Work Text:
The vacant lot was probably Johnny’s favorite place on Earth. Mostly because he didn’t know any other places on Earth besides the neighborhood he’d grown up in and his favorite bit of that piece of Earth was the vacant lot.
It was just a grassy lot, covered in bits of old car parts and equally old newspapers, but it was special to him and the other greasers in his gang. More to him than the others as he spent every night the weather was good out on the old ripped out car seat, covered in newspapers at the back of the vacant lot. It was better than going home to mother who loved to yell at him and a father who loved to beat him. His mother hit him too, but his father was the one who would beat him, sometimes until he couldn’t move.
The vacant lot, even on the colder more windy nights, was better than that.
He was there alone this evening, searching for the football his gang had left there to use when they wanted to play catch together while there was still some light. It was rare for any greaser to travel alone, but Johnny liked being alone. He liked spending the night in the lot looking at the stars or throwing the ball across the lot just because he could while the world slept around him. That was what he was going to do tonight. Maybe he would look at the stars once he wore himself out, count them and see how far he could get before he drifted off on his car seat bed amongst his newspaper blankets.
That really did sound like the perfect night to him and he smiled to himself as he continued hunting, hunched over, through the lot for the football.
A bright light flashed through the lot and over Johnny’s eyes, making him turn and look into a pair of bright headlights. He stood and saw the blue Mustang that was behind them. He couldn’t see how many people were in the car, but he didn’t need to to be nervous. That car was far too nice to really belong on this side of town.
There was a reason for greasers to travel in packs: the Socs, the rival gang that lived on the West side of town, frequently traveled to the East side to find lone greasers to jump.
And that was exactly what he was.
Johnny put his hands into his pockets to keep the boys who got out of the car from seeing them shaking. There were four of them and Johnny knew immediately no one would come for him if he screamed. This wasn’t a nice neighborhood. This wasn’t like the neighborhoods these boys came from and they knew it. He could scream all he wanted and the people in the houses nearby would only think it was a typical Friday summer night.
“Hey, grease,” the boy, who was the driver of the Mustang and must’ve been the leader, said. “What’cha doin’ out here all by yourself?” He was tall with curling blonde hair and brown eyes similar to Johnny’s, but they held none of the warmth. He held a flask in one hand, the same hand that was covered in three different rings.
Johnny swallowed and didn’t look up at the boy’s face again. He looked at their shoes instead. He noticed they were all wearing really nice penny loafers and khaki slacks.
Luckily, no one seemed to have noticed that Johnny hadn’t replied.
“Greasers...” the leader went on. “You all make me sick.”
He threw his flask to the ground and all four of them began walking towards Johnny. He wanted to take a step back, maybe start running, but he couldn’t make himself. The soles of his shoes were rooted to the ground and his shaking hands were stuck inside his pockets. He’d lived with his parents long enough that he knew when a beating was coming.
The Socs surrounded him. They didn’t pull out any weapons, but they didn’t need to. They were all bigger and stronger than him and wearing rings and they knew it as well as he did. That was when the feeling returned to Johnny’s legs and he knew if he could outrun them, if he could get to Ponyboy’s house or Dally’s or any of the gang’s, he’d be safe.
But he didn’t even get to the edge of the lot. He didn’t even get three steps before one of the Socs caught him by the sleeve of his jacket and, though he turned and pulled himself out of it, he was still thrown him back into the center of the four of them. The guy who had his jacket threw it to the edge of the lot behind him and that was how it started.
One of the Socs behind Johnny, turned him around and slugged him across the face. Then hit him in the stomach. Luckily, it wasn’t the guy with the rings, but he was next and when he hit Johnny, it hurt ten times worse. He felt his face cut open like zipper and blood begin to gush down his face as one of the rings sliced from the top of his temple right down his cheek.
He let out a cry of pain at that one. He let out another cry when the same Soc hit him in the stomach as well. He gasped, his eyes going wide with shock as he felt his ribs crack and when the Soc let go of him, his knees buckled.
They all kicked him then, wherever they could reach. He curled himself into a ball, trying to protect himself from their blows.
One of them pulled him up and said, “I’m gonna kill you if I ever see you again.” He backhanded him across the face as hard as he could.
Another hit him in the small of his back so hard he cried out as he said, “I’ve heard about you, greaser. You’re lucky the boys are here or I’d show you what it feels like to be a real man.”
Johnny didn’t have to ask to know what he meant.
This continued on. The Socs dolling out threats every time they hit him. He threatened him with rape, murder, killing his friends, killing his family, following him, coming for him. He lost track of it all eventually and only remembered the things they kept repeating.
The Soc with the rings only hit him in the face one, but he hit him everywhere else he could reach until Johnny was sliced up all over his arms, chest, and back. The rings tore through his thin t-shirt and cut up his skin. It wasn’t long before his shirt was spattered with more red than white.
