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The very first time Racetrack Higgins saw Spot Conlon, he was sneering down at Jack Kelly’s outstretched hand. 

Lip busted and bleeding, shiner on his left eye, patched up knife slash over his right, he looked scary. Race had been in plenty of scraps, but none like that. 

It had only been a few days, but the news had spread across the boroughs fast. 

Something’s happened across the bridge. 

The King’s been knocked down. 

I hear it was bloody. I hear someone pulled a knife. 

Whoever’s in charge now can’t possibly be worse. Can he?

It’s that Conlon kid—he’s always scared the shit out of me. 

And so it was. 

Spot Conlon, King of Brooklyn. 

Looking at him now, Race could picture the fight. He could picture a challenge, one insult too many. He could picture fists flying, knuckles connecting with bone. He could picture a blade, flashing in the dark. 

Most of all, looking at Conlon, he could picture the deposed king on the ground, coughing blood, and Conlon standing over him with an invisible crown on his head. 

Conlon’s eyes snapped up to Race’s. They were cold. 

Race suppressed a shiver with the biggest grin he could. Conlon might be one unnerving son of a bitch, but Manhattan wasn’t going to kiss his boots just because he was intimidating. 

“Is your second laughing at me, Kelly?”

Jack glanced over his shoulder. “No, he’s just stupid. Knock it off or you’re walking back across the bridge by yourself.”

Race’s smile dropped. He pulled out his cigar and chewed the well-worn end. 

“But he’s not wrong, either, Conlon.” Race started a little. He wasn’t? 

Jack went on again. “We came to arrange some sort of agreement, not be pushed around. I hated the old king as much as anyone. I’m hoping you and I can come up with a deal that works for both of us.”

Conlon’s face changed fractionally. It was subtle, but enough hands of poker meant Race knew a tell when he saw one. There—again. A slight narrowing of the eyes, a miniscule movement of the jaw. 

The silence hung in the air between them. Conlon’s second, standing just behind him, darted her eyes back and forth between Jack and Conlon. New York held its breath. 

And finally, Conlon stuck out a hand. “I’m sure we can sort something out,” he said. “And don’t call me Conlon. It’s Spot.”

The second time Race saw Spot, he earned himself a fist to the face and a knee to the gut. 

Race had always considered himself a free agent. Sure, he was loyal to Jack and the rest of the Manhattan boys, but sometimes he knew he could put a couple extra nickels in his pocket if he got creative with his selling spot. 

This pragmatic philosophy had taken him across the city, from Houston to Harlem and beyond to Queens and the Bronx. If anyone had a problem with that, well, he was a fast runner. 

When Jack and Spot had negotiated the terms of their peace, Spot had given him a list of rules he absolutely would not compromise on. At the top of the list: Manhattan newsies stayed out of Brooklyn. Brooklyn newsies stayed out of Manhattan. 

Race knew selling at Sheepshead broke the rules. He knew Jack would lose it if he found out. But he also knew he could get through two hundred papes on a Friday afternoon selling to gamblers and watch the horses while he did it. 

He just wouldn’t get caught. Easy. 

What he hadn’t counted on however, was Spot being an entirely different kind of leader from the previous king. Old Warehouse, age 19, had been lazy and corrupt. He hadn’t cared much for his borough beyond the cut he could take from his newsies. As long as a kid avoided him and his thugs, he could get away with anything on Brooklyn turf. 

And although Race knew Spot was different, more involved in ruling his territory, he hadn’t counted on just how quickly things would change. 

On a Friday evening in July, he stepped into the street after a very successful selling day. He had burned through all his papers in less than two hours, and his favourite horse had won him five whole bucks. His day’s wages, all in coins, were loose in his pockets, but the dollar bills he had tucked safely into his sock. 

The high carried him across two blocks. He was eating well for the next few days, maybe even the next few weeks if he was careful. 

But when he ran headfirst into Spot while turning into an alley, he knew he had fucked up. 

“Heya, Racer,” Spot said, low and cool. 

“Spot! I was just, uh. Visiting my girl? Yeah, she’s… real pretty. Dark hair, all that. Was heading back across the bridge now.” He winced. 

