25 for the mini fic asks? Please!
"Is it true? That you have to pay someone to get an eyeshine in a slam?" The kid's eyes swivel to look at Ponyboy in earnest.
He doesn't know if he has the heart to out her gender yet—they all think she's still pretending to be a boy, and worse an alpha. The shaved buzz of her hair is only doing so much for her, and he gives her as kind of a look as he can manage. As an answer, he lifts up the patch he has over his eye, letting her see the eyeshine herself. "No. I was born with it, and so was he."
He doesn't tell her that the experiments robbed him of the eyeshine for the most part or that the patch is mostly for show now. Even diminished, it's still good, not as sensitive but it makes for a good disguise. She still brightens up, her eyes darting over to Dallas. He's still focused on sawing off the collar he's got around his neck, unwilling to let anyone except Pony help him.
And right now, Pony's busy trying to come up with a plan given what they have: the Captain Cherry Valance herself, daughter of one of the biggest generals in the Celestial Corps who's still not sure if she should've let Dallas free and smarting over Ponyboy almost killing her; that Merc, Randy who's got a bad habit that Ponyboy can scent even from where he's sitting, knowing he's probably sweating out the last round of drugs; the kid calling herself Curly even though Ponyboy knows Curly Shepard is dead; the prospector Marcia already trying to joke with the Holy Man who Ponyboy is sure isn't actually a Holy Man who's name he won't give.
The remains of the ship keeps on smoking, and Ponyboy knows that they've got to get off of this rock, and soon. The only two people who seem to understand that there's life crawling, humming beneath the sand dunes is him and Dallas.
things you said in front of other people — riddickverse.
