i burn like a sun inside!

The Curtis brothers have definitely woken up to find greasers they don’t even know sleeping on their couch.

Dally and Steve sometimes wrestle or arm wrestle for who gets the couch for a night.

They both give Johnny first dibs, of course.

If Dally finds someone outside the gang sleeping on the couch when he wants it, he’ll push them off. Sometimes he comes over when he knows someone else is using the couch, just to do this. The other greaser usually doesn’t fight back (unless it’s a reflex, always a risk when you wake up a greaser, Dally has definitely gotten some bruises) because they know it’s Dally’s home turf. Some of them leave when this happens, but most of them just go back to sleep on the floor because the Curtis carpet is still better than whatever their alternative is.

Once Dally pushed someone off the couch not realizing it was Sandy - she snuck in after everyone was asleep and didn’t want to crash Soda and Pony’s shared room. Soda punched him, but only as a formality (“hey buddy, I know it was an accident, but I gotta take a swing atcha for this, ya dig?” “Yeah, yeah, I dig, just lemme put out my cigarette.” “Soda, you don’t gotta do that, I’m fine.” “Oh I know baby, don’t worry, this is just what we do”) but Dally’s real punishment was having the gang watch as he actually tried to apologize politely to a girl. That was fuckin hilarious.

Johnny, needless to say, will not fight anyone for the couch. This bugs the gang because he should really get to pull rank. Soda finally comes up with the idea of taping a picture of Johnny above the couch with gigantic scribbled arrows pointing to it and a note saying “GIVE HIM THE COWCH.” Except nobody ever sees it because usually by the time someone stumbles in to crash there for the night, it’s late and the house is dark. So this does nothing.

So Dally implements Plan B: pushing other greasers off the couch to give it to Johnny.

Once they fought a rumble against another greaser gang, and afterwards the other gang didn’t feel like going all the way back to their neighborhood, so they all crashed at the Curtis’. Between the two groups, they used up all the Curtis’ first aid supplies, not to mention all their food.

Darry always warns their couch guest that he will not be making them breakfast in the morning. He always makes them breakfast in the morning. He knows the egg preferences of way too many of the greasers in Tulsa. This may or may not be how he labels them in his head when he can’t remember their name.

One night when Steve was on the couch, he and Soda played a prank on Pony by putting him on the couch while he was asleep, while Steve used his bed. Pony was very grumpy about this when he woke up, and Soda felt badly about it so they never did it again.

“Hey. Who’re you?”

“Oh, hey. I heard this was a safe place to spend the night.”

“Heard from who?”

“A buddy of mine, his girl gets her hair done by a broad whose boyfriend was in the cooler with a hood who runs with Tim Shepard’s gang.”

“Right.”

“………..”

when they got back, 

they spent the rest of the summer in that room?

Staring at the carved wooden doors

daring each other to try again?

the window open,

robinsong floating through that just

didn’t sound right?

Do you think Lucy ever crept down,

in the middle of the night,

the big house lit by nothing 

but a pale and unfeeling moon,

her footsteps following muscle memory 

to the edge of the wardrobe

crawling in and curling up 

at that cursed wooden back wall,

falling asleep surrounded by fur coats

hand pressed up against the one thing

preventing her from going back?

Do you think Edmund every joined her,

sneaking down in shame and secrecy 

only to find his sister 

already there?

Do you think Eustace spent hours over Christmas break in the room with the painting,

staring at it,

willing it,

begging it

to move?

Susan and Peter, stealing away to the train station, 

with no plan but to sit

on the same bench they always did,

hoping against hope,

against knowledge,

to hear the call again?

Do you think Jill was ever late to class,

missing the bell, the call of her peers,

the force of her wanting overpowering them

as she faced the hole in the wall,

the moore beyond,

the bright, real truth that it had happened,

trying to find the right combination of words

to make it happen again?

How many times did they sit,

backs pressed against locked doors, wrought benches, stone walls,

waiting to hear the key in the lock,

waiting to hear the rushing of wind,

waiting to hear that beloved voice