Hell, Where we Thrive

Pershing Park looked different in the day, he noticed. The rust on the playground equipment was much more noticeable under the setting Tulsa sun and standing still rather than in the glimpses he got when cruising by in Bob’s car or helping hold down some East Side trash for a quick beat down in the otherwise silent evenings. Those occasions when tossing the flask and the football back and forth had proven too boring and they decided to get some energy out. The grass seemed taller in the dead of night when rushing back to the car with bruised knuckles and high adrenaline, not like now as he stood by the run-down fountain and picked at his nails.

Paul felt stupid waiting around like this. Part of him wondered if it had even been worth it to be early to begin with. It’d serve Darry right to make him wait around for him for once. It’d be payback for the last four months. But he was a stickler for punctuality if nothing else, and he felt like he had some kind of high ground being there first. Not like he needed it anyway, he wasn’t in the wrong here.

After what felt like hours of standing around- it was realistically only twenty minutes, Paul had checked his watch enough times to mark every mind numbing second and add it to his pile of disdain- he saw the familiar beat-up truck pull up on the road and the even more familiar figure climb out of it.

Darry’s shoulders were tense, Paul could see it from a mile away. He always had a specific way of carrying himself after a rough game or a long practice, and it was no different when he’d traded his football for a hammer.

“Was starting to think you weren’t gonna show,” Paul told him when he was sure he was within earshot. “You sure took your dear, sweet time.”

“Work went late,” Darry replied with a raised brow, shoving his hands into his pockets when he momentarily forgot himself and made the beginning motions of a hug.

Paul resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “You couldn’t just ditch early? You practically live there the rest of the time anyways.”

“Not if I wanna keep my job,” he snapped back as he crossed his arms over his chest. The tension hung in the air as they stared at each other, waiting for the other to say something, anything.

It was Darry who finally cut it, sighing tiredly. “You gonna tell me what this is all about? You called me out here, remember? Not the other way ‘round.”

Paul clenched his jaw, his fists following shortly after. “Again, didn’t think you were gonna show,” he said, voice short. “Wouldn’t surprise me. You’ve had a pretty good track record of that lately.”

Now it was Darry’s turn to tense, glaring back at the boy across from him. “I’ve been-“

“Busy, I know!” Paul interrupted, his voice dripping with exasperation. “When have you not been busy?! Hell, this is the longest I’ve seen you around in months! I’d have better luck reaching the damn Queen of England than you!”

Darry’s face shifted into that unamused expression Paul recognized all too well, the one that told him to quit while he was ahead lest he cross a line he was tiptoeing towards. “Sorry I gotta work for a living, man! The state’s been on my ass nonstop and bills are kicking my ass-“

He ignored the warning and stepped closer to both the line and Darry. “So because of that I just get shoved off to the side? I just gotta deal with that? How the hell is that any fair to me?”

Darry scoffed. “Jesus Christ, Paul, ain’t none of this fair!” he snapped, raising his voice as the tension rose with it.

“Double negative,” Paul mumbled on impulse.

That made the other pause, glaring back at him in silence for what felt like ages. “…I’m gettin’ real sick of you correctin’ me like that. Like I don’t know how to talk right. Like you gotta teach me or somethin’.”

The Soc didn’t even hold back his eye roll this time, tilting his head with obvious annoyance. “That’s not what I mean and you know it-“

“Do I?” Darry bit back, eyes locked on Paul with a hint of exhausted madness flashing in his cold stare. “Sure seems like I don’t know a damn thing when I’m around you. Always remindin’ me about proper speech and etiquette like I grew up in a goddamn barn! And now here you are all upset that I gotta work and pay bills and I ain’t got the time to hang around you!”

Paul had stopped looking at Darry halfway through his rant, the anger bubbling under the surface and threatening to spill over until his clenched jaw began to ache like hell. “Sorry I can’t just be okay with being ignored like I don’t matter, asshole!” He took a deep breath to try and steady himself even as the rage flowed through him like a live wire. "You told me we were gonna figure it out. When you dropped out you told me it was gonna work out. I figured you were insane to just throw it all away like that but I thought ‘hey, at least me repeating senior year won’t be so bad if he’s sticking around. Least I won’t have to wait around til I finally make my way there too’. And now look where we are.”

