!" and Spot sneered at the other patrons of the bar, who were paying a little too much attention; but he let himself get dragged out into the dark alley, and they kissed and felt alive.
#22 - Jealousy
"I ain't jealous of a fucking horse," Spot snapped, and when Race wouldn't stop laughing, he scowled and dug his cane into the other boy's ribs, then stalked off, annoyed.
#23 - Hands
Spot's knuckles were split and bleeding, he had a terrific shiner, his shirt was torn, and there was skin and blood under his fingernails; he explained about soaking some Bronx kids who got a little too adventurous while he was pulling Race's clothes off, grinning and adrenaline-fueled.
#24 - Taste
"You taste like cigars and horses," Spot said and shoved him away affectionately.
#25 - Devotion
Spot would only say that he would stay in Brooklyn until they didn't need him anymore; "Well, when d'ya think that'll be?" Race asked, praying against the answer he knew was coming, but Spot just smirked and said, "Never."
#26 - Forever
When Spot Conlon died, he was buried in Brooklyn with his key and his suspenders intact and most of the New York street life paying their respects; Racetrack Higgins walked out with Spot's gold-capped cane hanging from his belt, and he kept it with him for the rest of his life.
#27 - Blood
He's surrounded by blood, his life has been accompanied by blood every step of the way; he won his city by shedding blood, he shed his own blood to keep it; Racetrack manages somehow to remain untainted by the blood that follows Spot, and though he'll never say it he loves the Manhattan newsie for it.
#28 - Sickness
"The nuns say gambling is a sickness," Spot said in a reasonable imitation of a pious voice; Race snorted and contemplated shoving him off the Bridge, but settled for kicking him instead.
#29 - Melody
They don't make music together, and what they do isn't beautiful; it's secret and hurried and often painful, and neither of them would trade it for anything in the world.
#30 - Star
When Lucky Star won Race a whole twenty dollars at the Sheepshead, he had to run for his life to keep it; he blew most of it on a celebratory dinner with the other Manhattan newsies at Tibby's, and barely ate anything himself because Spot sauntered in with that smirk…
#31 - Home
Racetrack fought back the urge to ask Spot to come to Manhattan or, better yet, leave New York behind entirely; he knew what the answer would be, and he didn't need to hear that Brooklyn, not Racetrack Higgins, was Spot Conlon's home.
#32 - Confusion
Les stumbled on the two of them in an abandoned stall at the Sheepshead; Spot threatened the kid with bodily harm if he told, Race just begged him to keep it a secret "between friends", and Les Jacobs looked utterly, absolutely bewildered by what he'd seen.
#33 - Fear
"I ain't afraid of nothing, and you knows it," Spot snapped viciously at Cowboy, and pushed aside nightmares of Race lying dead or dying.
#34 - Lightning/Thunder
It was storming in Manhattan, and as Race listened to Kid Blink telling some tall tale to the littler kids in the Lodging House, he wondered if Spot was listening to the same thunder in Brooklyn.
#35 - Bonds
"No, I understand, Race, I really do-you're bonded to Cowboy and Manhattan and all those damn pansies, and I'm bonded to Brooklyn and my boys-that's just the way it is."
#36 - Market
No races at the Sheepshead that day, so Racetrack hawked headlines outside the market instead, and missed hearing Brooklyn accents all day.
#37 - Technology
They're all there in the picture, all the Manhattan newsies plus one lone figure from Brooklyn; Spot looks completely out of his element, cap missing and none of his boys to back him up, but Racetrack treasures the newspaper clipping, because it's the only photograph of Spot that he's got.
#38 - Gift
It wasn't a permanent box at the Sheepshead, no, but the little package of four Havana cigars and the note scrawled in Spot's uneven print (Happy birthday, old man, think you can still keep up with me?) was almost as good, and put a smile on Race's face for the rest of the day.
#39 - Smile
They said in the streets that the only time Spot Conlon smiled was after he killed a guy, and most everybody was terrified of making Spot smile; Race never contradicted them, but he knew for a fact that it wasn't true, having put an awful lot of smiles on the Brooklyn king's face without anybody dying.
#40 - Innocence
"Were you ever innocent?" Racetrack asked sleepily; Spot snorted and asked, "What's innocent?"
#41 - Completion
"I say…that what you say…is what I say," Spot declared, meeting Race's eyes from up on the stage with Mouth and Cowboy, and Race couldn't stop himself grinning as the alliance was sealed.
