#hh!au

In short, I failed in the weeknd albums and, you know, decided to make parallels under the covers. Ref:

after their death, the nightmares began being nightly again, with vivid depictions of how their final moments may have gone. did they know something was up before it happened? did they die instantly? did they suffer? whatever did actually happen was probably just one of the hundreds of scenarios ponyboy has watched play out in his dreams. he began having to share a bed with soda, something he hadn’t done since he was a little kid, just to keep him calm enough to get some sleep every night.

after they moved to the west side and time passed, the nightmares became fewer again. at paul’s house, he slept in his own room and only had to go slip into soda’s bed when the nightmares got so bad that he was unable to calm himself down.

one night, pony woke with a start, gasping as he shot up. he couldn’t breathe, it was all too much. his parents, the train, the fire, the screams. as he struggled to catch his breath, he realized he was crying; his face was soaked with tears. he got out of bed, going to make his way to soda’s room. he couldn’t breathe and he felt like he was dying and he just needed a hug and comfort and reassurance that everything was okay.

but as he made his way to soda’s room, he discovered that soda wasn’t in his own room but in chet’s room at the house. the two had clearly fallen asleep while watching a movie in there. and while pony had no issue waking up soda cause he knew soda wouldn’t mind, he couldn’t do that to chet. not only just to be nice to chet, but chet seemed to think pony was pretty cool and that would just be embarrassing to have to wake him up crying because he was being a baby and needed his big brother. so instead, he made his way to the kitchen. a glass of water will make him feel better, surely.

pony sat at the kitchen table, glass of water in front of him as he tried to will himself to calm down. he had gotten his breathing mostly under control but there were still tears falling from his eyes and his brain was still replaying the screams.

he brought his hands up to cover his ears, knowing it wouldn’t work. blocking out sound won’t do anything for a sound inside of his head but he was desperate. “stop. stop!” he mumbled, smacking himself in the side of the head. he was so absorbed in making the sound go away that he didn’t hear the footsteps coming down the hall and towards the kitchen.

“pony? that you?” pony whipped around to find paul entering the kitchen, clearly half asleep.

pony quickly moved to wipe the tears off his face. “yeah, just got thirsty. what are you doing up?”

paul narrowed his eyes at pony, clearly picking up on the lie. he sat down at the table with the younger boy. “heard someone walking in the hallway, wanted to make sure everyone was okay. didn’t know if it was one of you guys or if someone was just getting here and may have needed something.” since adopting the curtis boys, paul had also adopted the family’s open door policy, telling the group, greasers and socs alike, that they were welcome at any time, no questions asked.

“oh. sorry for waking you up.”

“don’t be sorry. i’d rather wake up and be able to help than not be available when someone needs me.” paul let them sit with his words for a second, as if waiting to see if pony would take the bait and admit that he needed help. when he didn’t, paul continued. “are you okay?”

pony was quick to nod. “yeah. i’m doing fine. like i said, just thirsty.” as if to prove his point, pony picked up the glass of water and took a large sip from it. “see?”

paul just stared at pony. “right. well if that’s all, you should get back to bed.”

“no! i mean, no, i think i’m gonna stay up a bit longer. i’m not really tired.”

paul sighed, trying to weigh out his options. he really tried not to pry into soda and pony’s lives, knowing they were still trying to work on completely trusting him to let him into their lives. but he also recognized that he was their legal guardian and it was his job to take care of them, which means sometimes getting involved even when they don’t want him to.

“any particular reason you don’t want to go back to bed?”

pony looked down at the table, sensing paul had caught on to his secret. still, he didn’t give up yet. “no?”

“pony, you know i’m not that stupid, right?” paul deadpanned and pony looked back up at him, letting out a small laugh. the joke was enough to loosen pony up, to make him admit the truth.

“i had a nightmare. really bad one. couldn’t calm myself down. usually i would go to soda but he’s in chet’s room and i just panicked and now im scared to go back to sleep.”

paul took in pony’s words, nodding as he thought of the best way to respond. his immediate reaction was to tell pony to come spend the night in his room, the same way he would have if it had been cherry or chet coming to him with this. but he also recognized that his relationship with pony was on a different level than with the other 2 and he didn’t want to scare pony off.

