Author's Note: What am I doing? I don't know. I'm just trying to get more het Skittery fics out there, I guess. Mostly I feel sorry for the guy; I still haven't gotten the whole snittery thing yet. I mean, where is there any back-up for that in the movie? I'll admit, I don't like slash, but I can see where some of it comes from. Blush makes sense, in a twisted sort of way. And I can see where sprace comes from. But snittery I still haven't figured out. Somebody, give me some scenes I can track down so this starts to make some sense. Especially since Snitch shares a bed with Itey. Okay ... and what kind of personality does Snitch have, anyway? Does he actually have any lines? How do you determine his personality as working with Skittery's, if there isn't any physical contact that pairs the two? Yeah, putting it away now. I'll probably get some flames just off of the A/N. Seriously, people. If you're going to flame my writing, flame the actually story.

Disclaimer: No, I do not own Newsies, Skittery, Sarah ... whatever else I may borrow. I suppose I'll technically "own" something I write in here, except that I don't have a copyright, and therefore can't legally "own" anything I write, anyway. So, technically, you could reproduce this entire story and I couldn't do a thing about it, because I don't have a copyright. Huh. Never thought about that. Oh, yeah, the title's from that song "Breathe" whose artist I can't think of right now, because I'm no good at remembering that sort of thing. Hell, it's probably in violation with the lyrics laws, but then, "cars on a cable" is pretty much a cliche, right?

Cars on a Cable

She could hear him closing the door tightly behind him, and she held her breath, waiting for her quick little bootsteps to follow. As soon as Esther was out the door, they would be safe. She heard her mother pause, just about where the mirror was on the wall, glancing over herself carefully. All would be fine - maybe a golden curl out of place, or a wrinkle in her collar. But that was usually all. A moment, and in that single thread of time the only Jacobs girl was able to procure a hundred different reasons why her mother would know, and be suspicious. Sarah held her breath a second longer, her heart drumming wildly in her throat. Then the footsteps resumed, the door creaked open, and was pulled tightly shut again.

Sarah let out a relieved sigh, closing her eyes for an hour or two of sleep, maybe. If he didn't wake up. He usually woke up, but when he didn't, she would sleep until it was time for her to awaken and prepare for work. When he didn't wake up, and she fell asleep, he wasn't there when consiousness returned to her. She glanced at him, watching his sleeping face resting on her pillow, mouth hanging agape, but not snoring; drool soaking into the fabric. His hair was a tousled, ridiculous mess that could only be solved with a strong comb and heavy grease, but she liked it better this way. A serene little smile lit her face. It didn't look like he'd be waking up this morning.

She ran her fingers gently through his hair, enjoying the soft, thick knots that returned stubbornly to their abstract directions when she was finished. Her eyes watered with fatigue, and in a moment or two, she would have to lay back down and find sleep in order to function the rest of the day. But not now. Now she would watch him, in his typical, amusing, unappologetic boyishness, because she loved him that way.

Sarah had always been glad she had been born with brothers. She remembered when she first saw David - her earliest memory - and helping her mother care for Les. She remembered a time, not so very long ago, when she had kissed Jack Kelly. They were not right for each other, and she was glad, because otherwise she would have never found Skittery. Or, perhaps, he would have never found her. Whichever way it had worked. She really didn't remember now.

She liked the differences between Jack and Skittery. Skitts had been the first male she had ever known who did not even attempt to be a gentleman, and she fell in love with that. Her father and brother were gentlemen, and Jack honestly tried, but Skittery was a completely different story altogether.

He didn't clean up any more than he had to. He didn't have any intentions of doing anything, and he didn't attempt to look like he did. He swore openly in front of her, burped, scratched himself, chewed, smoked. Every disgusting habit he kept when she was not there, he harbored when she was. Her parents despised him, and, after the one time he attended dinner at their home, forbade him from ever returning again. This, of course, advocated that he come tapping at her window later that same night, and once a week (at least) thereafter. As far as Meyer and Esther were concerned, there was no Skittery and Sarah. There never had been. Which made it all the more enjoyable for him to be there while they lay fast asleep.

He had tried to get her to sleep with him from the first date they had gone on. Considering that decline asrelating only to that night specifically, he tried at every other instance possible. And, while Sarah was well aware that this had ought to constitute an immediate end to the relationship, she found it instead refreshing, and couldn't help but enjoy his little ploys and sweet-talkings. No other boy (not that there had been too many others) would have dared to say or try the things he had said and tried - not with her father being the sort of gentleman he was, and not with her pristine little reputation and obvious destination for a white wedding.

She liked that Skittery didn't give a damn what kind of family she had or what sort of girl she was. When he was disgusting, and vilely male, he was being his absolute self, and she appreciated his disregard for pretenses. He was who he was, and he didn't care if society destined him for a hanging in a year or two. Around him, Sarah stopped relying on pretenses to define her, as well. Nothing could shock him. He didn't find her impudent and crazy; he listened and responded honestly, and usually in kind. She fell in love with him, and in an odd sort of way, she fell in love with herself around him. She knew he was special, because there was no possible way that her father made her mother feel the way he made her feel. This was true love. No society had conformed him, and she had loosened out of her mold simply being near him.