#42 - Clouds
It was a sweltering day, not a cloud in the sky, too hot to do anything; Race sold all his papes and snuck off with Spot to be alone, and for a moment that day, Spot wasn't the feared and fearless leader of Brooklyn, not a hero or a criminal; he was just a fourteen-year-old kid who didn't eat enough, sleep enough, play enough, and Race suddenly felt very, very old.
#43 - Sky
Eyes that had always been clear and cold and smooth as the winter sky were clouding over, blurring and darkening, and Racetrack swore at him, screamed at him, begged him to stay, to live, to wake up.
#44 - Heaven
The nuns on the street talked about heaven, sometimes, but Race was never really sure what they meant by it; he just knew that lying next to Spot, panting for breath, grinning uncontrollably, was as close as he was ever likely to get.
#45 - Hell
Race stopped selling his papes at the Sheepshead or even checking out the races, Spot stopped dropping in on the weekly poker game at Tibby's; for a week they refused to see one another, each unaware that the other was suffering just as much.
#46 - Sun
"I hear Jack-be-nimble's goin' to Santa Fe," Spot said out of nowhere; Race shrugged and said, "He's always talking about it but he's never gone yet…maybe the idea of that much sun scares him."
#47 - Moon
Meeting your secret lover by moonlight was supposed to be romantic, but for Racetrack and Spot it wasn't; it was muted and rushed and they both walked away with bruises and dark, unsatisfied eyes.
#48 - Waves
The river moved gently underneath them; Spot leaned over the side of the bridge and glared down at the waves, so that he wouldn't have to listen to Racetrack's apology.
#49 - Hair
Race had a little bit of a fascination with Spot's hair, in the same way that the Brooklyn streets were a little bit dangerous; he was constantly trying to coax that cap off and let the blond strands fly free.
#50 - Supernova
At the turn of the twentieth century, the fifteen-year-old King of Brooklyn and a nineteen-year-old Italian gambler ducked away from the festivities and made their own fireworks, both of them silently praying for the same thing: to survive the new year.
bored]
[music| where i want to be - chess]
Title: The Minor Fall, The Major Lift
Author: chicafrom3
Fandom: Newsies
Pairing: Spot Conlon x Racetrack Higgins
Theme set: Alpha
Rating: PG-13; language, underage sexing, smoking, drinking, abuse of the English language
Notes: Non-chronological order. Vague spoilers for throughout the movie.
#01 - Comfort
When Race got soaked bad by a bookie he'd failed to pay on time, Spot didn't offer words of comfort, didn't put an arm around him and promise that it would be all right; instead, he rounded up his boys and they roughed up the bookie in return, and for Race that was close enough.
#02 - Kiss
Race was drunk, and Spot had it in mind to take advantage of that; they kissed behind Tibby's for the first time: afterwards, Race passed out from the alcohol, and Spot stole his cigars and walked back to Brooklyn whistling.
#03 - Soft
There was nothing soft about the King of Brooklyn, 'cause if there ever was it got beat out of him a long time ago, but Race didn't care, he just loved him anyway.
#04 - Pain
"Love ya," Racetrack mumbled late one night, and then bit his tongue and waited for an answer that he knew would never come; Spot disentangled himself and walked away.
#05 - Potatoes
Spot was sitting on the bridge, carving up a potato, and when Race walked up he found himself with a face full of potato peel and a hysterically laughing Brooklynite.
#06 - Rain
"Damn you," Spot said, and wouldn't look at him, "I don't need nobody, 'specially not a 'Hattan gambler"; outside and inside, it was raining.
#07 - Chocolate
A stolen moment at the Sheepshead, a stolen bag discarded by their feet, and Racetrack was convinced that chocolate tasted better out of someone else's mouth, particularly when that someone else was Spot Conlon.
#08 - Happiness
He couldn't bring himself to actually touch the boy sleeping peacefully beside him, but his hands ghosted over the lines and curves of his form, mapping him out without ever quite making contact, and he decided that there was no place else he'd rather be, no matter what the nuns said.
#09 - Telephone
It goes like this: Spot's second in command, Skids, sends one of the littler Brooklyn boys, a kid by the name of Noise, to Manhattan; Noise is hardly past the Bridge when he runs into one of Jack Kelly's boys, little Boots, selling papes, and passes on the message; Boots runs to the Cowboy and the Walking Mouth's usual selling spot to let them know; and an hour after Spot Conlon is shot, Racetrack Higgins is running for all he's worth towards Brooklyn.
#10 - Ears
His little birds showed up from all over New York-Harlem, Queens, all over-to drop the news in his ears, but the one he was waiting for never did, so, okay, maybe he was being a little spiteful about that when he told Jacky-boy not to count on any help until he showed he was serious.