“I believe we had a deal, Race. And I don’t like when people don’t keep their word.”

He tried to laugh, to bluster his way out like he always did. Spot just stood there, completely still. His face was hidden in the long dusky shadows, all tells hidden. Race cleared his throat. 

Spot leaned in close and grabbed a fistful of Race’s shirt. For a moment, Race wasn’t sure what Spot was about to do—then he pulled back and socked him in the face. 

“That’s for selling on my turf,” he said. 

Race fell to his knees, spitting blood onto the pavement. “Is that the best you can do, Conlon?” he coughed out, making a pitiful attempt to get back up again. “Someone’s baby sister coulda done that.”

He knew he was staying down when Spot’s boot connected with his stomach. “And that’s so you remember to tell Kelly to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

“Still holding back, huh?” was all he wheezed out in reply, because apparently he had no idea what was good for him. 

But he really knew he had fucked up when Spot reached into his pockets and pulled out his coins, a day’s worth of pay—the difference between a full belly and going to bed hungry for the foreseeable future. Spot’s voice from above was still as calm and measured as ever. “And this is for my kids, who you’re stealing from when you sell Sheepshead.”

From the pile, Spot flipped a single dime to the ground. “So you can buy yourself something pretty,” he said. 

Race couldn’t breathe, couldn’t reach out to snatch it back. He stared at the coin, glinting in the growing darkness. It was enough to buy him a couple papers for tomorrow, at least. Splatters of blood—his blood, he thought, far away—hit the street beneath him. 

He thought for a moment that Spot had finally left, but then he crouched in front of Race and grabbed his chin. “I don’t like liars,” he said softly. “And don’t fucking call me Conlon.” Then he was gone. 

Race stumbled home alone across the Brooklyn Bridge, nose dripping blood down his face and ribs aching. That was really stupid, he thought. 

It was a slow, painful trip. Every few steps, he had to stop to catch his breath. But even then, he could only think about two things. 

The first: how, exactly, to get himself back into Brooklyn. Although Spot had just beat the shit out of him, it was only a warning—this felt like the second move in a game, and it was Race’s turn to make his play. 

The second: Spot’s calloused fingers on his jaw. 

It was a miserable newsie who finally collapsed into bed long after everyone else had gone to sleep. With a jolt, he remembered the money he had tucked into his sock, hidden even from Spot and his spies. 

He stared at the ceiling, a slow grin cracking the dry blood on his face. 

The third time Race saw Spot, he had an idea. 

He crossed the bridge and made a beeline for the docks where he knew Spot would be holding court. Some of Spot’s kids started tailing him as soon as he set foot on solid ground, so he didn’t dawdle. 

“Spotty! I got a proposition for you,” he called out as soon as he could see Spot, perched on a stack of wooden crates. 

Spot’s head whipped around, his mouth settling into a scowl as soon as he recognized Race. 

“I thought I told you to stop coming around here,” he replied, eyes narrowed. 

“See, the thing is, I don’t learn from my mistakes, and business ain’t been too good since you shook me down. I’m a Manhattan boy, but Brooklyn calls to me! Beautiful borough you got here. Also, no point in being named Racetrack without a track to sell at.” 

Spot jumped off the crate. He still stood on a pallet, Race noted, meaning he was looking down ever so slightly at Race. Being short meant you had to play whatever advantage you could get, Race supposed. “And what are you gonna do about it?” 

It was a challenge. And Lord knew Race had a competitive streak. 

“I’ll play you for it,” he said, pulling out his deck of cards, and the wrinkled bills from his previous trip to Brooklyn all those weeks ago. “You win, you take my money. I win, I get to sell Sheepshead. And you give me back the dough you took outta my pockets.”

And when Spot’s eyes sparked, just a bit, and his jaw worked in that miniscule tell, Race knew it was a game he was going to win. 

Spot stood up and slapped his cards on the table. 

Race got to his feet too, grinning.

Spot huffed. That telltale jaw was tight now when he crossed his arms. “Fridays only. And you come for the evening paper then leave right afterwards. I hear anything about you selling at the track any other time, I soak you again. And this time you won’t be able to walk yourself home afterwards.”