Darry scoffed. “Yeah, well I said a lot of shit three months ago, didn’t I?”

The tension had risen to a level that made both parties uncomfortable beyond belief, each locked in another stalemate as they dared the other to break the silence. They knew where this was going. It’d been a long time coming, four months of “I can’t, I’m busy” and “We’ll talk about this later” and “Gotta work, sorry” piled with “Why are you wearing that” and “It’s ‘don’t have’ not ‘ain’t got’” and “I don’t get why you’re so hellbent on playing parent”.

“…Not too late to take off, y’know,” Paul mumbled after a long time, eyes shifting away from Darry’s stern face to focus instead on the grass he absent-mindedly ghosting his shoe over. “We could still do it. Hop in my car and haul ass.”

“And go where? Do what?” Darry tested. “Get stuck in some other dead-end town where we’ll have to act like buddies and do the same damn thing we’re doin’ here? Wake up, man! This was always gonna be a problem! We were stupid for even makin’ that plan to begin with.”

Paul bit the inside of his cheek. “…So that’s it then? I just get put on the shelf so you can go play Dad?”

“I got a responsibility, Paul!”

“Nobody asked you to do it, Darrel! You could put ‘em in a boys home and move on with your life and you know it!”

Darry took three steps forward to be inches away, the rage clear in his eyes. “You don’t get it. Damn it, you never will,” he said, voice low enough to keep the conversation between them in fear of any passersby eavesdropping. “You’ll never fuckin’ get it. This- us, whatever the hell this is, we gotta cut it out. I got my brothers to worry about. I got bills to pay. I ain’t got time to worry bout whether or not you miss me. Talkin’ about runnin’ off somewhere and abandonin’ the two family members I got left? You’re the crazy one here, not me.”

Paul wanted to hit him. He wanted to scream and curse his name and leave the park with discolored knuckles and diminishing anger just as he always did. But it was daylight and he was a Soc without backup. That wasn’t how they did things.

“…You know what? Fine. Fuck you, man. I don’t need this,” he huffed, hands up in frustrated mock surrender. “You wanna stick around here on this shitty side of town with those lowlifes then I’m not gonna stop you. Can't say I didn't try, pal.” He began the trek back to his car, only making it a few feet away before turning back to glance at Darrel with his hands in his pockets and the same set expression of anger on his face. Though, from the angle he was stood Paul swore he could see the glint of tear tracks on his cheeks and some part buried under all the accumulating hate wanted to wipe them away. But he didn't. He couldn't. And he never would again.

Hidden in the corner of Darrel Curtis Jr’s closet, tucked under a pile of old clothes and an assortment of items that he couldn’t be bothered to understand a proper place for, rested a secret.

The notion of death had never been particularly on Darry’s mind growing up. Sure, sometimes he’d watch his father read obituaries in the paper after the sports section at the breakfast table and make comments when he’d see a name he recognized. But Darry would just continue eating his eggs while complaining for Sodapop to quit leaning his chair back to balance on its back legs.

It wasn’t until his twentieth birthday that everything changed. What started as a day of celebration quickly snapped like a rubber band being pulled too hard. And the sting of identifying his parents’ bodies- what was left, at least- was so sharp that he almost didn’t realize what this now meant for him.

Goodbye, college.

After funeral expenses, they were left worse than broke. What little savings their parents had when they passed was not near enough to cover a proper burial, let alone anything for him to begin the heavy weight of the sudden onslaught of bills. And so here he was. Twenty years old, two teenagers to raise, and piles upon piles of letters with the words ‘Final Notice’ stamped in red.

Goodbye, future.

He tried to keep them afloat for a long while on his own. Sodapop dropping out to work helped a lot, even though the guilt gnawed at Darry over it despite Soda’s insistence that he made the decision for himself. Darry knew that overall, even with two jobs, he couldn’t do it all alone. So, with gritted teeth, he let Soda take on more shifts at the DX station.

