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A Day at the Races	By : Gigi2904 Category: M through R > Newsies Views: 1135 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Newsies (Disney, 1992), nor do I earn any money from this fan fiction. More's the pity!

Chapter List
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David levelled a glare at him. “Thanks, Racetrack, I think I’ve heard enough.”
“Don’t be a goddamned fool, David, I-“
“Gangway! Make way, coming through!” Before Race had a chance to finish his sentence, something slammed into the small of his back, sending him staggering forward into David. A pile of petticoats crashed to the floor at their feet with a squeak. From within the reams of lacey fabric, a pair of bright blue eyes stared up at him. Race stared stupidly back for a moment, quite literally caught off balance – but quickly he reached down to offer the human cannonball a hand up.
Laughing, the girl emerged from the heap of frilled stage garments, and stood shaking out her skirts and brushing the dust from her blouse. A few pins must have fallen out of her hair when she fell, as a few chestnut tendrils hung down – quickly she tucked them behind her ears as she straightened up. “Sorry about that – I always miss the last step on those stairs.” Her eyes sparkled, and she spoke with a gentle Irish lilt. “Thank the Lord you were standing there, I’d have fallen right through the curtain onto the stage otherwise!”
“S’alright.” Racetrack could feel his ears growing warm – he couldn’t believe it. Her, of all people! He shoved his hands back into his pockets and tried to look as nonchalant as possible. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Davey watching with interest. It’s just a girl, he told himself. For God’s sake, just breathe normally, can’t you?
The girl smiled openly at them both – although Race could have sworn she looked at him the longest – and bent to pick up the pile of costumes. Quickly he knelt to help her – there was clearly far too much for her to carry. She looked at him properly then and gave him another quick grin. “Thanks,” she smiled, “would it be too cheeky of me to ask if you’d help me bring them over to the girls? It won’t take long, I promise, only they’ll kill me if I keep them waiting, and I don’t want to fall into anyone else! ”
I don’t want you falling into anyone else either, thought Race, but he just nodded in reply and followed her as she weaved through stage ropes and around the painted scenery. He could feel Davey’s eyes following him as she led him deeper into the jungle of machinery, and he knew what a ridiculous figure he cut, staggering after the girl with his arms spilling over with varicoloured lace. Ignoring the creeping feeling that his carefully constructed reputation was going to fall down around his ears as soon as Davey came across another newsie, he forged on ahead after the girl, ducking past stage hands (who nodded hello) and half-dressed performers (who didn't) until they reached a door right at the back of the stage.
“Thanks,” the girl said breathlessly as she turned to take the costumes from him, “It’s alright, I’ll take them from here.”
“Sure? I can-“
She chuckled. “Yes I’m sure. We might only be poor little chorus girls, but that doesn’t mean we charge admission to watch us get changed.”
“That’s not- no!” Race could have sworn that even his hair was blushing.
She laughed again, the blue eyes flashing with mirth. “Don’t fret yourself, I was only teasing.” She cocked her head at him. “I’ve seen you somewhere before, haven’t I? You work here?”
Race could have crowed with delight. Instead, he restrained himself to a careless shrug. “I help out.”
“I know I’ve seen you- Oh! Don’t you usually set up for our numbers?” As she spoke, she kicked the door with her heel – a sharp voice asked what she wanted. “Delivery for you!” she called. The door opened a crack.
“Oh, Thank God, Jeannie, we thought we were going on stage in our bloomers!”
If only, thought Racetrack, as the girl – Jeannie – flicked a sheepish look at him. “Take these off me, Gilda, will you?” The door opened slightly, and he stepped off to the side, averting his gaze as a pair of bare arms reached out and grabbed the petticoats from her. Relieved of her burden, she turned back to him – he had half expected her to disappear inside the dressing room right away, and he couldn’t help but smile at her when she didn’t.
“You do, don’t you?”
“Do what?”
“Change the set for our numbers.”
Race shrugged again. “Sometimes.”
She nodded, and again he was struck by the sparkle in those big blue eyes. She always appeared to be quietly laughing at some private joke of her own – he wanted so much to be in on the joke that it almost hurt. “Well I suppose I’ll see you in a moment then!”
“Yup.” He turned to head back to the front of the stage, where Davey and the set for the first chorus number were waiting for him.
“Hey, Racetrack?” He stopped dead in his tracks. Never in a million years had he thought she might know his name. He hadn’t known hers until a few moments ago. He turned.
“Yeah?”
“Do you ever speak more than three words at a time?”
That made him laugh, despite his nervousness. When he was with the newsies, he never shut up. But he made a show of considering the question. “Sometimes I do.”