He wasn’t sure how long this went on. It felt like hours, but in reality was probably only minutes. Later he would think it felt so long because he was in so much pain and he was only half conscious and every time he felt lucid for a few seconds, they were still at it. Then suddenly, he was lucid for a few seconds again and he was alone with only the sound of the crickets in the grass and the stars coming out above him for company. Not that he could see them. His nose was pressed into the dirt and he couldn’t open his eyes because they were swollen shut and pressed against the ground.
He couldn’t move. He could only lay there in the grass, shaking, covered in his own blood, in more pain than he could ever remember being in his entire life. He knew now that the way his father and mother beat him were gentle love taps compared to this.
He would never be sure how long he lay there in the lot before he heard faint voices. At first, he thought it was the Socs come back to finish him off. And he braced himself when heard the footsteps coming towards him. He felt hands turning him over, but this time they weren’t rough. They were gentle. He heard a gasp and moan and someone falling to their knees and though they didn’t say anything, he already knew it was his gang, come to save him.
Everyone seemed to materialize all at once and, thought Johnny couldn’t see them, he could hear them. He heard Dally swear, but other than that, no one made a sound apart from sick, horrified sounds until Darry arrived.
Then he felt gentle hands lifting his torso into someone’s lap. They said something, but he couldn’t really understand what they were saying. Then they shook him and it was like they shook open his eardrums as well.
“Hey, Johnnycake.”
“Soda?” he asked. He recognized the voice, but being unable to open his swollen eyes, he couldn’t see for sure. His own voice sounded hoarse and awful. He hated how weak it sounded, even in his own ears.
“Yeah, it’s me,” Sodapop replied. His voice was gentle, soothing, but also sounded strained with held back emotion. “Don’t talk you’re gonna be okay.”
“There was a whole bunch of them,” he tried to say, his tongue fumbling over the words. “A blue Mustang full...I got so scared...” He felt the tears form in the corners of his eyes and couldn’t stop them from falling no matter how hard he tried. Then he was sobbing, crying harder than he had since he was a kid. He couldn’t remember the last time he cried like this. He half expected one of the boys to call him a baby and tell him to shut up, but to his surprise no one did. Soda just held him, brushing his hair out of his shut eyes, telling him it would be okay.
Finally, his sobs subsided enough that he could gasp out what happened. When he finished, he let out a shuddering breath and struggled to control his breathing. He didn’t notice that he wasn’t the only one. Nor did he notice the silence that proceeded his story. He just felt his body shaking and the pain in his ribs and on his face and realized he wanted to go home. Not his home. That wasn’t home. But a home. A home where he wouldn’t be beaten, where he could lie under a pile of blankets and sleep, comfortable for once.
And for one minute, in Soda’s arms, he could pretend that’s where he was. But then he felt he pain and the cold again and he was brought back to reality and he let out a little whimper.
“Move, Soda,” he heard Darry say. “I’ll bring him back to our house. He can stay there tonight.”
If breathing didn’t hurt, Johnny would’ve thanked Darry a thousand times on the way back to the Curtis house from the lot. He didn’t know how he’d known exactly what he needed, but he wasn’t going to question it. The rest of the gang trailed along behind them. No one said a thing.
The Curtis house wasn’t very far from the lot and was warm and bright. Not that Johnny knew the second part since his eyes were still swollen shut. He heard the door open and shut about a thousand times while someone laid him down on the couch in the living room.
“Put him on one of your beds, man,” Dally said. “That couch ain’t soft enough.”
His words were short and held no room for interpretation of their meanings, but there something beneath them that no one had ever heard in Dallas Winston’s voice before. And maybe Darry heard it too because,shockingly, he listened to him and brought Johnny into another a room and then laid him on a bed.
Johnny couldn’t stop the sigh that left his lips as he was laid down on the mattress. It was the softest bed he’d ever felt. He could’ve fallen asleep right there, but his face was still bleeding and so were several of the other cuts across his chest and that had to be dealt with first.
Steve, Two-Bit, Darry, Sodapop, and Ponyboy all helped clean him up and bandage his cuts. Two-Bit sowed up the cut on his face. Steve bandaged the cuts on his arms. Darry helped ice his bruises and bandage his cracked ribs. And Soda and Ponyboy kept going to get the new bandages, the new wet rags, the new pots of clean water.
By the time they were halfway done, the swelling in Johnny’s eyes had subsided enough that he could open them both just a crack and see what was going on. The gang smiled at him, but no one made any jokes about his appearance. It was a testament to how bad he really looked.
The only one who wasn’t helping out was Dally and that was because he was too busy drinking straight out of one of Darry’s hidden liquor bottles and talking about how he was going to find the Socs who’d done this and kill them with his bare hands. No one thought he was joking, but no one tried to deter him from it either. They all felt similarly.