After a lot of long days that turned into long nights, the Curtis residence creeped slowly out of the debt pit and Darry had never felt so grateful to just be flat broke. Still, with as happy as he was to be making ends meet, he couldn’t stop thinking about the future. And after witnessing a particularly nasty workplace incident that’d left a new guy with a broken rib, the plagued thoughts of his parents’ untimely end and his own existential dread tied together to fuel his nightmares.

So, as the weather began to warm up and more and more roofing jobs around the city were needed, Darry formed a plan.

“Darry, you seen my jeans?” Ponyboy called from the bedroom. His eyes flickered to his study guide, but he wasn’t quite paying attention to it, convinced he could get away with looking it over on the walk to school.

“I ironed! Check my closet!” Darry shouted back curtly from the kitchen, and Pony was sure he was leaning against the sink nursing his third cup of black coffee as he did every morning like clockwork. The two were having another little spat again- nowhere near the intense shouting matches of before, but still enough to leave the house in a state of unresolved tension. So they only spoke to each other when necessary, for the sake of Soda’s wellbeing. Besides, the middle Curtis brother would have a long shift that evening, which gave the other two plenty of time to duke it out without him there to feel the need to play middleman.

Arguments between the eldest and youngest were not nearly as frequent as they used to be, but they still happened. Even after everything that had gone down three months before- after a week of heartbreak and grief and reconciliation- when it came down to it they were still two vastly different people and that often led to them bumping heads.

Ponyboy bit the inside of his cheek and stepped into the bedroom that once belonged to his parents. After the accident, Darry had moved in to give Soda and Pony their own rooms. Not like they slept in separate rooms now anyways, not with Ponyboy’s tendency for nightmares. But now the old decor and furniture of the room that his mother had once perfected was replaced by barren walls and Darry’s bed, and it no longer felt like the same place he’d once spent countless times sneaking into as a child to seek comfort from his mother after a bad dream or watching his father teach Darry and Soda how to fix squeaky door hinges and shaky knobs. Now it was just a room that his brother sometimes slept in on the rare occasions he could manage it. A room Ponyboy only now entered out of pure necessity, and otherwise briskly walked past in the hallway with downcast eyes.

The youngest Curtis opened the closet with a sigh, pulling the perfectly ironed pants from the hanger as well as a couple of Soda’s shirts he figured he might as well grab for his older brother. He was just about to shut the door and exit the room until the next unavoidable time when the slight flash of something reflective caught the bedroom light and subsequently his attention.

After pushing a few things out of the way- a couple of random jackets and trinkets, probably just things Darry couldn’t determine a place for or hadn’t gotten around to getting rid of- Ponyboy finally fully uncovered the source of the shiny material. An old cookie tin, dented and scratched beyond belief but still surprisingly bright when illuminated just so. He recognized it immediately as their mother’s old sewing tin. It housed buttons and thimbles and some spare needles that the boys used on more than one occasion to hastily stitch up particularly nasty wounds after the rumbles that used harsher weapons than just a plain skin fight. None of them liked to do it, but none of them liked hospital bills and pretentious doctors, either.

He opened the tin out of impulse, wanting just to see the mess of supplies and feel some semblance of familiarity. But when the lid slipped off the top, the typical contents were instead replaced by a mess of dollar bills. More ones than others, but a decent amount of fives and tens and even a few twenties.

Ponyboy blinked, examining the sight before him utterly dumbfounded. Darry was constantly harping on him and Soda that they were always barely making it, warning them about wasting things or avoiding anything that could cost more money than they could swing.

If they had at least something in savings, why they hell was Darry always so damn stressed over something that could be solved with this tin?

Going back to the money, Ponyboy began to notice something about the way the it was all placed. Some of the bills were neatly folded and stacked while others were crumpled into balls, as though they’d been angrily thrown in at the end of a rough day.

Or a rough argument.