#11 - Name
They called each other Sean and Anthony, but the names sounded strange and foreign on their tongues, and it was obvious they weren't used to them; when they left, someone overheard Anthony say, "Damn, Spot, let's not do that again."
#12 - Sensual
Spot was convinced that watching Racetrack smoke a cigar and deal a new hand of poker was the most sensual fucking thing in New York.
#13 - Death
"He's dead," Jack says, "There's nothing to do, he's dead," and Skids and Noise don't grieve because Brooklyn boys don't grieve, they just get pissed; Racetrack shuts down and refuses to hear and keeps trying to wake Spot up, even though he's cold, and motionless, and covered in blood.
#14 - Sex
"It's just sex," Spot said, lighting up a cigar and shaking the match out, "That's all, just good sex," and Race tapped his harmonica against his leg and nodded and said, "Right, it's just sex," and looked the other way.
#15 - Touch
They touched each other freely, unafraid of getting caught out; after all, the Manhattan boys were always grabbing on to each other and hugging and throwing arms around one another, so no one really noticed that Race had a little more heat behind his movements when he hung on to Spot Conlon.
#16 - Weakness
Spot Conlon didn't have weaknesses, or if he did no one would dare to mention them to his face; Racetrack Higgins had his own weaknesses: the Sheepshead Racetrack, good quality cigars, and the King of Brooklyn.
#17 - Tears
He didn't cry at Spot's funeral, or before, or after; he didn't cry, because Spot would've wanted him to be tough, like the Brooklyn boys, like Spot himself; he didn't cry, and if his face was wet, it wasn't from tears.
#18 - Speed
"Come on, come on, come on, come on," Race chanted under his breath, "You can do it, come on, come on-" and when Cloak And Dagger blew past the finish line in a blaze of glory and speed, he screamed in joy, spun around, and kissed Spot until they were both left gasping and grinning.
#19 - Wind
"Feel that wind, Race," Spot called, balancing himself on the railing of the Brooklyn Bridge, "Ain't that just the best feelin' in the world?" and though all Race felt was cold, he nodded and grinned, watching as Spot proudly surveyed his kingdom.
#20 - Freedom
A newsie's life was freedom, of a sort: roaming the streets at will, free to go wherever you liked; gambling the day away at the racetrack or the poker game was another kind of freedom: choosing your bets, choosing the players; sex with Spot Conlon was freedom of another sort, and Racetrack never could quite make up his mind which of the three gave him the most.
#21 - Life
"Lookit me," Racetrack shouted drunkenly, "I'se the King of New York!" and Spot sneered at the other patrons of the bar, who were paying a little too much attention; but he let himself get dragged out into the dark alley, and they kissed and felt alive.
#22 - Jealousy
"I ain't jealous of a fucking horse," Spot snapped, and when Race wouldn't stop laughing, he scowled and dug his cane into the other boy's ribs, then stalked off, annoyed.
#23 - Hands
Spot's knuckles were split and bleeding, he had a terrific shiner, his shirt was torn, and there was skin and blood under his fingernails; he explained about soaking some Bronx kids who got a little too adventurous while he was pulling Race's clothes off, grinning and adrenaline-fueled.
#24 - Taste
"You taste like cigars and horses," Spot said and shoved him away affectionately.
#25 - Devotion
Spot would only say that he would stay in Brooklyn until they didn't need him anymore; "Well, when d'ya think that'll be?" Race asked, praying against the answer he knew was coming, but Spot just smirked and said, "Never."
#26 - Forever
When Spot Conlon died, he was buried in Brooklyn with his key and his suspenders intact and most of the New York street life paying their respects; Racetrack Higgins walked out with Spot's gold-capped cane hanging from his belt, and he kept it with him for the rest of his life.
#27 - Blood
He's surrounded by blood, his life has been accompanied by blood every step of the way; he won his city by shedding blood, he shed his own blood to keep it; Racetrack manages somehow to remain untainted by the blood that follows Spot, and though he'll never say it he loves the Manhattan newsie for it.
#28 - Sickness
"The nuns say gambling is a sickness," Spot said in a reasonable imitation of a pious voice; Race snorted and contemplated shoving him off the Bridge, but settled for kicking him instead.
#29 - Melody
They don't make music together, and what they do isn't beautiful; it's secret and hurried and often painful, and neither of them would trade it for anything in the world.
