after the strike, the older manhattan newsies are *ruined*. like, comatose, barely awake, exhausted to the CORE. and the younger newsies are SO full of energy like 'YAYY WE DID IT' and the older newsies can only respond with 'ough' before they collapse onto a table at jacobi's. some of the older newsies have taken to sleeping in the same beds at the lodge because it helps them sleep easier. after jack moves to be with davey working in pulitzer's office, race and albert take over the manhattan newsies, trying to keep the morale up while barely keeping it together themselves. when albert suddenly breaks down in tears trying to get the younger newsies to just please listen to him, the only thing race really knows to do is hug him as tight as he can and try to kiss his cheek as inconspicuously as possible.
of course, it doesn't go unnoticed. it creates tradition and openness within the younger newsies; they feel comfortable crying in front of each other for the first time, and often kiss each other on the cheek or forehead to cheer each other up. when jack comes to visit and he finds such a supportive environment, led by race and albert holding hands and wearing steel promise rings, he's spellbound.
he can't believe that race and albert brought this about.
he's so proud of them because now they can finally be themselves.
Albert, who's absolutely terrified of losing his friends. He acts around the Newsies like he really doesn't care, but he truly does.
After the fight, nobody could find him for hours. They last saw him running away after Splasher was knocked out, dashing from the scene.
Finch ended up finding him hidden behind Jacobi’s, curled in on himself, and trying to shield himself from the world. He had to practically drag him back to the Lodge House cause of how scared he was to see the aftermath of the fight and what ended up happening to everybody.
Thinking about how novelsies spot is a redhead and how he's usually not described that way in fics 'cause even if more ppl read the novel we've already got albert meeting our redhead quota
Realising that if we did have both spot and albert as redheads.. considering the popularity of sprace/ralbert/spralbert... we could say racetrack has a type