And all too suddenly, it clicked with him. All the vague threats Darry made in the haze of their fights, all of the spat out declarations of moving on and leaving Soda and Ponyboy to fend for themselves, all the extra shifts and longer nights Darry seemed to add without thinking they’d notice…

It wasn’t simple angry threatening. It was a warning. He had a plan.

“Did you find ‘em? C’mon, you’re gonna be late for school, kid!” Darry called, his voice getting louder as he approached the bedroom.

Ponyboy quickly popped the lid back onto the tin and shoved it at the bottom of the closet, throwing all the odds and ends over top to try and hide his snooping as the endless sinking feeling threatened to pull him under the floor.

“Anyone notice somethin' weird about the kid?” Steve asked with a raised brow, his voice hushed and somewhat muffled by the cards in his hand as he glanced through the doorway of the kitchen into the living room. Soda and Two-Bit followed Steve’s curious expression, their own poker hands ignored. Ponyboy was sat on the couch, laser-focused on his science textbook resting open on the coffee table while folding the full basket of laundry to his side.

The boys shared a similar unnerved look after taking half a glance at the kid's face. Where he had the same look of concentration he always did when invested in schoolwork or a particularly intriguing book, his eyes were glassy, haunted. It was a look they hadn’t seen in over four months, when they’d lost Johnny and Dallas and Ponyboy spent two painful weeks sat in front of the television and refused to talk to anyone, refused to do anything.

“Soda?” Two-Bit mumbled nervously, almost like he was worried he’d speak too loud and startle the poor kid. “Is he alright, man?”

Sodapop gulped, his eyes trained on his little brother and the way he was seemingly operating on autopilot as he folded a shirt that definitely needed to be hung up. “…Yeah,” he said softly, nodding a little with his eyes still locked on the trauma-ridden ones in the next room. “Yeah, he’s fine. He’ll be fine.” His voice didn’t have a lot of confidence in it, like he was trying to convince himself more than his friends. “Prob’ly just tired. He had practice for track after school, prob’ly just went a little too hard in the paint, y’know?”

That night at dinner, Ponyboy laughed at Soda’s jokes and made casual chatter with Darry about his upcoming track meet schedule, but instead of his notebook and a pen resting on his lap as per usual there was just a stack of homework he scanned over and over again. He almost looked like he was the one grading it instead of his teacher, his eyes darting over the paper time and time again.

When the meal was over, Ponyboy was quick to start washing dishes without Darry even having to remind him it was his turn. While the eldest grinned in appreciation, Soda couldn’t help but hesitantly glance at the kid as he stood at the sink with his back to his brothers.

“He didn’t he do his little dramatic groan he always does,” Soda frowned.

Darry hummed, arms crossed over his chest as a calm smile ghosted his features. “I know, right? No lip or nothin’. It’s almost weird. But shoot, I ain’t complainin’.”

Soda looked from his older brother to his younger brother, noticing the way Ponyboy was hunched over the sink almost like he was operating on fumes. The poor kid had pushed himself like hell today. “Dar, I’m gettin’ kinda worried about him.”

“Pony? Why?”

“I dunno, he was foldin’ laundry and doin’ his homework earlier-“

“That’s it?” Darry asked incredulously, cutting him off. “Hell, we should be thankful. Takes three reminders to get that kid to even start on homework half the time.”

Soda grimaced. “You didn’t see the way he was lookin’, Darry. He looked like…like how he did a few months back. That same damn look.”

Darry felt a knot in his throat, but willed himself to stay calm and not make a mountain out of a molehill. “…He could just be tired. Didn’t he have track after school?”

“Yeah, but it’d make more sense for him to be complainin’ by now, man. You know he always gets like that when he’s beat.”

The eldest shook his head. “No. He’s fine, Soda. It’s been months. You’ve been watchin’ him same as I have and he’s been gettin' better. His grades are fine and he’s stayin’ out of trouble.”

“No, that’s just the thing Dar. When’s the last time he went anywhere but school? When’s the last time he bugged you about wantin' to go see a movie or grab a burger? Hell, when’s the last time you saw him with his nose in some book that wasn’t for class? Darry, he’s slippin' again. Wake up.”

