Newsies Imagines

Fortune Favors the Love-Struck (Race)

You're curled up on your bed, knees bent in front of you in an attempt to spread out on the narrow space of your bunk. A battered and beaten paperback is propped up against your legs, your eyes glued to its pages. Across the room, the door opens and you barely have a chance to realize someone's there before a sudden blur flashes across the room and knocks you back against the bed.

You tense for a moment, then laugh despite yourself when you realize that the blur was just your best friend, Race, knocking you down in a running tackle. "Jeez, Race, you trying to kill me?" Your joke dies slightly on your tongue when you look up and see his face only a few inches away from your own, his legs strewn over yours and his chin propped up on his palm to grin victoriously at you.

Race just rolls his eyes at your complaint. "Y/N, do you remember how we first met?" You attempt to calm the beating of your heart, and speak in a slightly exasperated tone. "You mean when I saw you on that street corner selling papes and bet I could sell twice as many as you?" Race nods in agreement, cheeky grin on full display. "And for some reason, I let you sell with me despite the fact that I had no idea who you were, and even after I won the contest I brought you to Jack out of the goodness of my heart and had him make you a full-time newsie?"

You don't need Race's anecdotes to remind you of that day. It seemed like it had just happened recently, despite the fact that you had now lived with the Manhattan newsies for well over a year. After you had first met Race out on the streets, the two of you had formed a fast friendship that would lead to you selling him with him more often than not, him even allowing you to steal a cigar or two from his treasured stash, and instances like this one, when he would launch into a running tackle just to rough you up and joke around like you were just another one of the boys.

That was one of the first things you had noticed about Race- he never seemed to care that you were a girl. He never treated you differently, like a glass ornament that could shatter at a moment's notice. He never seemed to see you as anything more than a selling partner, a friend, a newsie he could talk and laugh with whenever he wanted to.

The next few things you started to notice about Race were the sudden, startling blue of his eyes when the light caught them, or the way his mouth twisted up into a crooked smile when he was having fun. The way he'd raise his eyebrows slightly when talking about something that he'd seen earlier, which made him look like an excited kid again for just a second. The way his arm slid around your shoulders like a missing puzzle piece that was supposed to have been there all along. The way you loved him for all of that, and would keep loving him until the day your heart finally stopped beating.

The worst part about loving Race is the best part about him, too- the way the two of you were closer than anything, closer than either of you were to any other newsie across the entire city of New York. You were his best friend, and he was yours- even though you were the most important person to him, you were still stuck in one place in his heart, somewhere in between a sister and a friend. He would never see you as a girl he would fall in love with, even though you'd been head over heels for him for a long time. So, you fake your smiles, and pretend your eyes don't linger on him when they do, and you force yourself to snap back to reality instead of swimming around in your thoughts like you're doing right now.

You raise your eyebrows doubtfully. "Actually, I think I won the pape-selling contest, and you were so amazed that you practically dragged me over to the lodging house so you could beg Jack to let me sell with you." Race frowns. "I don't remember it being like that." You laugh at his cross face. "Maybe you should get a better memory, and maybe you should get off of me and tell me what you want."

Race stares at you for a second, then stretches out an arm to your side to push himself upright into a sitting position just a few inches away from you. You sit up yourself, trying to stop the hammering of your heart. Race crosses his arms over his chest. "What do you mean, I should tell you what I want?"