“well if you’d really like to stay up, you’re more than welcome to do that. but i can also tell from looking at you that you’re exhausted and want to sleep some more so if you’re not wanting to go back to your room and be alone, how about you come spend the night in my room?”

“i don’t want to bother you.”

“you aren’t a bother. and if you don’t want to spend the night with me, i can go wake soda up for you. or we can call darry, you can talk to him for a bit.”

pony was quick to shake his head. “don’t wake them up! let them sleep.”

paul was quick to back off the idea after seeing pony’s reaction. “okay! we don’t have to get them. i’m going to go back to my room. you coming with?”

pony hesitated for a second before nodding. worse case scenario, if he got uncomfortable or it wasn’t helping, he could always come back down to the living room and watch tv until morning. so he followed paul and they walked back to his bedroom.

paul let pony get into the bed first, pony settling into the other side of paul’s bed. paul laid in his usual spot, giving pony space.

“can i.. um, can i lay closer to you?” pony’s voice was quiet as they laid in the dark room.

“yeah, of course, kiddo. you wanna come rest your head on my chest, listen to my heartbeat? that always helps your brother fall back asleep after he has a nightmare.”

pony had begun moving closer to paul as he spoke but he froze as paul finished. “darry has nightmares?”

paul let out a breathe before responding. “yeah. i don’t think i’m supposed to tell you this, since your brother likes pretending he’s big and tough all the time. but he’s had nightmares pretty consistently since your folks died too.”

pony unfroze, continuing to move to his new spot. he laid next to paul, resting his head on paul’s chest to listen to his heartbeat, just as paul suggested. paul wrapped on arm around pony to keep him in place. as pony listened to the thumping of his heart, it did immediately help him begin to relax.

“darry really has nightmares too?”

“yeah.”

“why didn’t he ever tell me?”

“you were dealing with your own nightmares, he didn’t want to put more thoughts into your head and make yours worse.”

“oh, i guess that makes sense.”

paul ran a hand through pony’s hair in attempt to comfort him. “okay, come on, let’s go to sleep. you can keep pretending you’re not tired but i am.”

before the last few months, paul had gotten used to his house being quiet and empty. sure, cherry came over a lot and chet hung out sometimes but usually paul hung out with his friends at other places. but now, it was unusual for there to be no one at the house. now, against all expectations, the house was usually full with greasers and socs alike, hanging out and being friends (there were still some trust issues and times where there was a clear divide between the groups but they were getting over that faster than any of them could have imagined). it was certainly an unexpected turn of events but not one that paul was upset by. surprisingly, he found that he enjoyed having his house always bustling with people and he understood why the curtis parents seemed to enjoy it so much.

when the curtis boys returned home from the cemetery, paul met them at the door, not commenting on the red eyes on all three boys. when he made a motion to ask the younger two how they were feeling, he was instead brushed past, the two rushing into the house. the reaction would make sense but he swears he heard them laughing as they ran through the entryway.

"what was that?" paul looked at darry, who had been trailing behind the two. even darry looked confused watching them run inside.

"no idea. they were acting normal in the car. i mean, as normal and fine as we can be today." darry attempted to walk past paul through the doorway but the shorter boy blocked the path.

"how are you? you doing okay?" paul wrapped his arms around darry, pulling him in closer. he rested his chin on the taller boy's chest, looking up to watch his face.

"yeah. no, yeah, i'm good."

"okay now answer again but maybe don't lie to me this time."

darry sighed, looking down guiltily.

"fine. i mean, it's hard. i want to make them proud but i feel like i'm not doing it right. like i'm failing them. i feel like, if they're watching over us, it maybe looks like i abandoned the boys," upon noticing the way paul seemed to frown at this, he was quick to continue. "no offense to you. but i just can't help but feel like they'd be disappointed in me for giving up so quickly."

