Work Text:
It wasn't the first night this month Pony'd spent stooped over a toilet bowl. And it wasn't the first dark morning Darry had found him lying there, curled on the bathroom floor in only his underwear. He was paler than even his palest winter skin. He was too skinny. Anyone could see. And Darry felt an immediate impulse to shove a donut down his little brother's throat, physically clamping his mouth shut and leaving him no choice but to chew and swallow.
But he knew force feeding, or forcing his brother to do anything at all for that matter, was futile. Not at this point. Not in this place they were in. Besides, he wouldn't put it past Pony to opt for choking on a crammed mouthful of pastry, deliberately sucking it down his windpipe rather than swallowing.
Death by donut. Just out of spite.
It wasn't funny. Really. Darry was worried. And if there was one thing he'd learned in his twenty years, it was that anything could happen. He'd just about seen it all. And right then the bloodied image of crazy stupid Dallas and his chest of bullet holes flashed before his eyes as if he needed one more brutal reminder.
Pretty much everyone knew though that when Darry was worried, Darry got stressed. And when Darry was stressed, Darry got angry. At least that's what Soda was always saying about him, whenever he had to explain away Darry's rough behavior to someone else; to some sad sack who happened to fall in the wake of Darry's mad-bull temper.
And this morning Darry couldn't help the jackhammer of seething frustration drilling a set of holes for his own young chest. He couldn't deny it anymore-not only this resentment he felt over everything that was happening to them, but the resentment that was building over the broken boy that blocked his way to the shower today. Probably already thinking up ways to convince Darry to let him miss school, miss practice, miss life. Pony was becoming by all definitions a recluse. The begging would start soon.
He knew to be fair, he had to take into account how young Pony still was, how much he probably still needed Mom and Dad. And with the help of Soda's reminders, he also tried to keep in mind that their little brother was the sensitive one who felt things harder than most. Or as a whispering Soda always put it, "C'mon Darry, you know he's different."
So it was no surprise to Darry that all of Pony's anxiety and grief would manifest into more physical symptoms the way they were now. Hell the way Darry remembered it, it seemed that Pony had been plagued with 'upset stomach' for most of his childhood, coddled as he was. For he had lived a whole different kind of growing-up than Darry had, and the oldest Curtis brother carried the weight of a mother that Pony would never know.
No doubt Pony'd witnessed some pretty traumatic things over the course of one week. Things maybe even Darry didn't want to know about. Who knew what went on in that abandoned church? The biting glass from its window had been sure to leave a mean and jagged scar on Pony's right shoulder blade. And Darry certainly didn't want to know how it felt to be held down under water so long the world went black.
It had been one hell of a week. The week that started with water and ended on fire. And neither element had managed to take down Ponyboy Curtis.
While he was being hailed a hero, Darry hailed him a survivor and reminded his little brother of that when he refused to eat. When he lay in bed concussed and sweaty, and started talking to Johnny like he was in the room.
"You're a survivor ya know that? You're strong Pony. Don't forget it."
"Survivor? I don't think so. Maybe it's just that I got left behind."
And now there was the trial that loomed before them. The threat of being yanked out of his home. This rabid threat was a rat eating away at Darry's pillow every night. He couldn't imagine what it was doing to Ponyboy.
But today, Darry didn't have time to deal with a nervous Pony; to talk some sense into him, to lift him up, especially the way he never fully listened. Or whenever he did listen the way he might yell back in an angry outburst. Or the way he might say nothing at all. Pony's blank stares were more unsettling than even his worst tirades.
Couldn't anybody understand the stress he was under? Darry never got to yell and vomit through all his worries, or just give up and drape himself across a dirty bathroom floor of pubes and dried piss they'd neglected for too long.
He had to be at work in an hour and another late day would surely have his boss thinking he was nothing more than an irresponsible loser who didn't take his job seriously. And if Darry lost that position, they could for sure kiss the last shredded remains of their family goodbye..sayonara suckers.
Just the thought alone scared Darry so bad, that he laughed deep deep down in his gut, almost maniacally. There was a prickling nausea knowing that all this was his fault, and if Pony and Soda got dragged into a boys home..well he couldn't let it happen. Let's be honest. He knew what perverted things went down in those godawful places.
But sometimes when he imagined his brothers gone, what horrified Darry most of all..was that little evil spark of relief.
This one thought and his laughter was stopped short, completely sucked of breath. And the split second idea was gobbled up by churning stomach acid. A wicked thought so fleeting as to become foreign, as if he'd never had it at all. The taste of leftover guilt was the only evidence that such a vile notion had ever existed. And he simply moved forward then; a bulldozer over tender sprouting weeds. Darry was a professional when it came to guilt. He'd found a way to live with that a long time ago. He had to in a family like his.
Darry's loyalty and fierce protection over his brothers had been ingrained in every atom and cell, and would always win out. And so there was no question Darry would bust his ass at work today and tomorrow and Saturday and every weekend and holiday that came down the pike. He'd take on a second job, a third if he had to. And somehow he'd convince Ms. Finch that sure, Pony may have ended up in a murder rap under his watch, but Darry was still fit to keep him.
And not if, but when all his pleas failed to convince her, he'd find another way. A seedier way. A sick way. He wasn't blind. He was aware how that woman looked him up and down; just exactly where her eyes lingered. And he was willing to go there. What was one more sacrifice by this point?