#30 - Star
When Lucky Star won Race a whole twenty dollars at the Sheepshead, he had to run for his life to keep it; he blew most of it on a celebratory dinner with the other Manhattan newsies at Tibby's, and barely ate anything himself because Spot sauntered in with that smirk…
#31 - Home
Racetrack fought back the urge to ask Spot to come to Manhattan or, better yet, leave New York behind entirely; he knew what the answer would be, and he didn't need to hear that Brooklyn, not Racetrack Higgins, was Spot Conlon's home.
#32 - Confusion
Les stumbled on the two of them in an abandoned stall at the Sheepshead; Spot threatened the kid with bodily harm if he told, Race just begged him to keep it a secret "between friends", and Les Jacobs looked utterly, absolutely bewildered by what he'd seen.
#33 - Fear
"I ain't afraid of nothing, and you knows it," Spot snapped viciously at Cowboy, and pushed aside nightmares of Race lying dead or dying.
#34 - Lightning/Thunder
It was storming in Manhattan, and as Race listened to Kid Blink telling some tall tale to the littler kids in the Lodging House, he wondered if Spot was listening to the same thunder in Brooklyn.
#35 - Bonds
"No, I understand, Race, I really do-you're bonded to Cowboy and Manhattan and all those damn pansies, and I'm bonded to Brooklyn and my boys-that's just the way it is."
#36 - Market
No races at the Sheepshead that day, so Racetrack hawked headlines outside the market instead, and missed hearing Brooklyn accents all day.
#37 - Technology
They're all there in the picture, all the Manhattan newsies plus one lone figure from Brooklyn; Spot looks completely out of his element, cap missing and none of his boys to back him up, but Racetrack treasures the newspaper clipping, because it's the only photograph of Spot that he's got.
#38 - Gift
It wasn't a permanent box at the Sheepshead, no, but the little package of four Havana cigars and the note scrawled in Spot's uneven print (Happy birthday, old man, think you can still keep up with me?) was almost as good, and put a smile on Race's face for the rest of the day.
#39 - Smile
They said in the streets that the only time Spot Conlon smiled was after he killed a guy, and most everybody was terrified of making Spot smile; Race never contradicted them, but he knew for a fact that it wasn't true, having put an awful lot of smiles on the Brooklyn king's face without anybody dying.
#40 - Innocence
"Were you ever innocent?" Racetrack asked sleepily; Spot snorted and asked, "What's innocent?"
#41 - Completion
"I say…that what you say…is what I say," Spot declared, meeting Race's eyes from up on the stage with Mouth and Cowboy, and Race couldn't stop himself grinning as the alliance was sealed.
#42 - Clouds
It was a sweltering day, not a cloud in the sky, too hot to do anything; Race sold all his papes and snuck off with Spot to be alone, and for a moment that day, Spot wasn't the feared and fearless leader of Brooklyn, not a hero or a criminal; he was just a fourteen-year-old kid who didn't eat enough, sleep enough, play enough, and Race suddenly felt very, very old.
#43 - Sky
Eyes that had always been clear and cold and smooth as the winter sky were clouding over, blurring and darkening, and Racetrack swore at him, screamed at him, begged him to stay, to live, to wake up.
#44 - Heaven
The nuns on the street talked about heaven, sometimes, but Race was never really sure what they meant by it; he just knew that lying next to Spot, panting for breath, grinning uncontrollably, was as close as he was ever likely to get.
#45 - Hell
Race stopped selling his papes at the Sheepshead or even checking out the races, Spot stopped dropping in on the weekly poker game at Tibby's; for a week they refused to see one another, each unaware that the other was suffering just as much.
#46 - Sun
"I hear Jack-be-nimble's goin' to Santa Fe," Spot said out of nowhere; Race shrugged and said, "He's always talking about it but he's never gone yet…maybe the idea of that much sun scares him."
#47 - Moon
Meeting your secret lover by moonlight was supposed to be romantic, but for Racetrack and Spot it wasn't; it was muted and rushed and they both walked away with bruises and dark, unsatisfied eyes.
#48 - Waves
The river moved gently underneath them; Spot leaned over the side of the bridge and glared down at the waves, so that he wouldn't have to listen to Racetrack's apology.
#49 - Hair
Race had a little bit of a fascination with Spot's hair, in the same way that the Brooklyn streets were a little bit dangerous; he was constantly trying to coax that cap off and let the blond strands fly free.
#50 - Supernova
At the turn of the twentieth century, the fifteen-year-old King of Brooklyn and a nineteen-year-old Italian gambler ducked away from the festivities and made their own fireworks, both of them silently praying for the same thing: to survive the new year.