She chuckled, and ducked inside the dressing room. He stared at the door for a few seconds after it had shut, trying to avoid imagining her changing out of her skirt and blouse and into the more revealing stage costume. Shaking his head to clear it, he turned back where he had come.
He couldn’t believe it had only been a month since he first saw her on the stage. It felt like years since that hot summer afternoon when he had ducked into the Vaudeville to see Medda in between the matinee and the evening shows. Medda had been busy checking over the lighting with a few of the stage hands, and had waved to him to wait, so he had sat himself on an upright piano in the wings to watch the world go by.
A few chorus girls had entered the stage to rehearse the latest number – Medda liked to keep the show fresh – and he had watched them with idle interest as they rucked their long skirts up around their knees and ran through the kicks and flicks of the new routine. He had always like watching the chorus - mostly he would admit, because their costumes fit so well, and the skirts were rarely much lower than their knees. He considered himself above the men who would crowd into the front row whenever there was a routine involving high kicks, in the hope of glimpsing a flash of stocking-clad thigh or garter, but would nonetheless freely confess to enjoying those numbers immensely. For artistic reasons, of course.
He was so absorbed in his day dreams about the legs of chorus girls that he hadn’t seen the latecomer join in at the back of the group. It was only when they were rehearsing a pirouette and one of the girls in front turned span rather too enthusiastically, catching her a backhand across the face, that he had even noticed her. She’d hit the floor like a ton of bricks, naturally drawing his attention as she lay flat on her back on the stage.
The other girls crowded round her, fussing like chickens, but she brushed them aside and stood up – a little gingerly of course. The thing that had really drawn his eye was the fact that she wasn’t crying. In his experience with the fairer sex, they did that a lot. The girls at the shirtwaist factory, who worked with Sarah – Davey’s sister and Kelly’s girl – seemed to do nothing else. They cried if you wanted to kiss them, they cried if you didn’t. They cried if they liked you and they cried if they didn’t. They cried if you walked them home, they cried if you didn't. Sarah didn’t cry – but then she also helped out with strikes and wrote articles for newspapers. Sarah was different.
This girl was different too – she had clearly taken quite a clout, and had the wind knocked out of her when she hit the floor, and yet she seemed to shrug off the attentions of the other girls with good humour. She had headed towards Race to sit out the rehearsal for a while – she hadn’t noticed him, but for the first time he had had a clear look at her face.
And that had been that. Her figure was slight, with a narrow waist and the delicious suggestion of curves under her white blouse. But it was her face that had captivated him most of all – the flashing blue eyes, the fine elfin features, the mouth that seemed to be permanently quirked in a barely repressed smile. Later, he noticed the sprinkling of freckles across her nose, and the streaks of red and gold in her brown hair where the sun had caught it - he had barely been able to keep his eyes off her.
He had found himself coming to the theatre more and more, until Medda had suggested he make himself useful by helping with the scene changes. He wasn’t sure if it had been deliberate – he suspected so – but they had set him to work setting the stage for the chorus numbers, of which there were usually three. As payment he got his dinner with the rest of the stagehands, and watched the blue-eyed elf sing and dance her heart out on the stage every night – in his eyes, he was a rich man.
And now he had spoken to her. Or she had spoken to him, which was better. And she had known his name! He grinned as he bent to check the wheels on the painted flat that he needed to take on for the first chorus number. He couldn’t quite believe she had known his name – he wondered how she had found out. Had she asked about him?
A tap on the shoulder brought him out of his reverie. He turned to see Davey, looking considerably more friendly than when he had left him just a few minutes before. He was also looking considerably more amused.
“How was the Pocket Rocket?”
Race laughed – the name suited her. “Clumsy.”
“You can say that again.”
“Clumsy”
Davey raised an eyebrow at him. Racetrack ignored him and went round the other side of the flat to check on the second set of wheels. He wasn’t going to rise to the bait – not like Davey had earlier.
“Hey, Race?”
“Ya?”
“Yes.”
Race turned, having checked the wheels. He rolled the scenery to the marked sightline in a gap in the curtains, so it was just out of the view of the audience.
He got the nod from the stage manager, who was standing just opposite him on the other side of the stage, and prepared to push the heavy flat as soon as the lights dimmed.
The lights began to dim, and Race quickly manouevered the flat into its position near the front of the stage. He double-checked the marks, scanned the stage to make sure the other hands had finished with their flats in the right places so that the girls wouldn’t end up smacking into them. He gave the thumbs up to the stage manager as he returned to his spot in the wings.
“Yes what, Davey?”
“Yes, Race. I can keep my mouth shut.”
Race attempted his very best ‘don’t shit with me’ glare. Davey just smirked at him, as the stage lights came up, and the girls came on.
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A Day at the Races