"hey. you didn't give them up. you didn't abandon them. yeah, they're living here with me. why? because otherwise they would be out in a different state in a home. you did what you did to keep them. you did not abandon them. even dally has come around to admit that, that's how you know it's true," darry allowed himself to laugh at paul's joke and paul smiled at the small victory. "you never gave up on them. you're here all the time for dinner and to hang out. when you aren't here, you're calling and texting them. you still take them out at least once a week to spend time with them. as much as i take care of them, so do you. your parents would be proud of you."

darry nodded. "yeah. yeah, okay. thank you," he gave paul a kiss on the head and backed out of his hold, walking around him to get in the house.

paul followed him into the house, closing the door behind them. "i'm gonna go change." the boys had decided to dress at least a bit nicely for the cemetery, meaning darry was wearing a button up that he was dying to get out of.

"alright, i'll be out here. i've gotta text cherry, let her know it's good to come over. i figured we'd wait to make sure you guys were feeling okay before they were over. didn't want to overwhelm you when you got home."

darry just smiled, his face showing gratitude without any words being spoken.

paul made his way to the living room, pulling out his phone to text cherry while he sat on the couch. while he typed, he heard a throat clear in the doorway. he looked up to see pony and soda looking at him with huge grins on their faces.

"what's up? you guys feeling okay?"

"we're good!" soda was quick to answer but he couldn't stop the giggling that came from him, even when pony elbowed him.

"what are you guys up to?" paul looked at them suspiciously.

"we have something for you!" pony took his arm out from behind his back to reveal a gift bag.

"...you guys are aware that my birthday isn't any time soon, right?"

soda pushed pony forward with the bag. "yeah. 'course we know that."

"then what is this for? did you guys, like, break something and this is to beg for forgiveness?"

pony shrugged, finally shoving the bag into paul's hands. "well, you're our legal guardian and there's no, like, legal guardian day or whatever. but we figured father's day was close enough. so happy father's day!"

paul studied the boys' faces, trying to find any trace of this being a joke. but instead, he was just met with two large smiles.

paul finally accepted the gift, looking inside and pulling out the card first. PAUL was written on the envelope in what was clearly soda's handwriting. when he opened the card, he was met with "cheer's to your first father's day". it was clearly a card meant for someone with a baby, not a 20 year old with a 16 and 14 year old, judging by the art of a baby bottle cheersing with a beer bottle. paul couldn't stop the huge smile that came over his face, even if he wanted to.

he opened it up to read the short messages from the boys. there was a whole paragraph in pony's neat handwriting, thanking paul for everything he had done for them. 'i can't imagine what would have happened if you hadn't helped us out', he had written. soda kept his message shorter, probably knowing his handwriting was harder to read. but paul was able to make out his message of 'thanks for taking care of us and looking after darry too'. on the bottom of the card, soda had signed it "love," with both of them signing their names underneath.

he looked up at the boys, who were both still giving him grins but looked slightly sheepish now, as if they were afraid of his reaction. he reached back into the bag, pulling tissue paper away. he saw two items and he pulled out the smaller of the two first.

as he pulled it out, he recognized it as a tshirt. he held it up, shaking it out so he could see it. he could hear soda laughing as the boys watched him. it was a simple black shirt with white text that said: 'DILF. damn i love football'. paul let out a loud laugh, shaking his head at the boys, who were both laughing now. "you guys are so weird. where did you even get this?"

"amazon. so you're gonna wear it out all the time, right?"

paul just continued laughing. "i think your brother would murder me if i tried wearing that out of the house."

paul moved on to the other item in the bag. it was a frame. inside the frame was one of those cliche child handprint gifts that kids usually made in school. instead of father, it said 'best legal guardian, hands down!' with pony and soda's painted handprints underneath. like the card, this also had 'love, pony and soda' written on the bottom.

"come here, you knuckleheads." paul opened his arms and both boys made their way into a hug. "thank you, guys. this does seriously mean a lot."

pony shrugged, his face red. "it was nothing. you've done a lot for us and we wanted to do something for you. plus it gave us a good distraction."

"yeah. i know we're laughing and joking but we really do mean it. these past few months have been really hard but it was nice to know we had you in our corner. i can't imagine us trying to deal with our grief and getting separated and taken out of state."

the three boys sit in silence for a second at the reminder of what would have happened to the brothers had paul not stepped in.

"of course i'm in your corner. like it or not, you guys are my kids now. and i will always be here to take care of you guys." paul looked down at the present that was still on his lap. "i hope you guys know this frame is getting hung up."

pony made a face at that. "but the guys will make fun of us!"

