The Experiment || Newsies AU

Chapter 48

Race was walking to the library to get Jack and Davey to put their plan into action when he heard them talking.

He wasn't surprised that they were talking, that's what people do but he was more surprised when he heard what they were saying.

Not wanting to blow his cover he pressed himself as flat as possible to the wall beside the door and listened in on their conversation.

He risked a glance and nearly screamed at what he saw, the two of them leaning on each other and Jack kissing Davey on his temple every few seconds.

What surprised him the most was when he heard them refer to each other as boyfriends.

As soon as he heard this he sprinted as quietly as he could to the common room where they had migrated halfway through their planning.

"Crutchie," he called to the boy who was deep in conversation with Elmer. "Crutchie. This is a code red. I repeat a code red."

Crutchie was up and over to Race as soon as he heard this.

"What happened? What's wrong?" he asked worriedly.

He looked at all of the Newsies looking at them and signalled to him to go outside to talk.

"So I went down to the library to get them like I said I would and you'll never guess what I saw," he started. Crutchie gave him a look to say 'don't stop talking'. "They were sitting suspiciously close to each other, they were practically cuddling, and Jack kept on kissing Davey on the forehead."

"No," Crutchie gasped.

He wouldn't admit it but he was slightly upset, they had spent so much time making the plan perfect.

He was mostly happy though, because seeing, or hearing, that his brother is happy made him happy.

"Yes. And get this, he called him his boyfriend," Crutchie nearly squealed, being the no. 1 Javey/ Javid shipper he is.

"What are we going to do about the plan?" he asked. "We also can't tell the other boys, we need to respect their privacy. I only told you because it might seem odd if I came back without them and why the plan couldn't go ahead."

"What if we tell them that we have a new plan," Crutchie suggested.

"We could also say that to make it more subtle that just the two of us are going to do it," Race added onto his idea.

After a little while they had come up with a new plan to tell the group.

They spent more time trying to make it foolproof so they wouldn't start asking questions.

Afterwards they went back inside so everyone else wouldn't begin to get suspicious.

"Where's Jack and Davey?" Buttons asked once they came back into the common room.

"They were just finishing when we left," Race explained a little too quickly.

Some of the boys didn't believe him and the girls saw straight through his lie, but they all let it slide.

"We were just finishing what?" Jack asked as they walked into the room.

"I don't know, it was just whatever you were working on. I only saw you so I don't know," Race said as cooly as he could.

Jack and Davey worriedly shared a look.

"I just saw Davey reading something and Jack taking notes and it looked like you were near the end of the section in the book," he said, making sure to keep his breathing in check so his story was more believable.

There was a few moments of awkward silence between the three of them and the rest of the group just looking around trying to figure out what was going on.

Finally, Albert broke the silence by suggesting a card game, which they were all delighted to play.

~~~
631 words