It was completely dark outside by the time they finished. The streetlights had come on and a hush had settled over the neighborhood. Johnny discovered he was lying in Darry’s bed and when he said he felt good enough to move himself to the couch, Darry told him he didn’t mind spending one night on the couch. Johnny was grateful. He really hadn’t felt good enough to get up.
The hours wore on and everyone drifted out of Darry’s room, but no one left the Curtis house. Somehow the fact Johnny had gotten jumped had shaken them all up and made none of them feel safe. No one wanted to walk home now and one by one they began drifting off in various places all over the house. It was Two-Bit who ended up falling asleep on the couch and Darry in his armchair. Ponyboy and Sodapop slept in their own bed and Steve passed on the floor after he and Two-Bit had just about finished another bottle of Darry’s hidden liquor.
It was a testament to how little Darry drank that both the bottle Dally had and Two-Bit and Steve had filched were nearly full.
By the time midnight rolled around, the ones still awake were Dally and Johnny. Johnny had tried to sleep off and on, drifting in and out of semi-consciousness similarly to how he had in the lot before Soda, Steve, and Ponyboy had found him. But now it was midnight and he couldn’t fall back to sleep. The exhaustion from the adrenaline rush he’d gotten when the Socs had attacked him had worn off and now all he could think about was how there was a blue Mustang out there full of Socs that wanted to do a whole horrific array of things to him.
They were okay coming to their side of town now. That wasn’t exactly new, but it was new that they were now jumping the greasers who didn’t travel together in their own neighborhood. It was then Johnny realized he would never be safe again. He would never be able to walk through his own neighborhood without wondering if those Socs would come back. He felt like crying all over again.
He didn’t thought. It took a lot to make him cry and in their gang you didn’t cry. You just didn’t. Not unless you just had to. Not unless you had every reason to. That was just the way things were. Though, as he lay there, staring through the slats in the blinds that covered the window in Darry’s room, he realized that the boys hadn’t said anything to him when they found him crying in the lot. Maybe to them that counted as one of the times you just had to.
“You ain’t gonna be able to ever sleep again if you keep thinkin’ about it.”
Johnny nearly jumped out of his skin when he heard the voice and turned to see Dally sitting in a darkened corner of the bedroom. His legs were bent, his elbows resting on his knees, his arms dangling in front of him. He held the liquor bottled he’d swiped at the beginning of the night in one of his hands. Johnny noticed it was almost empty now.
“Thought you went home, Dal,” he said honestly. His voice was weak and hoarse.
Something passed across Dally’s face then, just as he looked away, that Johnny couldn’t define, but it almost looked like anguish. But Dallas Winston didn’t feel emotions like that. Dallas Winston was hard and mean and drank liquor for fun. Not because of anything else.
That was what Johnny reminded himself of as Dally swallowed and turned back to him, saying, “My old man is in town. I don’t wanna go home. No one else did either, y’know.”
Johnny knew, but this was Dallas Winston. He didn’t care to stay if anyone was hurt. He liked his sleep. He liked his own bed. So why was he still here?
Dally stood, taking another swig from the almost empty liquor bottle and sat down on the end of the bed. Johnny watched the mattress sink a little as he sat down.
For several moments, they were both silent. The crickets in the grass of the Curtis’ front yard sang to them through the partially open windows as warm summer breezes blew in and ruffled their hair. Then Dally looked up at Johnny with that same odd expression.
“You gotta be careful, man,” he said, resting the liquor bottle on his knee. “You know how the Socs been lately. They ain’t playin’ by the rules no more. They coulda done somethin’ really bad, man.”
There was something in Dally’s voice that Johnny had never heard before either. It sounded like the same thing he saw in his expression. But that’s impossible, he reminded himself, Dallas Winston doesn’t care about anything or anyone.
Did he?
“They ain’t ever done this before, man,” Johnny replied in protest. “They come around here, but they don’t usually jump us unless we go out of our neighborhood. I go to the lot alone plenty of times and they ain’t never bothered me before.”
“Things ain’t the same, Johnny!” Dally replied in almost a shout. He seemed to remember at the last second they were both in a house full of sleeping people. “Things are gettin’ rougher. Greasers ain’t safe no more. The Socs are gettin’ bolder cause they know they can get away with anything.” He let out a scoff and looked away, taking another swig of the liquor.
Johnny wasn’t sure why Dally was getting so upset. And he didn’t have a chance to ask either because just as quickly as he’d appeared in the corner of the room, he got up and left. He didn’t leave the house. Johnny listened for the sound of the front door slamming shut and never heard it, but he didn’t know where Dally went or what he did.
But he didn’t sleep that night either. The day – Dally in particular – had left him with much to think about and he was up thinking about it until the first rays of dawn shone through the window and Darry got up for work.