Oh my gosh! She's alive! She's not dead!

Yes, I know. Long time.

So. This story, which I am heinously excited about, is actually a…drastic…rewrite of a story formerly known as "Queen of Queens" that I wrote in…what was it? 2003, with my cousin, Mush's Skittles.

We decided that it was high time that we revamped it and reposted it…and since she is now a full-time college sophomore, (as opposed to a high school junior, which I am now—as opposed to an 8th grader—oh god…time flies, eh?) and has zero time, I'm doing most of this—with editing and major idea help from her.

So let it begin. I hope you all enjoy!

Reviews are much appreciated!

L'n'MP (Been a long time for that, too),

Glimm

And oh yes,

Disclaimer: I own nothing that you recognize from Disney's production (fancy, eh?) of Newsies. And…just an FYI…I am obsessed with Panic! at the Disco and am currently in countdown-mode to the concert I will ecstatically be attending in July, so…in each chapter, there will be Panic! lyrics. See if you can find them! (I don't own those either)

On with the show!

A Wonderful Caricature of Intimacy

Prologue

.

Beginning a story always seems to be the most trying part. The middle is easy—and it's where I find myself tempted to start.

With the strike. With them. And us.

But my mother, who used to tell me the most magical, spell-binding stories, always made it clear that in order to tell a proper story, one must start at the beginning: right at the space in time where your life begins to shape you for your actions later.

Right where it matters.

This has proven to be more difficult than I'd previously thought, and has taken me forever, which scares me, because, well, I'm the narrator, and this is just the prologue. And I've got a long way to go.

It's also been trying to identify the beginning because it seems as though things had always been the way they were.

They say that, "In 1899, the streets of New York City echoed with the voices of newsies." And that's all true.

But what they forgot to mention was the fact that in 1899, the streets of Queens echoed with the voices of newsgirls. And I'm not referring to the one-in-twenty newsgirl that occasionally took up work in the other boroughs. I'm talking about a gang of twenty-five girls who made up the whole of the Queens newsy population.

I don't rightly know how things came to be this way. The most logical explanation around seems to be the one that claims that, at one time, Queens was populated by both girls and boys, but that the girls, seeing that Queens was the one borough where they'd receive the warmest welcome, swarmed the area, and the boys, feeling suffocated, fled to the surrounding boroughs—leaving the girls to govern themselves.

However the living situation came about, that's how it was: girls living together in the small lodging house and selling the papes just as well as any boy.

But as the years went by, the girls leading the gang began to realize that if they did nothing to hide the fact that a gaggle of girls was living in Queens—that no big, strong men were around to protect them from turf wars—that we may lose everything.

So, as the story goes, in about 1870, the then-current Queens leader, a girl known as Cameo, took a secretive trip to Brooklyn.

Cameo was a mesmerizingly beautiful young girl—all shadows and mystery—with long, curly dark hair and piercing green eyes and creamy skin. She had just been appointed leader of the Queens newsgirls, and she meant to take her responsibility seriously.

She felt, as did all the girls, that for years they had been living in constant fear of being found out. They did the best they could to spread rumors that they were big, terrifying men that would just as soon kill you and shake your hand, but talk like that only works for so long before even the slowest of boys begin to realize that it's all coming from the same direction. Harlem could never tell Manhattan one of their boys was hurt by a Queens newsy. Brooklyn could never tell horror stories to the Bronx.

The girls knew that their vicious rumors would only work a little longer—and they could feel them crumbling already. The boys they kept such a close watch on were beginning to get curious.

So Cameo, on only her second day as leader, trekked alone to Brooklyn to see their leader and strike some kind of deal with him.

As the story goes, when she arrived at the docks where the boys lounged in between the morning and evening editions, she could feel her heart pounding.

If she didn't do this exactly right, she and her girls would lose everything.

She straightened her skirt and her spine, lifted her chin and walked down the docks, heels pounding as though they personally were on a mission. She stalked past young, muscular boys who gawked at her and made her way to the end of the dock, where the boy she knew to be leader sat on a crate as though it were a throne.

"Hello," she said loudly, and he looked up at her in surprise. The only girls he saw were the ones he and the boys brought into their lodging house—and none of those girls had the gall to simply walk down his dock in the middle of the day.

And this girl, this gorgeous, striking young woman, was so unlike all the girls he filled his nights with. She had an incredible dignity about her, something he noted with a certain amount of respect, as he could see the tears in her blouse and the dirt on her hands.