“And what about my money?”

“Don’t push your luck.”

“Deal.”

They shook, and that was that. 

By the fourth, fifth, and sixth times Race met Spot, the guy was starting to piss him off. 

He knew Spot was having him tailed on his walk home from Sheepshead, making sure he wasn’t getting up to anything unsanctioned. Most of the time, it was random newsies, but sometimes there were faces he recognized, like Spot’s second. He had never caught her name. 

One night, Spot himself was the one waiting outside the track. He pushed off the wall when he saw Race, choosing not to walk beside him, but ten paces behind him—making his presence known but not even deeming Race good enough to talk face to face. 

He did this three Fridays in a row. By the third week, Race was fed up. 

Halfway through the city, he finally spun around. Spot was right there, much closer than Race had expected. He faltered for half a second, then his righteous anger returned. 

“You got a problem with me? Because the way I see it, you got all of Brooklyn as your oyster, and you’re choosing to bother me.”

Spot crossed his arms, eyes narrowed. “I like to know what’s happening in my borough. Especially when certain people known to go back on deals are wanderin’ free.”

That was the last straw for Race. He was sick and tired of being treated like a criminal in the selling spot he had won fair and square. He took a step until they were nearly nose to nose—or would have been, if Spot were taller than Race’s chin. 

“I’m following your goddamn rules. Why do you care? You’re fucking obsessed with me, or something.” And then he shoved Spot Conlon, King of Brooklyn, as hard as he could. 

He knew immediately he had made a mistake. No one touched the Brooklyn leader like that and got away with it. 

But Spot just looked… surprised. It was fast, just a flash across his features, and then his trademark scowl settled again. He brushed off his shirt where Race had touched him, slow and deliberate. 

“Fine,” he spat. “I’ll leave you alone. But I hear anything about you breaking the rules, and you’re over. You’re six feet in the ground, Manhattan. And that’s a promise I don’t intend to break.”

The seventh time Race ran into Spot, it was sort of an accident. Sort of. 

Spot had mostly eased off when he saw that Race had no intention of breaking their new deal. He hadn’t seen Spot since that night weeks ago, and he was mostly fine with that. Race made his way to Sheepshead on Friday evenings, sold his papers, and headed home. 

Now, that didn’t mean he strictly sold papers while he was at Sheepshead. If he sometimes got into a little game of cards, or had a few drinks with some of the patrons, that was his own business. Spot didn’t seem to know about the loophole, or he just didn’t care. 

One such night, deep in October, found Race cleaning four grown men out of their bets. Twenty-one dollars, a pair of new shoelaces, and an expensive-looking watch found their way into his pockets. It was a good night.

“Well, fellas, this has been great!” He plucked one last bill off the table. “Thank you kindly for an excellent game. I should really be getting home.”

He flashed a smile, downed the last of his drink, and popped his cigar into his mouth. Then he started to make the long trip back to Manhattan. 

He got about halfway to the bridge before he started to realize something was wrong. 

Race had had three—four?—drinks, enough to loosen him up. He knew how much liquor he could take. But he hadn’t had enough to feel this inhibited, and this didn’t feel like alcohol. 

His head felt wrong, and his eyelids started to droop. Christ . And here he was, leaning against a wall all the way out in Brooklyn, trying not to collapse. Jack couldn’t come save him, and neither could Blink or Mush or Finch. Everyone he knew was across that bridge. 

Almost everyone. Jesus Fuck.

He could hear scuffling in the street behind him. Footsteps? It was past midnight, dead and quiet. But Race could definitely hear someone—several someones—walking towards him. 

He took off. He knew he wouldn’t make it all the way across the bridge, but he was hoping he could make it to the docks before they got to him. Race was tall, with long legs that carried him well on a good day. On a good day, he flew through the streets of New York, free to go where he pleased as long as his body could keep up. 

Today was not a good day. He knew he was still fast—he hoped he was—but he kept tripping and stumbling on his own feet. He was winded already after a single block. 

And then he fell once. 

Twice. 

Three times. 