Sarah sighed, her body reminding her of its fatigue and stiffness; commanding her, with a little impatient quip, that if she was going to enjoy him in that fashion, then she was going to have to compensate for it with sleep. Reluctantly, she laid down again, resting her head on her chest, knowing he would return it gently to her pillow before he left. The sour, heavy odor of sweat and unwashed skin clouded her nostrils for a few breaths before she became used to it again. She curled nearer to him, delighting in the heat of his body against hers. He was tired this morning. The previous day must have been hard, and it made her ache femininely to wash away the pain he must have endured - in his feet, in his shoulders, in his arms. Maybe some jackass had called him worthless mick, and spit at his feet when he tried to sell a paper. Or maybe the Delanceys had tried to rough him up before lunch. He always had bruises. On his ribs, on his back, on his face. He had scars, too, but they looked old - discolored and ugly from healing wrong. She loved those, too.

She loved his hands, with their big joints knotted from endless popping and cracking, and their dirty, chewed up nails. She loved the big veins that swelled when he was angry, or passionate, and the little colonies of warts that dotted his right hand, but stayed clear of his left. He was left-handed. He said, if he'd been to school, he wouldn't be, because they fix that. But he hadn't been to school, so he was left-handed. There was always dirt, or ink dried in the lines of his palms, and in the winter the backs of his hands would crack and bleed from lack of moisture.

She loved his bruised, aching feet and his neck - always sore from the odd position in which he slept. She loved his complaints and grievances against his muscles and joints because she loved doing everything in her power to make them better. Nothing could possibly hurt as bad as he made it out to, but she liked healing, and he liked being taken care of. It wasn't as if he had ever been taken care of before in his life. Sarah had been too pampered for a girl of her circumstance: a sober, loving, intelligent set of parents; a fair, humanitarian boss; honest, upstanding brothers. She had nothing to complain about, and so her ear was eternally attentive to Skittery's problems and woes and hardships. Nothing in his life had gone right, except for her, he said. And he loved her for being that one right thing. On the contrary, nothing in Sarah's life had gone wrong, until she met him. Up until she had become involved with Skittery, she had been rolled out flat and pressed easily to become the exact image of the cookie-cutter that was producing every other girl of her age. She was doing everything benignly right, until now. Now she was going dangerously against the grain, thanks to him, and she loved him for it.

She rubbed her forefinger up and down his breastbone thoughtfully, knowing this could never last. She knew, just as well as he did, that there was no future ahead of them to share. She knew that one of these nights, he wasn't going to come. Maybe he would be dead, his innards hanging open into the gutter, or maybe he'd be in the midst of a "sure-thing" burglary. Maybe he would be imprisoned, tapping his foot impatiently in the vain hope that he would yet escape that night and see her. Or maybe he'd meet someone new and exciting and beautiful. Sarah shrugged away that thought, swearing herself to an oath that would keep her waiting, no matter what. Even though she knew, one of these nights, he might come and she'd be gone. Mugged coming home from work, or accepting a job with slightly higher wages somewhere else. He might come to find that she had been married off to someone else - a good man, who would take care of her and provide for the children he gave her. One night, it would all end.

Sarah knew Skittery couldn't take care of her, if she should get pregnant. She knew he could barely take care of himself; he'd been doing it too long, and he was tired of it. Children who grow up too fast become no more than grown-up children. Sarah knew he may even refuse to take care of her, knowing he wasn't up to the task, and refusing to break her heart in the attempt. She knew she could never love him, if they did get married, because someday she'd be tired of being the caretaker, and that day would come at the unfortunate time when he would have given her young children whose mouths he could not feed and backs he could not clothe. And then she'd have to be both mother, and father, and wife, and she'd hate him. If they were ever married, she would eventually fall out of love with him, and into hate.

That's why it would end. Someday. Some night. Some night she'd lie awake with tears staining her pillows at the realization that he was not coming back. And ... slowly, her granite obstanance against society would melt, and she would conform to the mold of cheerful mother and wife, and marry a good man she didn't love, and bear children that she did, and be sweet and benignly happy until the end of her days as an old, dried up woman. And that's the way it would have to be, because that's the only way she could go on loving him.

Sarah wondered, vaguely, if her mother had spent early mornings like her own. If she had loved a boy intensely with the knowledge that they could never stay together and that she would one day bear the children of a "good man." Sarah's father was a good man. Her brothers were good men. But she was ... She didn't know. She was something that needed more, but couldn't continue once she had it. Skittery was what she needed, but she couldn't have him forever. He wasn't a forever kind of boy. He was not a good man, and he didn't pretend to be. And she loved him, and she'd always love him, even though he would move on. He had either a death sentence or a thrill ride ahead of him; she was trapped and doomed to die in prison. His life would go on, for a short time, but it would be a hell of a time while he remained, while she rotted slowly, losing the spirit he'd awakened within her.

Why was life so unfair? Why was the one person who had ever truly known her the one person she would have to disregard? If she wanted to survive, she'd have to let him go, even though the rest of her mundane existence would hardly be survival at all. She was a dead woman with him and dying without him. None of this really made any sense.

She could feel her mind fading in and out of a dream. Sarah needed sleep desperately, and she knew she would fall asleep, despite her dramatic self-proclamation that she loved him too much to sleep. She loved him too much to miss a single moment with him; bullshit. The best moments were asleep in his arms. Not thinking about their future - futures - or lack thereof. The greatest time between them was when they were not Sarah Jacobs and LaFyette Hardy. That time, after making love as quietly as they could afford, after their normal breathing rates had returned to them and their heartbeats had slowed, when they were just a boy and a girl who loved each other. When they didn't need names, or classes, or personalities, or futures, or dreams. When their minds were deep in slumber, and who they were simply consisted of their bodies entangled. That was their finest hour, because then nothing in the harsh reality of their worlds mattered.

Sarah reluctantly closed her eyes. He wouldn't be there in the morning. But somehow she'd make herself certain that he'd be there every night.