Darry just shook his head again, standing and smacking the table, insistent but not angry. “No,” he said again, his tone firm and final. “He’s fine.”

That night, Darry laid awake in the hollow shell of his room, staring at the ceiling and worriedly piecing together every possible excuse for his brother’s behavior. He was fine, he’d been laughing and smiling again, he’d been spending time with Curly and spending evenings on the porch staring at the setting sky with his fingers curled around a dulled pencil as he wrote in his notebook. He’d been getting better.

Sleep be damned. It wasn’t like Darry was banking on getting any, anyway.

A few weeks later, Darry’s work day had been cut short from running out of shingles and the lumber yard being closed for some dumb reason Darry didn’t even have the energy to be annoyed about, and he’d sooner start again early tomorrow than haul ass all the way across town to the other yard for more bundles for just an hour of daylight.

Even though it was a shorter shift than he was used to, the man was felt dead on his feet by the time he was climbing the steps to the porch. Soda was working a late shift at the DX working on some guy’s car with Steve, and Two-Bit was busy buttering up some random girl who’d just started working evenings at the Dingo. So when he walked through the front door, making sure not to slam the screen door behind him, he knew the muffled noise from the kitchen had to be Ponyboy.

But just as he was about to call out for the kid and alert him he was home, the sound of a hiccup catching on a sob had the knot in his throat that he’d tried gulping down weeks ago falling down to his stomach.

He crossed the living room quickly but quietly, taking cautious steps into the kitchen. Ponyboy was hunched over the counter by the sink, clutching something in his hand with is arms resting crossed over on the surface and his head hidden in the space. His shoulders shook along with his legs as his sobs echoed in the small kitchen, his cries lacing with frustrated yelps that Darry had last heard in a dimmed hospital room underneath the sounds of Dallas’ screams.

He’s slippin' again. Wake up.

Darry had sure as hell been awake. With as little sleep as he got on any given day when was he not awake? But in that moment he realized that while he may have been awake, his eyes were sure as hell not open. Not completely. Not until right now, watching his little brother break down over the notebook that contained his semester thesis, the very one he’d been writing in for months as he crawled out of the pit of despair he’d spent weeks wallowing in, now covered in kitchen grease and gravy and utterly ruined.

He slowly approached the boy, noticing the stove still on but the pan nowhere near the eye. Burnt gravy was puddled on the stove top and by the sink and Darry finally started putting the pieces together. “Pony?” he asked hesitantly, watching as the kid finally lifted his head from where he’d been dejectedly resting it.

Seeing Ponyboy cry wasn’t uncommon, especially not in the last few months. But god, if Darry didn’t hate it every time. He’d do anything to not have to see the poor kid cry ever again. The way his eyes were bloodshot and his face was red from the force of the sobs, the way he hiccupped and tried to force it all down which only seemed to make it so much worse. Darry loathed it more than anything in the world.

“Pony…what’s the matter?” he asked, keeping his voice gentle enough to try and soothe him but not so sweet that it unsettled the boy. He knew Ponyboy preferred the normalcy of how Darry usually spoke to him over the sweet, caring tone he tried to adopt to calm him down. It was a constant, and Ponyboy needed constants to keep him grounded more than he needed hushed tones and gentle words.

Sniffling, Ponyboy wiped his eyes with the heel of his palm and took a deep breath, glancing down at the notebook in frustration. “I was tryin’ to make dinner and finish up this page and I didn’t turn down the damn heat in time. Made a damn mess and now this is all fucked!”

“Hey. Language,” Darry said on impulse.

“And I ain’t got time to work on it, because I got two more papers, an exam to study for, and a science project! So there goes my English grade and there goes my halfway decent GPA-“

Darry took a step forward as Ponyboy’s ranting began to worsen. “Pony, you gotta calm down. Who said you had to make dinner? We got leftovers.”