"Hello," he replied with a smirking smile that each and every leader of Brooklyn seemed to have perfected in the most infuriatingly beautiful way.

He was all slouchy sexiness, with his dark curls that peeked out from under a blue newsy hat and flopped onto his tanned forehead and into his chocolate brown eyes. He smiled at her in a way that made her feel, in the most uncomfortable way, as though he'd seen her naked. Or as though he'd surely like to.

But Cameo, ever brave and composed, was all business. She stepped closer to where he sat, and he sat up just a touch straighter.

"Could I speak with you? In private?" she asked softly, making sure the others, who were now beginning to surround the two of them, couldn't hear.

"Speak, hmm? That's what ya want with me?" he retorted loudly, grinning at his boys, who chuckled knowingly amongst themselves. "I guess we could maybe begin with that if ya want."

Cameo met his innuendo-filled gaze with a level stare of her own. "Yes, that's what I want," she replied firmly.

So the two leaders went inside the Brooklyn lodging house and into the Common Room, where the boys held their "shindigs," got drunk, won money from each other, and took their pick of loose women.

From there, the story loses its detail, as I don't think Cameo ever really disclosed the more intimate aspects of their conversation.

What we do know is that she once she had convinced him that Queens was indeed overrun by girls—no small feat, I'm sure—she asked him to help her keep the secret.

I can only imagine that the Brooklyn leader—Top, he was called—asked Cameo what was in it for him.

I say this because it seems to me that all the Brooklyn leaders have been the same—smart, cunning, powerful, passionate, loyal, and, underneath it all, very, very selfish.

But that's later. I'm trying, Mama. I'm really trying.

So Cam and Top struck up their deal, and from then on, each Queens leader has been just like Cameo—intelligent, ambitious, caring, daring, and most importantly, beautiful.

Don't you see? Brooklyn, and by that I mean its leader, had the power to protect Queens—to spread its own rumors and use its sway over the other boroughs to keep them out of Queens.

And what was in it for him? Why, the leader of Queens, of course. She was his—his to have at any time, to have his way with.

Of course, it was never referred to as such. We girls have always referred to what our leader had to do by saying that she was "his pleasurable company."

And naturally, it was all done in secret. The other boys of Brooklyn never knew that the stunning young lady—and they all thought of her as such, for there was just something about the way she looked at them that made them feel as though she were above them—who frequented their leader's bed was anything more than a good lay. They never had the slightest inclination that she was the leader of those "big giant brutes" in Queens.

So when I became the leader of the Queens newsgirls in 1898, I was sixteen, and Spot Conlon, the formidable new leader of Brooklyn, was the same age, I was sent to him on my first night as leader.

Our retiring leader, a golden Scottish belle appropriately called Scots, had gone off that morning to be married. Her fiancé, a big gorgeous blonde man, never knew of her "circumstances," as she called them, with Brooklyn. And she was determined that he never would.

"Lydia," she said to me in that gorgeous drawling accent of hers, for once calling me by my Christian name, "We do what we have to do to survive. It's not somethin' we gotta enjoy or think about once it's over. Ya just do what ya have to do, and once it's done, once ya get outta here and move on, ya tell the next girl the same thing. Ya tell her that, in acceptin' leadership, she's savin' the rest of the girls."

And I only half-understood what she said, but I nodded anyway, and she hugged me, and walked out the front door of our lodging house forever.

Later on that day, when I went up to my room to get ready, I found, on my bed, a lovely, simple dusty purple skirt with a deep, vibrant purple blouse next to it. The blouse had gorgeous intricate, lace eyelet trim on the collar, down the front, and on the sleeve cuffs.

A note on top of the skirt read, in what I recognized as Scots scrawled handwriting,

Gleam—

I hear that this Spot Conlon loves ladies in purple. Be a lady, Lydia.

All my best,

Scots

So I put on Scots' old clothes, which fit marvelously, and walked the long ten-mile walk to Brooklyn.

It took two and a half hours to get there, and I suddenly understood why Scots usually left around five PM and didn't return back until shockingly late, around 1 AM.

As I hadn't taken into account the distance, I left at seven PM, after the evening edition and dinner, and didn't arrive until 9:45, as I'd gotten famished on the way and used a precious penny to buy an apple from a vender who talked my ear off for fifteen minutes.

When I got to the Brooklyn lodging house, thanks to the directions of a woman street vender who had been exhaustedly packing up her wares for the day, and had, as she gave me directions, told me to be careful in "that un-godly place," I felt like I was going to throw up from nervousness and dread.

