The one thing Specs had unfortunately grown accustomed to in his time away from the Newsies was sleeping in.
At the beginning his body woke him up on time but as time went on he slept on longer and longer past when the circulation bell would have rung.
The fact that he was just enough away from it for it to not be loud enough to wake him up didn't help much either.
So when he woke up and saw that the clock showed it to be well past the circulation bell he started panicking.
He woke up alone on the chair he'd been on the night before with Romeo.
While he was waking up he went through a fair amount of stages of confusion.
At first he was confused as to why he had woken up on a chair and why it was so much brighter than usual.
Once he remembered the fact that he was home with the Newsies he started to get confused about why he was in the living room and not in his bunk.
Finally after all of his confusion he finally remembered everything that had happened that night.
Between the talking and being awake at midnight for the countdown, he was still tired.
After a few minutes of laying there and trying not to fall back asleep he finally managed to keep his eyes open long enough to see where everyone also was.
Romeo was sitting on one of the other chairs reading what Specs assumes is the only book he's ever read.
"I read Romeo & Juliet," he said, finally alerting Romeo of him being awake.
Romeo smiled so much Specs thought his face might stretch.
How happy Romeo was made Specs regret not reading it before and jumping to conclusions about it.
"Did you like it? Please say you like it," Romeo said while jumping up and down in the air.
Specs pondered his answer for a moment before deciding on it. "It wasn't horrible," he started. "I didn't know what they were saying half the time and it was so unrealistic but it wasn't as bad as I thought it was."
"See I told you it's the best book ever," Romeo shouted.
Specs playfully rolled his eyes and stood up. He put his hands on Romeo's shoulders to get him to stop jumping.
"You can think that," he said quickly.
He could Romeo was about to argue with him about it so he pulled him into a kiss.
Once they pulled away Romeo fake pouted. "I'll let you away with being wrong this once since you kissed me," he joked.
They went on like this for a while messing with each other and kissing, lots of kissing.
Both boys sat down side by side on the couch.
Romeo rested his head on Specs' shoulder and pulled his legs up beside him.
Specs wrapped an arm around his waist and kissed him lightly in the forehead.
"We are being really lazy today, aren't we?" Romeo pointed out.
"Well we're back selling tomorrow so don't get used to it."
Romeo frowned and looked up at Specs.
"Why do you think we ended up like we are? Like, we could have been the children of the richest men alive but here we are barely making enough to eat," he explained.
Specs looked down at him with confusion. "Where's all this coming from?" he asked.
Romeo looked back down at his lap. "I don't know I was just wondering. I'm sorry."
"You don't have to apologise. But in all honesty, I don't know. We really are a step behind in life but there's still everything in front of us," he slowly explained. "Just because we're poor now doesn't mean we won't be rich when we're older."
"I suppose you're right," Romeo decided.
"Of course I am but look at it this way, you don't need to have money there are other things too, like friends and family and we've got enough of them to last a million years."
Romeo laughed and leaned his head back down on Specs' shoulder. "I'm going to be rich one day, I promise you that."
~~~
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