“-And then there goes college and then what? Then I ruined everything because I can’t get it together!” Ponyboy shouted over Darry, clearly ignoring him as he continued his rambling. “Then I ruin everything you and Soda are working for!”

“Pony, c’mon kid. You don’t gotta do all this like you’ve been doin’-“ Darry started.

Pony looked up into Darry’s eyes, screaming, “Yes I do, ‘cause I’ll have to do all this anyway when you leave!”

The eldest looked at his little brother with wide eyes as he stood in front of him, panting from his winded rant and remnants of hiccupped tears. “What the hell are you talking about?” he asked, confused.

“…I found Mom’s old sewing kit in the closet. You got all that cash in there. And you’re always talking about taking off and starting over someplace new. What, were you just gonna up and leave in the middle of the night without tellin’ us?” Pony spat, his voice sounding bitter and broken and nothing like the happier version of himself he’d been piecing back together over the last few months.

Darry gulped, shaking his head. “Pones…no, no no no, that ain’t…I’m not…” he paused, unsure how to explain himself. He wouldn’t lie, it sure looked bad. With the amount of times he’d threatened to up and leave when he was tired and angry and felt less appreciated than a piece of furniture, with the times he spent longing for his own life and not the one he’d been forced into due to their parents’ sudden end, with the folded and crumpled dollar bills hidden away at the bottom of his closet, it all added up to an understandable conclusion in his little brother’s mind.

Before he could find the words to explain everything, he closed the gap between them with a tight hug. He wrapped his arms around the shorter boy and held him close, his grip steady and desperate like he needed Ponyboy to understand through the embrace that he’d never even think about actually leaving them. It was a hug that strangely felt like the one at the hospital months ago, only where he’d felt horrified relief before he now only felt an aching guilt for not recognizing this sooner, for not taking Soda’s observations to heart.

Ponyboy wrapped him arms around him after a second of hesitation, his arms going from loosely hanging around Darry’s torso to squeezing him tight as if he was afraid to let go. “Kid, that money ain’t my bailout money. It’s just a backup plan.” He felt Ponyboy’s grip tighten and he realized he wasn’t helping his case. Slowly leading his brother out of the kitchen, Darry got them both seated on the couch and he pulled back to look the kid in the face.

“Remember how finances were after we lost Mom and Dad?” he asked, Ponyboy nodding silently as his eyes glazed over with muted grief. “They didn’t have anything saved up for something like that. I wasn’t sure we were gonna make it for a while…I don’t want that to happen to y’all if anything happened to me.”

After a second, Ponyboy’s eyes widened a little. “What do you mean-“

“I ain’t saying something’s gonna happen, Pone,” he reassured calmly, squeezing Ponyboy’s shoulder. “But nothin’s guaranteed. Roofing’s got plenty of chances for someone to screw up and get hurt. You know that just as well as I do. I don’t want you two to be caught up in that if anything happened. So I’ve been squirrelin’ away some odds and ends just in case.”

Ponyboy sniffled again. Darry made a reminder to grab some aspirin for the headache the poor boy would inevitably have later. “…And you weren’t ever gonna tell us?”

Darry grimaced, shrugging a little. “I figured you’d find it when you needed it.”

“So you ain’t goin’ nowhere?” the younger boy asked, not quite meeting Darry’s eyes.

“I ain’t goin’ a damn place, Pony. Except maybe to the kitchen to clean up that gravy mess,” Darry replied, glancing over to the doorway. Slowly, the events of the last few weeks started to click in place in his head and he sighed. “Hang on, have you been acting like this all ‘cause of that?”

Ponyboy bit the inside of his cheek and looked away. “Didn’t wanna give you anymore reason to cut out. Figured if I kept the place clean and stayed outta trouble and kept my grades up that you’d change your mind or something,” he explained, shrugging.

Darry let out a breath he’d accidentally been holding, coming out like a sigh. “Ponyboy…this all ain’t on you, kid. You’re puttin’ way too much on your shoulders.”