With each stumble, he picked himself back up and ran on at a sloppier pace than before. 

The footsteps were definitely closer. Distantly, voices sounded in the night, but they kept getting stuck in the fibers of the wool filling his skull. He knew that he should understand them, knew they were speaking English, but he couldn’t decipher the words. 

He was so close. He could see the docks, that great miniature city bobbing in the harbour. 

And then he fell again. 

This time, he knew he wasn’t getting up. His limbs had liquefied. He couldn’t feel his toes or his fingers anymore, and his arms felt foreign, detached from his body. 

The voices and footfalls drew closer. Suddenly there was a fist in his hair, the glint of brass knuckles slicing into his muddled mind. 

A punch to his face, a punch to his stomach, the crack of his bones breaking. He remembered that night with Spot in the alleyway, except this time, he knew they weren’t going to stop. 

Another hit, and the crunch of his nose breaking. Hands pawing around in his pockets. 

A shout, a hazy fist striking the person behind him with a viper’s speed, and then he was dropped to the pavement, hitting it hard. Someone grabbed his shoulder. He flinched. 

“Racer. It’s just me.” A familiar voice, floating around his head. “Why are you here, Racer?”

“Didn’t know where else to go,” he said, and then even the voice slipped out of his awareness. 

When he came to, he thought he was in the lodging house at first, but the angle of the light was all wrong. The sun struck his face through a dirty window pane. 

And everything hurt. Fuck, everything hurt. 

He had no idea where he was, whether he was in Brooklyn or Manhattan, but he knew there was no way he could get back to Jack and his other friends alone. He closed his eyes. He wished Jack were here to tell him what to do. 

When the door opened, Race tried to sit up, to find some way to defend himself, before he realized it was Spot standing in the doorway. 

A little kid, probably six or seven, stood next to him with a bowl and a towel. She wrinkled her nose and hid behind Spot’s legs. When Spot looked down at her, then nodded at the rickety table beside the bed, she scurried over, put the bowl down, and left. The door clicked shut behind her. 

The only other piece of furniture in the sparse room was a chair. Spot pulled this over to the bed and sat down. 

“You’re in the Brooklyn lodging house. You’re goddamn lucky I was getting home late, otherwise I would’ve been nowhere near the docks in the first place,” he began. Then he nudged the bowl towards Race. “For your face.”

Race reached up to prod the tender skin. Sure enough, it was crusty with blood and sweat from the night before. The eighth time he saw Spot was apparently the time he looked like shit. 

He sat up, gasping at the sharp pain in his ribs, but he found he was able to reach over to grab the cloth.

“What the fuck were you doing.” Spot’s voice was completely flat, every inch the King of Brooklyn ready to pass judgement. 

“I was… selling. And then I got a bit carried away. Listen though—I ain’t done nothing wrong. I was still followin’ every rule you gave me.”

Spot was quiet for a long time while Race cleaned his face, and then his hands and arms, scuffed and dirty from his falls. 

Race had noticed this about Spot: his silences. It was like he had a limited number of words per day, so he wanted to make sure the ones he used counted. 

Finally, he stood up. 

“You’re not Brooklyn. You will never be Brooklyn,” he said slowly. Race knew what was coming. He had fucked up his shaky alliance with Spot, was gonna get himself kicked off the Sheepshead turf for good, had probably ruined what little diplomacy Jack had brokered between the boroughs. Then Spot spoke again. “But you’re still a newsie. And we’ve gotta look out for each other.”

And when Race met his eyes, and Spot gave a slight nod before walking out, Race thought he saw something he recognized. Just for a moment. 

Two days later, it was Hotshot, Spot’s second from all those months ago, who helped him cross the bridge. As soon as he was on the other side, she left him with a two finger salute, and he limped the rest of the way home alone. 

Jack was livid. “Where the hell have you been? If this was that bastard Spot Conlon again, I swear to god I’ll kill him, Race.” 

“I’m okay, Jack, I swear. Listen, I’m fine. And it wasn’t Spot. He actually gave them… a pretty good soaking for me.”

“Like hell you are. You’re sitting out for the next week.” And then the second part of Race’s statement seemed to sink in. Jack gave him a strange look. “If you say so.”