"oh well, i want to hang up my present!" paul teased, pulling the boys into him for another hug. "it will have to be hung up tomorrow though cause the rest of the group is coming over soon. i'm gonna go put these in my room for now cause i don't trust the rest of the knuckleheads not to break them." paul got up, messing pony's hair up as he moved away from the two.

"hey! i give you a heartfelt present and you mess my hair up in response?" pony called after him, rushing to a mirror to fix his hair, while soda laughed, swatting at pony to mess it up more.

paul knocked on his bedroom door, hearing darry say to come in. he opened the door and darry was sat on the edge of the bed, wringing his hands together in his lap. he looked up as paul entered, eyeing the gift bag in his hand.

paul ignored darry's look, focusing on him instead. "you still doing okay?"

"yeah. what you said earlier helped. i still don't feel great but it did make me think about all the stuff i've done right, everything i've done to make them proud. it's nice to not be alone to go through all this." paul sat next to darry, putting an arm around his shoulder and leaning into him. "enough about me. what've you got there?"

paul grinned, holding up the bag. "oh, this? just a present from the boys to celebrate my first ever father's day."

darry stared at him with a dumbfounded look on his face. "they didn't! what did they get you?"

“so what is this meeting even about?” paul asked as pony seemed to get over his shock and continued walking.

“something about how im slacking in class? which, for the record, i’ve done all the work. i mean, yeah i'm struggling a bit because of everything but i swear i've done it all. the guy just hates me.”

“well for the record, this guy hated me too.”

pony looked up at paul with a raised eyebrow. “what’d you do?”

“your brother was very distracting.”

pony scrunched his face up. “gross.”

“what? ew, not in a gross way. god, i just meant we sat next to each other and we fooled around a lot. did you really think i was saying the teacher hated me cause i had the hots for your brother?”

pony’s eyes widened as he moved to cover his ears. “oh my god! ew! i’m gonna cut my ears off, why would you say that?!”

“you were the one that implied it!”

“gross," pony removed his hands from over his ears as he comes to a stop. "whatever. we’re here now, it’s this door,” pony gestured weakly at the door they had stopped in front of.

“well, here goes nothing.” paul went to reach for the door handle.

pony quickly cleared his throat. “knock. he doesn’t like when people don’t knock.”

paul quickly nodded, shifting his hand away from the handle to instead knock on the door.

paul knocked and upon getting a positive response, opened the door. he ushered pony into the room in front of him before entering himself.

mr fuller didn’t look up from the papers on his desk, instead just speaking. “mr curtis, i must say you are a difficult man to get a hold of. i’ve been urgently trying to get a meeting set up in regards to ponyboy’s slacking and it’s just been-” he finally looked up from the paper to see paul standing in front of him. his eyes narrowed, clearly displeased. “paul holden. you’re not darrel curtis.”

paul and pony shared a glance before paul responded. “i see you’re still as observant as you were when i was in your class.”

mr fuller didn’t seem to find paul’s comment amusing. instead, he continued scowling at paul. “well, darrell is a grown up now so i assumed he would know better than to send a friend in his place for a professional meeting, but i guess that was a foolish assumption on my part.”

pony’s mouth fell open, ready to defend his brother but paul placed a hand on his shoulder; a silent signal to not say anything that could get him in more trouble. instead, paul took the lead.

“for someone complaining that darry is difficult to get a hold of, you clearly don’t check your emails. pony, can you go wait out in the hallway please?” pony turned towards paul to argue but upon seeing the look on paul’s face, he knew he could trust paul to defend him and his brothers. nodding, pony went back out into the hall.

now that pony was gone, paul turned his focus back on mr fuller. “as i was saying, i actually personally took care of making sure all of pony’s teachers were emailed both by the front office and the guidance office to inform them of the situation. so if you are unaware, that means you don’t actually read any of the information sent to you by your employer. so that’s already a really bad look for you, on top of openly disrespecting a student’s legal guardian, after they respectfully came in to meet with you. so, you were saying about mr curtis?”

mr fuller had clearly not expected paul’s words as he hurriedly scrolled on his computer and flipped through papers on his desk. “you’ll have a forgive me, i seem to have forgotten the details of the situation. could you catch me up?”

paul sat down in the chair across from the desk. “well you should tell me what you already know so that i don’t have to waste time going over things you already know.”

despite the fact that paul was clearly winning whatever game the two seemed to find themselves in, mr fuller was determined to go down swinging. “well i believe it would be better if you just told me everything, so i can hear how it is from your perspective.”