“But you and Soda-“

“-Are the adults,” Darry interrupted, cutting Ponyboy’s argument off. “We are the adults in this house, not you. Do I appreciate you pickin’ up and doin’ your homework? Absolutely. Do I think you should only be studyin’ and cleanin’? Hell no.” He stood from the couch and briefly excused himself, returning with a warm, damp washcloth that he slowly wiped over his little brother’s eyes.

For a short moment he was reminded of the time the three of them had been riding their bikes on the road as kids. The chain on Ponyboy’s old hand-me-down had snapped, leading to a nasty wipeout that had taken out a neighbor’s mailbox and the skin off the top of the six year old’s knees. Their mother had cleaned the scrapes while Pony wailed, and Darry cleaned his face with a warm cloth as Soda held and comforted him and their father fitted the bike with a new chain.

Even now, Pony looked like the same teary-eyed kid, but knowing the cause of his current state was more than a simple bicycle incident did little to ease the knot still weighing in his stomach. Darry bit the inside of his cheek to steady himself. “Soda and I didn’t have to be adults at your age, Pony. We got to be kids a little longer than that. You’re already growin’ up way too fast, baby. Let yourself enjoy some of this time you got, okay? Please?” he asked, sounding somewhat insistent.

After a long stretch of silence, Ponyboy mumbled, “…He wouldnt’ve let it get this bad.” He looked down at his hands. “I think…he prob’ly woulda talked me down weeks ago.”

Darry didn’t have to ask who. The haunted stare his little brother had was enough of a tell. “…Yeah, kid. Johnny was always pretty good at workin’ stuff out like that.”

That seemed like the code words to get Ponyboy to finally relax, his head drooping to rest on Darry’s shoulder. “…I ain’t watched a sunset in a while…ain’t had the time.”

Darry turned his head to glance back through the window, noticing the dull orange coming in through the shade of the porch. He wordlessly stood and encouraged Ponyboy to do the same before wrapping his arm around his shoulders and leading him out through the front door.

“Where are we goin-“ Ponyboy started, only to be cut off when his eyes met the orange and pink hues of the setting Tulsa sky. He stood entranced by the sight, not even noticing how Darry seemed to be watching in tandem with him, an identical expression of awe on his face.

“…I take a break to come watch these sometimes,” Darry said, not taking his eyes off the sunset even as Ponyboy glanced over at him. “When I’m out workin’ I’ll sit on the roof where nobody can see me slacking and just…watch the sunset til it goes. Like how Mom used to.”

When Darry finally glanced down again, he noticed in the light of the setting sun that the warm hues made Ponyboy appear like he’d never been crying, save for the puffy eyelids and his residual sniffling. “I didn’t know you even noticed them,” Pony mumbled, his voice scratchy from the sobbing.

“…You never asked,” Darry answered simply, letting that hang in the air as they let the fleeting moment pass from bright pinks and oranges to faded blues. “…Alright. Let’s get inside. I got a gravy mess to clean up and you gotta eat.”

After the kitchen was returned to it’s typical state and Darry had gotten a chance to shower the day’s work away, the two had climbed into the truck and driven to a diner for a quick bite. Darry scarfed down a burger and a basket of friends while Ponyboy did the same across the booth, and after the meal he slipped a five dollar bill in Pony’s hand and mentioned a new film playing at the movie house.

  Ponyboy didn’t want to eavesdrop. He was aware that people thought it was rude, but he couldn’t seem to prevent himself from silently leaving the bedroom when he heard voices coming from the kitchen. After doing a quick scan of his surroundings, he froze along the wall just outside the entrance to the kitchen as the voice of Darrel echoed in the otherwise quiet room. He listened close, but wasn’t entirely sure why.

  “We’d get a lot out of it, Soda. With it being a prototype or whatever, I’m sure there’s collectors out there who’d offer a good amount. We could catch up on bills, and actually have something in savings for once!”

  He heard Sodapop sigh. “We can’t sell him, Darry! We can’t just abandon him like that.”

  “What did I tell you?” Darrel asked, voice tight with frustration. “I told you not to get attached to it, and look what you did.”