It had taken Race five days to start selling again. Even Jack couldn’t keep him cooped up in the lodging house forever. 

He expected his first taste of freedom to fix everything. Sure, his nose was crooked now, and he had a fresh scar across his top lip, but he was still the same old newsie. 

But something felt off. The first two weeks, he stayed out of Brooklyn completely. He hung around the lodging house mostly, not wanting to walk too far with his busted ribs. 

Being home was difficult. Kelly wouldn’t leave him alone, for starters, and sometimes he felt like he didn’t know how to talk to the other newsies. He would look at them, talking and laughing and pushing each other around, and feel like there was something fundamentally different about him. Wrong, somehow.  

Once, he had been walking home from a mediocre day’s work. He still had a few papers left, but he didn’t have it in him to sell them. 

When Blink, Mush, and Finch snuck up behind him and grabbed his shoulders without warning, he jumped three feet in the air, dropped his papers on the sidewalk, and whipped around, ready to go down swinging this time. 

They hadn’t liked that too much. The rest of the day, everyone had treated Race like a spooked horse, poised to bolt at any moment. 

And maybe he was, because suddenly the streets he used to own held dangers behind every corner. He jumped at shadows. He was constantly looking over his shoulder, expecting some other past rival to appear and knock him down once and for all. 

It seemed like no one understood. 

Except for maybe one person. 

After that, Race started hanging around Spot more. The ninth, tenth, eleventh, twelfth times… they all started blurring together. All he knew was that Spot never told him to get lost. 

For a while, it was strictly a Friday night affair. Spot went wherever he sold during the day, and Race made the trek to Sheepshead. When his papers ran out and the sun began to sink, Spot was waiting to walk him home. 

These nights passed mainly in silence. When Spot talked to his newsies, he was still the same as always—larger than life, legendary. Dangerous. Still the most likely person to pull a knife in a scrap. 

Race still heard stories about him, and for the most part, he couldn’t tell which ones were true. 

Did you hear Spot Conlon stabbed some guy from Queens right through the eye?

He’s not capable of feelin’ fear. That’s what makes him goddamn invincible. 

I heard Conlon’s so untouchable ‘cause he’s got all the biggest mob bosses in his back pocket.

But when the two of them were together, the persona seemed to slip. He was still a viper, but he was quieter. More real. 

These night walks felt almost transactional, a service from Spot, but Race could never quite figure out what Spot owed him. On those nights the Brooklyn Bridge stretched out before them, an endless highway between their two worlds.  

Other times Race would make the trip just to see Spot. Their strange friendship slowly bled into the daytime hours, sometimes filling the void between the morning and afternoon papers, sometimes filling the long evenings at the end of their workdays. They would play cards (Race always won) or shoot marbles (Spot always won) or climb somewhere high to look out over the harbour. 

Sometimes, if it was too late for Race to make the trip back to Manhattan, Spot snuck him through the fire escape of the Brooklyn lodging so he wouldn’t have to pay the nightly fee. They would stay up late, smoking out the window, until Race would fall asleep sitting upright on Spot’s bed, or on the floor, or once, outside in the rain. 

On these nights, Spot talked to him. Not much at first, but slowly those nighttime silences filled with their whispered voices in the dark. 

Race slowly unravelled the mystery that was Spot Conlon. He learned which stories were true (the guy from Queens deserved it), which were completely false (of course he could feel fear, you fucking idiots), and which were… complicated (Race had some suspicions about the mafia thing, but he was was too scared to ask). 

This was how he learned the story of Spot’s rise to power right from his own mouth. 

“Warehouse was a jerk,” he told Race one night. “He would pick on kids. Single them out.” 

“Kids like us?” Race had asked, then he bit his tongue so hard he tasted blood. He knew he had very nearly ruined everything, this delicate peace built over stories and smoke and faint city stars. 

But all Spot had done was throw him a funny look and keep talking. 

“He stole from his newsies. He was supposed to be protecting them , but all he did was bully ‘em and rob ‘em blind.” He took a draw of the cigarette they were passing back and forth. “Sometimes I think it’s gonna destroy me, being king, but they need me. Brooklyn needs me. I can’t let another Warehouse take over and take advantage of my kids again.” 