But what he wasn't willing to do was play Pony's therapist. And he sure didn't have enough time to play daddy this morning. But he also had to admit that even if he did have all the time in the world, he'd already lost the patience.
And so he simply stepped over him, this shipwreck of a brother now sprawled beyond Darry's bare feet, and aimed his piss to arc perfectly into the toilet bowl. Then with the damning breath of frustration he roughly stripped his shorts and slammed the shower knob to full blast, the steam mixing with all their early morning misery.
Pony simply had no strength to give the groan that was trapped inside him, but he felt it shudder the marrow of his bones, the pulp of his teeth. One more wave of nausea and he'd surely be on his knees convulsing, but the puke just wasn't coming like he wanted.
He was half aware of the sounds of Darry and his shower spray, but only as the incorporated background of his fevered dream. Pony's brain had magically turned the blasting white noise of water into a diabolical freight train that was holding him captive and barreling through some nightmare version of Tulsa.
And just like in all his dreams, every familiar place was all at once both unrecognizable and unmistakeable. The high school, the drive-in, the looming water tower that looked down over their neighborhood, their railyard, their cemetery.
Next stop: Jay Mountain. It didn't matter he couldn't bear to go back. To see the skeletal remains of the place that took so much from him. But no amount of begging could stop such a sadistic engineer as himself. Pony had been drawn up and shackled into place, right there in the boxcar that still smelled of manure and cattle.
A hand, be it hallucination or real, slid beneath him and through his blonde hair to cup the back of his skull, and he felt his head being lifted and jerked forward. It might've been Dally waking him out of a fretful sleep on a splintered pew. Or maybe it was Bob yanking him violently above the fountain's surface for a few gasping breaths only to plunge him under again.
Pony tried to blink, but his eyelashes were somehow tangled and sticky, and through them he tried to focus. Everything was doubled. He could make out two outlines of his bathroom sink, two toilets, two Sodas in only sweatpants, knees bent so that his lips were right at Pony's ear.
His voice remained low but harsher than its usual mellow vibe. "Ponyboy Curtis I ain't fooling around. You better wake your ass up." Soda's other hand had a firm grasp of his brother's lower jaw, his fingers pressed into hollowed cheeks. "How much did you have huh? I told you not to drink more than what I poured you."
Soda really wasn't all that shocked to find his little brother conked out on the bathroom floor after the night they'd had, but was working desperately to get him as far away from Darry as possible. He hooked his forearms under Pony's biceps and hoisted him up, managing to get him on his feet. Pony'd had a growth spurt sometime around August and he wasn't all that easy to handle anymore. It helped that he was putting in a little bit of his own effort now.
Pony's voice was more of a raspy growl, albeit direct. "Just leave me."
But Soda wasn't going to do that. Not when his own ass was about to get thrown under the bus by his hungover kid brother.
God what the hell was he thinking? Soda only ever offered the smallest shot. Just a tad to help Pony get through a desperate night. His paranoia had only gotten worse, and so Pony had become more anxious and depressed. It was a helpless feeling for an older brother. His soothing words could only do so much. Soda knew that something a little bit stronger was in order. And how could he not offer Pony an easier kind of relief? It was harmless and besides, a little bit of whiskey always seemed to work for him whenever he felt like jumping out of his own skin.
But it didn't take a genius to figure out that last night, after Soda had fallen dead to the world, Pony had gone rogue and tipped the bottle back a few too many times.
"Soda let me go, man. I got this."
He said it so quietly Soda barely heard but he certainly smelled him, and he was sure Pony's breath had to be a thousand proof of pure grain alcohol fumes, and quite possibly flammable if someone were to light a match. It was rotgut whiskey after all, and he'd seen it do a number on his dad a few times, and his dad was no wimp by any man's standards.
Soda always thought fast and he worked fast too. He threw Pony's ragdoll arm across his shoulders to prop him up as he half-walked, half-dragged him at his side. And along the way, he grabbed the toothpaste off the sink and jammed it between his brother's lips and squeezed that tube as hard as he could before Pony had the chance to bite down and resist.
Simply the acts of standing upright, choking on minty gel and being guided to his bed and thrown back into it, all seemed to slap Pony with a little bit of clarity. Maybe a little bit of life.
And he knew enough to offer an apology. "I'm sorry Soda. I fucked up."
His brother was busy covering him with jumbled sheets and blankets, dragging over the waste basket and telling him to shush just as Darry hooked a towel at his waist and showed up at their door, a hovering specter of stress and scented soap.
The patience Darry had sworn to God he'd forever uphold the night they got Pony back had finally withered to its last dying thread. "Wait don't tell me, lemme guess. Pony's too sick for school."
But before he could say anything else, Soda was shutting the door behind him as he took on Darry out in the hallway.
And as Pony was falling backwards into the sleep he'd come to dread, he could faintly hear his brothers as they heatedly discussed him. Snippets of their argument tunneled through miles of misfiring synapses and neural pathways, and finally settled like thick oatmeal in the auditory processor of his brain.
was just a bad night...
life just can't stop because you lose...
darry he can't handle..
shit I can't handle...
you know he's different, just give him a little more...
we're outta time man, you and i both know the gig's up...
don't be so hard on...
nobody but a damn fool would grant custody...
what are we gonna ...
hell even I wouldn't give me Pony...
shhh keep your voice...
runnin out of options...
probably won't take me...
I don't know, but there might be something i can do...