  “He’s our brother! I’m sorry I can’t just turn that off!”

  “That thing is not our brother!” Darrel snapped loudly. “It’s plastic and metal! If you want our brother, go to the cemetery where that Soc left him!”

  There was a long silence in which Ponyboy considered walking in, but the sound of Soda’s crying cut through the air just before he took his first step. He didn't want to intrude. The eavesdropping was rude enough.

  He heard Darrel sigh. “Soda…” There was another long pause, and Ponyboy could infer that the oldest was comforting the younger as his sobs grew louder. “Hey, c’mon…I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it.”

  “I m-miss him,” Sodapop cried softly, voice clearly thick with his tears. “A-And he looks l-like him…s-sounds like h-him…”

  “But it’s not him, Soda,” Darrel replied, his tone more gentle now. “That Sheldon kid’s dad thinks that giving us an android replacement would just make everything right, but even Cyberlife can’t change the fact that that kid took our little brother from us…he’s gone, Soda…and getting attached to that tin can ain’t gonna change that. No matter what it looks or sounds like…it ain’t Ponyboy.”

  Ponyboy blinked. Looking down at his hand, he watched as he retracted the skin on his arm to show the blinding white plastic of his real body. After looking at it for a while, the sight of an unfamiliar notification popped up on his HUD:

S̒̃ͫof̟t̳̲͟wạr̶͓̊eͤ Ins̹̓t͆a͗ͣ́biͤli̪t͙̤̃y

  He ran a quick diagnostic to check for issues, only to see no alerts from the results. He considered informing Darrel and Sodapop of his discovery, and that he’d possibly need to go to the nearest Cyberlife facility for a complete diagnostic to find the problem. However, Darrel was already considering getting rid of him, selling him to the highest bidder. If he knew there might be an issue with him, then he’d for sure be gone. And while Ponyboy had no real stakes in that, he’d grown a fondness for them in the short week he’d been there. 

  Sodapop was kind and told him stories about the boy he shared a likeness with. He’d sit with him on the couch with a photo album and tell him everything about the snapshots on the pages. And while Darrel was cold and distant with him at best and downright hostile to him at worst, Ponyboy knew the man saw the benefit in having him around to lighten the load of the housework.

  “…We’ll keep it around,” Darrel said defeatedly after a while. “But just for a while longer. The second one of it’s parts get faulty, I’m putting it on eBay.”

  He heard Sodapop sniffle. “Really, Dar? eBay? Like it’s 2008?” he asked with a watery laugh. “Don’t stop there. Put him on Craigslist too.”

  Ponyboy experienced a strange sensation. Part of him was glad the tension had dissolved, but something about joking about putting him up for sale on the internet made him finally stop eavesdropping and return to the bedroom.

  While androids didn’t need to sleep, Sodapop had requested he share the same room as him when he went into stasis. Something about how the real Ponyboy used to share a bed with him and he’d gotten too used to it. Ponyboy acquiesced, hellbent on completing his purpose to make life easier for the Curtis brothers.

 Ponyboy was determined to win Darrel over, despite the task seeming impossible. If nothing else, he could prove useful and stay enough in his good graces to remain there. He couldn’t replace the brother they lost, and he knew Darrel didn’t want him to, but he would rather be an asset to the household than a burden, or worse, sold off to some collector who wouldn’t understand the reason behind his imperfect appearance. Someone who didn’t understand his entire creation was a futile apology from a father whose son had done the unthinkable to a poor, innocent boy. Someone who didn’t understand his model was a trial in grief processing androids.

  Laying in the bed, Ponyboy was suddenly struck with a flash of something, so fast he almost didn’t catch it even with his quick processing:

  “C’mon, let’s walk to the park and back. Maybe I’ll be cooled off enough to go home," he heard his voice say. The air was cold and he shivered, holding his arms as he walked alongside a boy who worriedly asked him if he was about to freeze to death. But something else was more intense than the chill. The feeling of stinging on his cheek, and the unfamiliar sensation of fear and the pain of betrayal.