“mr and mrs curtis passed away in a terrible accident. is that ringing any bells for you? did you at least check that email?”

mr fuller clearly did not appreciate being talked down to like this, especially not by a former student. “i’m aware of what happened to them,” he spoke stiffly.

paul felt bad using the curtis parents’ death as a gotcha moment, even if it was at the expense of a rude teacher in defense of the boys, so he finally got serious. "look, the state was going to take sodapop and ponyboy and stick them in a home and they would have been far away and no one wanted to see them get split up; from each other or from darry. so i took them in, adopted them. so now i'm their legal guardian, adoptive father, whatever you want to call me. darry and i are just trying to make sure they don't get uprooted from everything they know."

mr blank's face stayed flat, almost bored looking. "how admirable of you. i see you're still using darrel as your charity to make yourself feel like a good person."

his words felt like a stab to paul's heart. but if there was one thing paul was good at, it was not letting his face give away his emotions. so he pretended he didn't care, like that hadn't just validated all of the doubts he had been feeling about himself. "i'm sorry that as a teacher, it offends you that i'm just trying to do what's good for the kid. point is, i'm ponyboy's guardian so this is my meeting to have with you. so please, tell me what was so important about pony's work in your class that we had to meet."

"well, ponyboy is really struggling to keep up in the class. he's been falling behind on his work and doesn't show any interest in the class. seems like he thinks he's just too good for my class."

paul sucked on his teeth, thinking over his words carefully. "as mentioned, his parents were just killed in a horrific accident. and while my stepping in and adopting him stopped him from being taken out of tulsa, it's still a huge adjustment. i mean, he had to move out of his childhood house, he's living away from his oldest brother for the first time. it's a lot. give him some fucking grace."

"excuse you?" mr blank was taken aback but paul's language. he had clearly prepped for this meeting with the intention of it being with darry, who however mad he got, still would have been somewhat civil out of respect for ponyboy's education. paul, however, had no issue disrespecting someone who not only disrespected him but also the curtises.

"you heard me. he's going through a lot. give him a break."

"plenty of students are going through stuff. that's not my business. my business is making sure students get their work done and respect my class. all the other students seem to be able to keep up, so clearly this is a ponyboy issue."

paul let out a deep breath. as mentioned, he had no issue being rude back. but he could not afford to lose his temper with pony right out in the hall. he had made so much progress in getting pony and soda to trust him already in just a few weeks, he could not ruin that.

"fine. if pony is as behind in your class as you say he is, can you please provide me with a list of what he's missing? and then i will go through it with him and we'll make sure to get everything to you."

"well ponyboy is a big boy. if he can be moved up a grade, he should be able to keep track of his own work. without his 20 year old parent babysitting." the way mr fuller said parent was laced with disgust.

"if you don't wish for darry or i to get involved, then why request a meeting at all?"

mr fuller seemed to not have expected his question. he stammered for a second. "as a teacher, it is my responsibility to keep parents informed."

"well, i'm certainly informed about some stuff. just probably not the information you were hoping i would leave here thinking about; like how you don't read any emails from your higher ups, you don't seem to care about the well being of your students. or how blatantly disrespectful you were about pony's parents dying. all this to say, ponyboy told me prior to this meeting that he has turned in all the work and if you won't show me anything to back up your statement that he hasn't, then i will have to believe him. so?"

mr fuller didn't say anything, simply scanning over the papers on his desk, looking for anything he could use to prove his point.

"cool, you clearly have nothing. have an awful life." paul got up from his chair and turned around, heading back to the door without waiting for a response.

he met with ponyboy out in the hallway, beginning to walk straight down the hallway. "come on. he's an asshole. but you have nothing to worry about. we're going to go and get you taken out of that class and get him reported. maybe even get him fired. and then i'm thinking ice cream. you want ice cream?" paul trailed off as he seemed to realize pony was still standing by the classroom door, eyes wide as he watched paul. "are you coming?"