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Ever since he was six years old and met Dallas Winston and discovered the car seat in the vacant lot, Johnny had spent as little time as possible home. He knew he was lucky. He had friends whose houses he could go stay at when it was cold out if he needed to. He had friends period and that meant more to him than just about anything. They were the only family he really knew.
But that didn’t mean he didn’t have to go home sometimes.
All of his clothes were there. Same with his school things, his books and other personal belongings, his bed, a shower, and, occasionally, food. And, unfortunately for him, he needed those things in his life to live it.
He knew he could theoretically move his stuff to one of the gang’s houses, but he didn’t want to impose on them. He felt bad enough when he had to spend the night at once of their houses when it got too cold to sleep in the lot and he couldn’t go home.
But he hadn’t done any of that. So, sometimes, he had to go home.
Today was one of those days. He needed a shower and he needed to grab a clean t-shirt. He also needed to steal some laundry detergent if he could, so he could take his other clothes to the nearby laundromat, maybe take Ponyboy and Dally along, since his mother sure as hell wouldn’t wash them.
He’d spend the night before in the vacant lot. He’d been able to hear his folks fighting from up the street and had decided it wasn’t worth trying to be warm in bed. They’d drag him out of bed somehow and turn it into something he’d done. They didn’t hate each other even half as much as they hated him and they didn’t love yelling at each other more than him either. If they had the option to yell at or beat him rather than each other, they’d take it.
It was for this reason he thought sometimes that maybe his parents still loved each other deep down and just couldn’t figure out how to express it or get along with each other now. A part of him knew this was bullshit and another part of him wanted desperately to believe it. It meant that maybe, just maybe, they loved him deep down too.
The house was on a corner, right before the vacant lot and down the street from Ponyboy’s. His bedroom was hidden from view of the street and he always kept the window open, no matter how cold it got. He was rarely in there anyway and this way he always could get into the house without having to use the front door and – usually –without his parents knowing, too.
It was morning. Not early, but an hour and a half before noon. He crept around the side of the house and to his window. His father got up early to go do construction work, but his mother hadn’t worked since before she’d had Johnny and didn’t usually get up before noon. If he was careful and quiet, he’d be in and out of the house without her ever knowing.
The window was open just enough that he could crawl in and drop down into a pile of blankets he’d strategically placed on the other side. No one went into his room anymore and even if they did, they didn’t care enough about his things to shut and lock the window. Apparently, it had never occurred to them that a robber could drop through the window and search the rest of the house.
Straightening, Johnny looked around his sparse bedroom. His bed and night stand were pressed up against the wall to his right. His dresser was to his left. His closet was directly in front of him and the door to the rest of the house was to the right of the closet. He turned to his left and opened the second drawer of the dresser. He quickly pulled off his top and grabbed a clean one out of the drawer. He balled the other t-shirt up in his fist and knelt down to next grab some new jeans.
He had six shirts and four pairs of pants and he was on his last of each. He had to go to the laundromat today. But, unless he had the nickle to pay for the detergent there, he would need to steal his mother’s. And that meant going to the linen closet where she kept her own. The closet that was right next to her bedroom.
Johnny clutched the clothes in his hands as tightly as he could, steeling himself and then bunched them up under one arm and gripped the doorknob. He turned it and opened the door as slowly and silently as possible. Then he stopped moving and listened.
The small house was silent.
A good and bad thing.
Good because it meant his mother was asleep. Bad because any sort of noise would wake her.
Taking a deep breath, he stepped into the hall, trying to walk as silently as he could in his old Converse sneakers. The linen closet was ten steps away. Now eight steps. Now six. Four. Three. Two.
He opened the closet was slowly and silently as he’d opened his bedroom door and his eyes flicked upward, past the extra sheets, the broom leaning against the wall to his left, and other cleaning supplies, seeing the detergent on the top shelf, just barely out of reach.
He clenched his jaw. He wanted to curse instead.
Johnny wasn’t tall. He never had been. His parents were taller than him and had been all his life. They likely always would be. And they’d used this to their advantage since he was a small child. His mother knew he needed the detergent to wash his clothes. She would give it to him if he asked for it, he knew...though that would be only after she’d made him feel guilty for asking to begin with. So he’d just started stealing it. She couldn’t prove it, however, so she’d done this.