When he flicked ash off the end of the cigarette, the two of them watched it fall halfway to the street below before winking out. “A newsie like that’s no better than the big bosses,” Spot said. “That day, before we first met… I’d never been so scared in all my life,” he went on, leaning back onto the bricks and smiling faintly as he did. His jaw worked side to side. “But I knew I had to take him down. I knew I could.”

Here he paused. Race though maybe he was done talking for the night. Spot would do that, sometimes: get halfway through a story and realize it was too hard to talk about, then cut himself off in the middle of it. Race never pried. 

Then Spot spoke again. 

“You know that knife everyone talks about? It was mine. Of fucking course it was mine. It was… dirty, I know that. But I wasn’t gonna lose to him. That knife had bought me freedom before, and I knew it would again.”

Race started, and Spot looked at him. Another time , his eyes seemed to say. 

“Didn’t stop him from gettin’ me with it first, though.” He touched his scar, ran his thumb down the clean line it made across his cheek. All of Race’s own scars were jagged and uneven. Sometimes he wondered what that smooth, thin scar would feel like under his fingers. 

Race took the cigarette from him, took one last puff, and ground it out on the iron grate below them. Now it seemed Spot was truly done talking. After that, they sat in silence for the rest of the night. 

Later, when Spot was still asleep, Race woke up in the dark like he always did. In those early hours of morning, he walked back to Manhattan, alone, in time for the morning paper. 

It was the ninety second time Racetrack Higgins met Spot Conlon, but neither of them were counting anymore. 

The strike was a disaster. 

Race would do anything for Jack, of course he would, but things were bleak in Manhattan. Kids in the Refuge, kids beaten and busted up. He knew it wasn’t long before the bulls and the scabs and the thugs decided a baton to the face wasn’t enough—decided the only way to put down a striker was to kill him. 

Race was going to go down fighting either way. He knew what it meant, knew what it was to almost die, and he was ready to do it for something that mattered. 

But he knew the other kids in Manhattan weren’t. Sure, you couldn’t be a newsie without getting a little roughed up every so often, but some of Jack’s kids were young. He had seen their little faces afterwards, fresh black eyes and scuffed knees, and ached for them. 

No one had been there to protect him when he was a kid, and now there was no one to protect them. 

That was when he knew he had to go to Spot. 

Race-and-Spot aside, Brooklyn and Manhattan still had a rocky relationship at best. Jack was too cocky, Spot said. Too much confidence and not enough foresight. Spot was stuck up, Jack thought. Too busy trying to be intimidating to make friends with the other boroughs. 

So of course when Jack asked Spot for help, Spot had said no. Why would he bring his boys into a fight when Kelly had no idea how it would end? You put your chips all in, you gotta be sure you’re gonna win. 

That was why Spot never won at poker. 

It was also why Race beat him nearly every time. 

But the truth was, Manhattan wasn’t winning without Brooklyn. Brooklyn had the numbers, the bruisers, the king. So Race crossed the bridge to ask a favour—because while Spot wasn’t a gambler, Race was. And this was a risk he needed to take. 

When Spot saw him, he let out a low whistle. Race wasn’t sure why he felt self conscious. He knew Spot had seen him looking worse. 

“Heya, Spotty.”

Spot took a moment to speak, turning the words over in his mouth. “I didn’t know if Kelly was serious or not.”

Race laughed, but it sounded thick, even to his ears. “Yeah, we were serious.”

“Race…”

“They’re slaughtering us, Spot. We just don’t have the numbers to make this work.” He paused. “Whichever way this goes, I’m sticking with it. If that means I end up in the Refuge, that’s where I’m headed. Even if this ends with a knife in my gut or my skull caved in, I’m stickin’ with it. Kelly’s serious. And even if he wasn’t, I am.”

Spot didn’t say anything. He pulled a cigarette out of his pocket. 

“Christ, Spot! You’re not gonna say anything? I’m asking your help, because Manhattan sure as fuck can’t win without Brooklyn backing us.”