I'd never seen this Spot Conlon in my life, and I had no idea what was going to happen when I got there.

He had been told, by way of the birdies that flocked between Scots and himself, of my impending arrival, and he was waiting for me outside in the warm early-autumn air.

I hate to say it, but he really did take my breath away. He was smolderingly exquisite, and he astounded me.

"Gleam?" he asked when I got the bottom of the stairs. His voice was a honey-smooth tenor, and it flowed with confidence and oozed of sex.

I nodded, swallowing my fear and trying to look defiant. "Spot?" I shot back, hoping my voice carried the same ease his did.

It probably didn't.

He nodded and beckoned to me, turning to go inside. I had to run up the stairs to catch him before the heavy door closed behind him. I was slightly shocked. Men usually, despite my dirty clothes and hands, treated me with some ounce of respect.

He silently led me past the Common Room, where floozies and drunken boys laughed and touched, and up the stairs. I was painfully aware that I was about to join the ranks of those girls. He turned into the first door at the top of the stairs, a door almost hidden at the left of the landing.

We walked into a small, private room, a lot like mine, that I knew to be the leader bedroom. Almost every borough's lodging house, save for Manhattan's, had one.

He sat on the bed and looked up at me. "They said all the Queens leaders was beautiful, but I had no idea. I kinda thought that maybe that Scots was just a lucky accident."

I refused to let his compliment make me glow. "No," I said coldly.

He immediately picked up on my animosity. "Aw, come on," he said, smirking, as I said before, in an infuriatingly beautiful way, "We don't gotta hate each other, do we?"

I scoffed at him, and tossed my long, curled hair behind my shoulder. I knew exactly the effect the toss of my honey-brown, red-tinted hair would have, and the way he watched it swing gave me a smirk of my own.

"Please," I spat, tucking a strand behind my right ear, "For all that we call what we do acting as 'pleasurable company,' we know what we are. We're your whores." I threw the final word from my mouth as though it were something vile, which it was, as though it tasted bad on my tongue, as it did.

His eyes lost their playfulness. "Hey," he said in a low rumble that made me, in spite of myself, take a quick step back as he stood to face me, "I didn't make this deal, remember? You girls did."

"I didn't," I retorted, feeling my cheeks flush, "This deal was struck almost thirty years ago. I wasn't even a twinkle in my father's eye yet, and I surely had nothing to do with it."

"Neither did I," he shot back, turning away and going to sit on his bed.

For just a moment, he looked almost…defeated. But no, I must've been mistaken, for in the next second, his self-satisfied smirk was back, and he was asking me what my real name was.

"I'd prefer if the likes of you didn't use the name my parents gave me," I heard myself saying. I was so angry, and I wasn't sure why. He hadn't arranged this any more than I had. I suppose it was partly because I knew that he alone had the power to change what was being done.

He alone had the power to help my girls and me without the incentive of sex. But I knew, somehow, that without it, he would walk downstairs and tell all those boys—some of whom I recognized, from our spying, as Manhattan boys, that Queens was made of girls and that they should go and take us over.

"Maybe I should remind ya that I'm made o' the same 'likes' as you is," he retorted brusquely, crossing his arms and staring at me, clearly awaiting a smart comeback I didn't have.

I settled with glaring rather spectacularly at him for a horrendously long thirty seconds. "Well?" I broke the silence with a word that came out sharper than I'd intended. "Are we going to do this or what?"

"Are you a virgin?" He asked suddenly, looking at me with those serious, penetrating blue-green eyes.

As I thought back to my training, which, among the usual important things, consisted of a brief, painful, "breaking-in-process," as Scots comfortingly called it, I cringed inwardly. That night had been strange and awkward, and above all, had carried with it a tearing pain I could still feel if I concentrated hard enough.

"No, I'm not," I said boldly, wanting, for reasons I couldn't identify, to defy him in some way.

"Oh," he replied, looking rather disappointed, which I couldn't understand. Scots had told me that the leader that preceded her, Parish, had said that her Brooklyn leader had been frustrated when she had been in pain on their first encounter, and had told her, yelling, that from now on, his boys weren't to get "saddled with virgins."

"'Oh'?" I asked.

"I just thought that I'd be…" He trailed off and cleared his throat, obviously embarrassed that he even cared.

"My first?" I finished, smirking at him in a way that mirrored his trademark.