And this was new. Up to this point, Johnny could get the detergent without her noticing, but he must’ve taken too much last time. So she’d moved it. And made it significantly harder to get without being noticed. The only thing Johnny could see that would be his access to the top shelf were the shelves below and, though they were made of metal, he didn’t know if they could take his weight.
He clenched his jaw more tightly and dug his nails into his palms.
But his clothes needed to be washed. He didn’t like wearing dirty clothes.
And to wash his clothes he needed the detergent. He only had two dimes.
Steeling himself again, Johnny dropped his clothes to the ground by the closet, and gripped the highest shelf he could reach, placing his feet on the lower shelf and then pulling himself up.
He could now reach the top shelf.
Reaching out with one hand, he grabbed the detergent.
And that was when his footing slipped.
In a panic, he tried to grab onto the shelf to steady himself, but he succeeded only in knocking things from the shelves and knocking over the broom with his legs as he dangled for a moment by his fingers before falling and crashing to the ground.
Johnny knew long before he hit the ground that he was in trouble. The hallway was scattered with cleaning agents, some of them had broken open and spilled chemicals all across the carpet. There was no way he could hide this or clean this. In fact, he only had time to pull himself to his feet, one hand still, miraculously, holding the detergent, the other grabbing his clothes quickly out of the way of the spilled chemicals, before the door to the left of the closet was flung open.
His mother looked livid the moment she opened the door, but once she saw the mess in the hallway, her look became absolutely murderous and Johnny felt his stomach drop.
He was standing, but his mother was unnaturally quick. She grabbed the broom off the floor, held it up by its handle and swung it at him. He barely had time to raise his arms to protect his face before the blow landed on them and he cried out, staggering back.
She swung again, this time the blow landing just short of him. He opened his eyes in shock, but didn’t wait around to watch her raise the broom again as he turned and began to run for the front door.
The broom caught him in the back and he staggered forwards, crying out again. He pulled himself to his feet using the handle of the door, and frantically turned it, gritting his teeth against the pain as the broom handle landed again on his shoulder.
The doorknob twisted open and the door flung outwards. Johnny staggered forwards, out onto the porch and then down the steps, his mother right behind him, screaming obscenities he could barely understand from how hysterically she was yelling. She hit him again on the back and he fell forwards. The next blow landed on his leg and he cried out in pain.
He could hear her yelling still, though he could not still understand the words, and he closed his eyes tightly, prepared to curl himself into a tight ball to protect himself from her blows until she got tired and stopped or she killed him.
He wasn’t sure which he’d prefer.
But the blow never came.
He opened his eyes and turned around quickly, ready to see where the next blow was going to come from so he could avoid it, but what he saw was not at all what he expected.
Two-Bit was standing over him. The broom handle was in one hand, holding it mid-blow. His free hand held a beer and if he hadn’t been so shocked, Johnny might have laughed.
With a quick shove, Two-Bit pushed the broom and Johnny’s mother away from himself.
“Go on!” he shouted, sounding angrier than Johnny had ever heard him sound. “Get back in your house, you goddamn drunk!”
She wasn’t going to listen. Johnny could already tell, but before she could yell at them or come after him again, Two-Bit was pulling him to his feet. He grimaced as he put weight on the leg the broom handle had hit, but Two-Bit’s arm around his shoulders forced him to walk quickly. A part of him wanted to protest, another part of him knew that they had to get out of there as quick as possible.
They were silent until they reached the end of the street, something extreme uncommon for Two-Bit, but everyone acted differently around Johnny than they did the rest of the gang. Finally, Two-Bit stopped moving and Johnny dropped down to the curb, his hands going immediately to his leg. He pulled up the leg of his jeans to see the bruise already forming there.
“Thanks, Two-Bit,” he said quietly, still looking at the bruise as he covered it again. “I-I dunno what would’ve happened if you hadn’t come along.”
“I do,” Two-Bit replied and took a sip from his beer, but he didn’t say anything else.
Johnny drew his brows together. This was really unlike him.
“C’mon,” Two-Bit said, pulling Johnny out of his thoughts. “Let’s go over to Soda’s and get some dinner.”
He didn’t protest. He wanted something to eat. The laundromat could wait.