Newsies Twitter Conversations That I Might Build On Later-

love your writing! could you do some more for ralbert?

Aaaa thank you!!! I’m so sorry that this took so long, school has been beating me up lately, lol. Enjoy this little bit of rambling!

There’s a crack in the mirror in Albert and Race’s home.

Neither are quite sure how it got there- perhaps a box was dropped onto it during moving and hit the glass a bit too hard, perhaps one of them had bumped into it and just didn’t remember- but it’s been there for as long as the two of them can tell you. It was there when they signed the lease on the house, it was there when they came home one day with a shining bundle of joy in their arms, after years of waiting, and it’ll be there when the time comes to put the mirror away.

When you stand in front of it, your view of your reflection is distorted a bit where the glass has chipped. Right above your heart lies a star-shaped crack, your skin seeming fragile and broken underneath it. Both Albert and Race have looked into this mirror hundreds of times, a quick glance on the way out to run an errand or for several minutes as they laughed at the faces their kids made in it.

Their youngest barely comes up to the crack, a little puncture mark poked into his face when he passes by. He laughs when he sees it, brushing his hand just close enough to feel the groove where the mirror’s broken, smiling at his reflection.

Race has to blink tears from his eyes when he sees this, his beautiful child so happy with what he saw in that glass. Albert isn’t so lucky- he’s always been sentimental anyways. It had taken a long time for the two of them to find that, for their own reflections to not punch a hole through their heart.

Their children won’t ever have to suffer through those long years of waiting before freedom, trapped in the hopeless purgatory of no support before they finally get the courage to stand up. That mirror will never haunt them. Their names will not be a source of pain. They’ll never be afraid to be who they were- both Race and Albert had promised that long before they’d first adopted.

For now, that mirror will distort their children’s faces, hear their giggles as they stick out their tongues at the warped image. As they grow, they’ll fall into the same routine, ignoring that old crack in the glass as they fix their jacket or comb through their hair, the slight bend in light unnoticeable now. Their hearts will break, just like the glass, and be mended together again with some sort of miracle. When they leave their childhood home, that mirror will watch, still the same as ever yet having bore witness to the molding of two human beings, just as it had done before. They’ll come home for holidays and birthdays, funerals and reunions, their fingerprints left on the mirror and wiped off again, like when they were little.

Sooner rather than later, it’ll become no longer useful, and it will sit in a basement or old antique shop, slowly staining and losing its light. It will heave its final, weak breath, the memories made lost to time and decay, to all except those who lived it- those who still dream of the time spent in that house, with that mirror.

That glass may one day be broken, but those men and their family? They never will be.

guys i survived tech week AND show week. pls cheer

in my modern au jack has to take davey's concert black pants and they pool at his feet btw. he has to wear platform shoes btw.

Things in my show that impressed the children

1. Swing pitch to standing in shoulders. This makes sense it looks amazing

2. Carrying a mat in on our heads. Why what is impressive about this

3. The trapeze being lowered in from the roof

4. The German man’s jumpy flipyness

5. Little child’s jumpy flipyness, and his unicycle

6. Finn I don’t get this one

7. Weird song about Australia

8. My headsprings

9. Moving props

10. Big metal wheel things

11. Sweeping up juggling balls

12. Spiderman in a top hat and Elton John glasses in a window talking about going vegan

13. Measuring a stage with a hula hoop

and what if I make all the newsies in my au classically trained musicians... what then.

anyway Albert - trumpet

race - clarinet

Davey - alto sax

jack - piano/pitched percussion

crutchie - actually he's the only one who doesn't play anything .. he came along to all the band rehearsals and sat w them

maybe im just being autistic and applying my blorbos to everything but i just saw asteroid city and man. davey as a playwright. jack as a set designer. them meeting on the set of whats supposed to be daveys magnum opus, except davey doesn't entirely understand what the magnum opus is yet. it's there, it's coming, but it's not done. jack and davey clashing on ideas, getting into fights and not being able to explain themselves properly, hashing those fights out and kissing many, many times. davey creating plays within plays within plays because theres so much he wants to say in so many different ways if he could just figure out how he's supposed to say them, and jack's trying his hardest to keep up despite how confused he is because theres something there with davey, something life-changing, and jack desperately wants to see it through.

davey getting into a car accident a few months into production. the scenes and dialogue and set pieces and tiny tiny details that davey was so passionate about despite not entirely understanding them yet, all being cut for run time. until what was meant to be his greatest creation ends up... unfinished. incomplete.

(jack tries to get it. he doesn't get it. it's davey's life's work and he's not getting it)

jack mourning a relationship that barely even happened. jack trying to paint. jack's paintings never coming out right, not what they used to be, not what they could've been. jack living with the loss of something that hadn't even really been there yet. jack knowing that something could've happened here that changed him entirely, if it hadn't been cut off halfway through.

albert doesn't really KNOW how to express affection. he steals race's cigar every once in a while, but he doesn't think race really appreciates that. what he knows (or thinks) race likes is when albert hugs him, when albert compresses race as tightly as possible for as long as possible. usually albert isn't a hugger, but something about the way race melts in his arms is addicting. the faint smell of smoke on his vest, the soot on his cheeks wiping onto albert's neck, where albert wouldn't want to clean, to keep that faint reminder of race on him for a little longer.

some mornings albert 'accidentally' puts on race's vest instead of his own, to smell his scent of smoke and sweat and warmth in winter. sometimes he climbs into race's bed with him just to Be with him. to feel race's warmth and smell his smoke.

being with race is the only thing he really wants, he thinks.

LAST POLL FOR AU PLS DO IT :3

i am inching so slowly like the smallest inchworm into your askbox after seeing your riff as crutchie (BANGER art btw, you're so good???) and v v v humbly groveling at your feet for me as jack?/nf

OH SHIT I DIDNT SEE THIS!!!!!!!!!!!! I am so slowly filtering through notifications and asks and this is from AGES ago I must have missed it!!!!!!! I WILL DO IT DM ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I AM SO SORRY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Modern Javid au where Jack meets this guy (David) who takes some time to warm up to people but once he does he's the Coolest and Jack is crushing so hard on him but like they've become best friends he can't ruin that now by liking a straight guy and telling him and one day he just says something like "woah you really know stuff about music (or something) too bad you're straight what a waste of potential lmao" and Davey is just like "I'm sorry it's too bad I'm what?"