"Shut up," he growled, and before I could recover from my shock at a male speaking to me in such a way, he threw me down on the bed and kissed me. I'd never been kissed before, and suddenly, I was wondering why in the hell I'd waited this long.

I began to kiss him back, and his hands roamed over my body. I began to explore his, and was pleasantly surprised to find that his thin frame was adorned with long, lean muscles.

He began to quickly unbutton my blouse, and once it was off and my top half was left in merely its camisole, he removed my skirt.

It was when I had him down to his long, tight white underwear that he slowed his pace and began to be not the aggressor, but the love-maker.

He looked into my eyes, and I was shocked to feel lust begin to build up in my body. I hadn't expected this. Of course, Scots' leader had been a giant beast of a fellow, and I was certain that he had never inspired lust in a woman in his big, ugly life.

But this Spot Conlon was…well, he was spectacular.

He slowly removed my underwear, and I felt myself blush as my face grew hot. He kissed me once and then, just as attentively, slipped my camisole over my head as I raised my arms willingly.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew I shouldn't be enjoying the prospect of spending the night with this boy, but, I reasoned, if I had to do this for the next few years, I may as well try to enjoy it if I could.

When I was fully naked, he lowered himself on top of me, and I gasped at the sensation that shot through my body as his glorious weight flowed over me. He kissed me deeply, and I dragged my nails lightly along the smooth skin of his back. I felt him shudder, and he immediately got up and walked over to a drawer.

I felt, for just an instant, abandoned. Then, as I watched, he dropped his underpants, and I merely lied there, stark-naked, and gawked at his behind. He opened the drawer and pulled something out. Looking down, he fasted whatever it was to…himself.

As he turned around, I almost laughed. Instead, I settled for smiling cockily and asking, "What is that?"

"A rubber," he replied, glancing down at it. It was erect and almost seemed to be beckoning to me. "You don't want to get pregnant, do you?" he asked smugly, his voice telling me in no uncertain terms that he was confident he was fertile enough to impregnate me on the first try.

I shook my head quickly. No, no I did not, thank you very much.

"Come here," I said softly, surprising myself, and he walked to the edge of the bed and leaned over me, his hands on either side of my raised legs. His chest hit my knees and I lowered them. He seized me gently but firmly around the ribcage and easily scooted me back on the bed in a "You. Here. Now." kind of way.

One second he was only kissing me and I was running my hands over every inch of him I could reach, and the next he was inside of me.

I gasped loudly, surprised. This was not what I seemed to remember. What I remembered was rough and impersonal, and it stung and burned.

This was…this was heavenly. I moaned to the ceiling as I arched my back. He seemed to gain excitement at my noise and slammed into me, pulling out and stroking back, back, back in.

It was incredible. I raised my head to be kissed, and he lowered his mouth on mine like a starving man. As he thrusted into me, I began to feel something build inside my body.

I stopped kissing him back, and he opened his eyes. I looked at him, my eyes wide. It was the most delicious feeling I'd ever experienced, but he took my wide eyes to mean something else, and began to slow in his movements.

I wrapped my arms about his lower back and pulled him into me, fast and hard. "Don't stop," I breathed, needing nothing more in the world than to know where this feeling in my body would take me.

He entered me fully again. Again and again, and the feeling grew. As it exploded into a million little delectable pieces, I moaned again, and I could feel my whole body shuddering and tightening around him.

Spot, who had up until now merely been breathing hard and fast, let out a low, quiet grunt that was full of pleasure and wanting. As I came down from my high, I could feel his begin. It was in the way he kissed me deeper and moaned against my mouth, and in the way each and every lean muscle in his back tightened. He began to thrust faster, faster, faster, and as that amazing feeling in my body returned and exploded again, I could feel the same happen to him.

Once he had finished, he collapsed, sweaty, on top of me. I kissed his damp temple, and he gently licked and kissed my neck. After a few minutes, he rolled off of me and removed his "rubber."

I half-worried that he was going to get redressed and leave me there, but he immediately rolled back over and pulled me to him.

"Spot—"

He cut me off. "Sleep, baby," he said drowsily, snuggling against me and seeming to fall asleep immediately.

Baby.

Oh my, but I did think I was going to rather grow to enjoy our little arrangement. I fell asleep, sweaty and hot and pleasured and altogether spent, in his arms.

Author Notes:

Panic! lyric: "I'm the narrator, and this is just the prologue." –The Only Difference Between Martyrdom and Suicide is Press Coverage.

Reviews, por favor!