Silence. Spot managed to get the cigarette lit. When he held it out to Race, his hands shook. 

Race didn’t take it. Spot’s hand retreated, and he took a long draw of tobacco. 

The smoke curled around them both. “Brooklyn’s got you.”

The next time Race saw Spot, he had never been so happy to see another person in his life. 

“Brooklyn’s here!” Someone shouted over the din. Race whipped around to see a crowd of kids—Jesus, there must have been hundreds of them, thousands, maybe—flooding into the square. 

He couldn’t see Spot, but he must have been there somewhere. The Brooklyn kids wouldn’t be here without him. 

When someone jostled him to the ground, suddenly Race couldn’t see anything beyond the legs around him—running, kicking, stomping. He couldn’t stand up, couldn’t move from the ground, until a hand appeared in front of his face. He grabbed it, and Spot Conlon hauled him upright. 

“Sorry I’m late,” he grinned. 

Afterwards, when Jack Kelly’s fist in the sky signalled a win to every kid in the square, the Manhattan lodging house was bursting with newsies—laughing, drinking, playing cards, running through the streets. Victory was still sweet on everyone’s tongues, never mind the hangovers they’d all be sporting when they woke up early for the paper the very next morning. 

Through the whole night, Race found that despite everyone else’s good moods, all he really wanted was quiet. So that was why he found himself slipping out the back door into the alleyway. He knew how he was going to celebrate: there was a new cigar in his pocket, and for once, finally, he was going to smoke it. 

“There you are.”

Race’s head snapped up. Spot was standing in the doorway, haloed in the warm light spilling from inside. He walked out, and the door shut behind him. 

“I would’ve expected you to be in there,” Spot said, head tipped up to the sky. “You know—life of the party, and all that.”

A glow started in his chest at the idea of Spot watching him beat his Manhattan boys at every card game in the book, of getting drunk with Spot next to him, of spending time together in that warm light he could see through the dusty windows. 

“Nah,” was all he said. “Not tonight, at least.”

“Well, I’m glad. I was hoping to catch you alone.”

“Aw hell, Conlon. You’re not going to confess you’re in love with me or something, are you?” Race said with a laugh. He had meant it to be teasing, flippant—a defense against the impossible truth building in his own heart. But as soon as he said it, he immediately wished he had kept his big mouth shut. 

Spot didn’t say anything. His face, when Race looked over at it, was stony. Shuttered. The silence stretched. 

“Spot, I—”

“See you later, Racer.”

The door slammed shut behind him. 

“Has anyone seen Spot?”

The room was loud. No one heard him from where he stood in the doorway, so he tried again. “Hey! Has anyone seen Spot?”

All he got was a couple of noncommittal shrugs or head shakes. Everyone was too busy celebrating to pay him much attention, it seemed. 

He fought his way through the crowd of newsies: lounging, hanging off bunks, splayed on the floor. Sometimes he would grab someone’s shoulder, talk directly in their ear over the din. But Spot, apparently, had disappeared. 

He spotted Jack and, surprisingly, Hotshot, in a corner. They were each building a card house. It seemed like they were competing, but Race couldn’t figure out exactly what the metrics of the game were. An audience of newsies surrounded them, Brooklyn and Manhattan both. 

“Either of you seen Spot?”

Hotshot didn’t look up. “Went back to Brooklyn,” she said. 

The floor tilted beneath him, and he took a steadying breath. “Okay. Thanks. I’ll see you guys later.”

Jack paused and caught Race’s eye just as he was turning away. “Be careful, Racer,” he said quietly. It seemed like he wanted to say more, but in the end he just held Race’s gaze. 

Race nodded mutely. And then he left, ready to make the long trek across the bridge by himself. 

When he finally found Spot, it was in the King of Brooklyn’s court. Spot paced back and forth across his patch of dock, but when he noticed Race’s footsteps approaching, he stilled. 

Race figured he couldn’t mess this up more than he already had, so he just started talking. “Spot, I’m sorry. I don’t know why I said that. Fucking hell. I don’t think you’re—queer, or something. Jesus.” 

Spot slowly, deliberately, pulled his switchblade out of his pocket. Race recognized it immediately. He had certainly imagined it often enough, had woken up in a cold sweat from dreams of its blade dark with the blood of kings past and present. Spot flipped it open, once, twice, three times. 

“What if I was?” He said, voice low and dangerous. Here was the Spot Conlon that Race hadn’t seen since those early days. Scratch that: here was the Spot Conlon that hadn’t been used against Race since then. 

“What?”

“What. If. I. Was.”

This was a trap, but Race couldn’t figure out how. The game was drawing to a close, the final cards being turned over, bluffs so close to being exposed. 

He took the gamble.

“I wouldn’t… Spot, I wouldn’t care.” The knife snicked shut. “Honest.”

It fell to the dock with a clatter. Spot stared down at his hands. They were shaking. 

Race bridged the gap between them, covering Spot’s hands with his own. 

“Spot.”

“I was ready to do it. I was ready to put that knife in your heart.”

“Spot.” 

“Race, I—”

Race wrapped him in a hug. He grabbed the back of his neck and pressed their foreheads together. “You’re okay. You’re okay, Spotty.”

They made their way back to the Brooklyn lodging house. It was empty, all the Brooklyn boys still on the other side of the bridge. When they reached Spot’s room, he cracked open the window to let in the cool night air. Spot sat on the sill and Race joined him, dangling his legs over the fire escape. 

Sometime between the strike and now, something had changed between them, cracked wide open. They were both quiet. Until—

“I was always gonna come for you,” Spot said. “Even before you showed up, I was planning to bring Brooklyn across the bridge. We’ve… gotta look out for each other.”

The echo of those words from so long ago did something to Race’s heart. Perhaps the same thing they’d been doing all along, ever since that day—slowly working through his blood and bones, curling up in the centre of his chest. 

“Yeah. We do.” 

And when Spot’s jaw worked, that miniscule grinding of his teeth that Race had become so attuned to, Race couldn’t believe how stupid he’d been. He considered himself an expert in reading Spot Conlon’s tells. He couldn’t believe he’d missed this. 

So when he reached out to catch that jaw in his hand, it wasn’t a gamble. It was all certainty and adrenaline in his veins, better than any poker game or streetrace or fistfight. 

And when Race kissed him, Spot Conlon wasn’t a knife, or a viper, or even a king. He was just a boy, and he had given Race his fragile heart to cup in the palm of his hand. They had been circling each other, watching the other move and breathe and speak—or stay silent—for months. After that, this kiss felt like the most natural thing in the world. 

Spot suddenly pulled back, leaving a hand curled in the too-long hair at the base of Race’s neck. He was breathing hard, and he had a hint of that old expression back, hackles raised, eyes narrowed. “I want to tell you something. And you have to promise to keep it a secret, otherwise I’ll soak you, Racer. I’m not kidding,” he said. 

Race reached out and brushed a thumb over the scar on Spot’s face. He traced the place where it bisected his eyebrow, the longest part across his cheek, the very bottom of it where the knife had licked the underside of his jaw. The scar was slightly indented, not quite as smooth as Race had imagined. It was the most beautiful thing he had ever touched. 

“Promise.”

“My real name is Sean,” he said quietly, never breaking Race’s gaze. 

Race grinned and stuck out a hand. “Anthony. Nice to meet you, Sean.” 

When Spot smiled crookedly and put his hand in Race’s, the bridge between Brooklyn and Manhattan suddenly didn’t seem so long. 

The first time Anthony saw Sean, really saw him, the sun was rising over a Brooklyn lodging house. They had fallen asleep tangled up in each other, neither willing to let go. Anthony watched the light trace its way down Sean’s face, over his scar and his jaw and the faint freckles on his nose. 

“Hey,” he whispered. “Sean.”

Sean stirred slowly, then bolted upright, surreptitiously wiping drool from his cheek. Anthony smiled wide. 

“Get up. We have a paper to sell.”

And when Sean walked Anthony back to the Brooklyn Bridge that morning, he crossed it halfway by Anthony’s side. That way, neither of them had to walk the whole thing alone.