Chapter Text
For as long as Johnny has been a part of the gang he’s admired Dally. Idolized might be applicable.
Dally is everything Johnny had wanted to be. Dally’s tough, strong and brave. A real man. A man’s man. Dally always knows what to say, what to do, and how to do it. And if occasionally, he doesn't know, Dally will brute force his way through till he gets there.
Johnny didn’t think the way he looked up to Dally was odd. He didn’t think it was any different from the way Ponyboy looked up to Soda, except that Pony and Soda were brothers.
Johnny and Dally were close, really close, but Johnny never thought of him as a brother till later. Johnny had never really thought of him as a friend either. “Friend” had felt too limiting. “Friend” had some crucial, scary puzzle piece missing.
Dally’s looked after Johnny. He’s taken him in when his parents wouldn’t. To this day, anytime Johnny’s in a tough spot he knows he could turn around and reliable Dally would be there for him.
Johnny loves him for that and Johnny loves little.
For years, he couldn’t decipher the missing label of his feelings toward Dally. Dally would face him with those deep, brown eyes or throw an arm around him on the sidewalk, making Johnny smile all around town. In those moments, Johnny could feel his heart in his jaw, like he might throw it up.
By the time Johnny had realized that’s where the feeling stemmed from, his heart, he’d realized that Dally didn’t think of him that way. To Dally, Johnny was a little brother. To the whole gang, Johnny’s a little brother. He’s the pet.
Perhaps “pet” may sound condescending but Johnny has never felt like they pitied him. The gang just looked after him (the same way Dally looks after him).
Johnny loves all the gang because they care about him. In return, he cares about them. He finds it easy to get confused when love is involved. Sometimes the crock pot that is Johnny’s emotions is so full of flavors and scents he doesn’t know what’s chicken and what’s chocolate. Johnny’s not a very good cook.
That running theme of culinary confusion led Johnny to conclude that this is why he loves Dally. Dally cares for him. It just took Johnny a while to realize Dally doesn’t love him. Furthermore, Johnny doesn’t love Dally, he loves Dally because they’re family. It was all just a simple mix-up between the frayed wires of Johnny’s mind and all of his tangled love receptors.
He’s been kicked around a lot and Johnny knows it shows. He knows this mix-up is a byproduct of said kicking. Fear is embedded in his demeanor, his personality, in the knife that’s always tucked snuggly in his back pocket. Johnny still gets jumpy at the sight of rings. One glint of metal is enough to put him on edge. This is why it’s comforting that the gang cares about him.
His parents certainly don’t. The gang is all he has.
Johnny doesn’t like being the way he is. He lives his waking moments like someone’s hunting his skin. Although, he’d rather be prepared. There’s nothing worse than getting comfortable just to have the rug pulled from under him.
Johnny will admit, that he’s glad he never did anything stupid back when he was all confused about Dally. Dally who’s in and out of the cooler every other month and gets in fights with his girl Sylvia, occasionally nasty enough to rival his own parents.
That’s where the resemblance between Johnny’s parents and Dally and Slyvia’s relationships end. Dally and Sylvia inevitably come crashing back together through toxic passion. Johnny’s parents feed off one another in an eternal cycle of vicious, vindictive, vengeful rage.
Johnny has never liked Sylvia but he used to despise her. As he got older, the hatred for Sylvia and the confusion with Dally, has dissipated. He doesn’t think about it much now.
Dally’s as much his brother now as Pony and Soda are. Jonny doesn’t like to dwell on the past. Just thinking of that phase makes hot shame and embarrassment creep up his neck.
However, because Johnny spends quite a bit of time alone, out in the lot, he has time to think. So, unwillingly, sometimes his thoughts drift back to the past. Johnny still feels as though there’s something tugging on his shirt he hasn’t dealt with yet and he can’t take a step forward because there is still an incessant tugging on his shirt.
Usually, Ponyboy will join him in the lot and distract Johnny so he doesn’t have to think about it anymore.
Today the two of them, Dally as well, go out to the movies. Johnny likes movies even though it can take him some time to get the meaning of it. Ponyboy always helps him through the bits he doesn’t get. It would be embarrassing because Pony’s a year younger than him but because it’s Pony, Johnny doesn’t mind. Besides, Johnny likes hearing his perspective on things, it’s nice.
Johnny doesn’t have a tough time following the one tonight. It’s some beach movie.
The plot is straightforward enough, a bunch of girls in bikinis and guys in boardshorts singing songs.
Perhaps some of the meaning of it is lost on Johnny towards the middle, however, because halfway through Dally starts talking up these two soc girls in front of them.
While Johnny and Pony try to sink into their seats, Dally keeps harassing them until one of the girls, the redhead, turns around, shouts at him and Dally slinks off to buy some sodas. Upon seeing the other two, sitting uncomfortably behind her, the redhead asks, “Are you gonna start trouble too?”
When Pony says “No, ma'am” all her anger melts away and is replaced with a tentative smile. She has straight white teeth, and nice lips, a shade of red to match her hair.
The two move up with them and get to talking. Johnny’s never been the chatty type. It’s rare that he’ll talk to a girl, especially an uptown one like Cherry and Marica, the two movie girls.
When Dally returns, a few minutes later, drinks in hand, and promptly gets one of said drinks thrown in his face, Johnny knows he is going to snap. Dally doesn't sputter when the ice-cold soda gets dumped on him, he just stands there, eyes boring into Cherry. Sweet brown soda runs in streams from his temples to dripping off his sharp jaw. The smallest, seething smirk grows on his face.
Dally is just about to enact his boiling wrath when Johnny speaks up.
Johnny idolizes Dally. Johnny’s never been much of a talker. He doesn’t speak up but something in that moment made him. Even Dally deserves a drink in the face every once in a while. He’d earned that privilege with how he treated those girls that night.
“Stop it, Dal,” Johnny says softly, just loud enough that Dally can hear him and tell that he’s being serious. Dally locks his jaw so tight, that Johnny thinks it’ll crack. Dally slowly ticks to face Johnny, looking him right in the eyes. His deep brown, chocolate eyes have turned to rocky dirt.
Johnny’s own eyes drop to the floor.
He doesn’t have eyes like Dally. His are the ones of a kicked puppy, not the kind of eyes that inspire fear but pity. It makes Johnny’s own jaw tighten.
His eyes meet Dally evenly.
Dally scoffs. Then, he storms off, muttering something along the lines of “that fucking kid”. Johnny is congratulated and thanked by the girls. Pony bumps his shoulder and smiles at him.
Johnny smiles back.
Later in the night, Two-Bit gives them a scare when he creeps up on them. He was pretending to be a soc. Two-Bit’s impression is a little too good for Johnny’s comfort. He nervously laughs it off and Two-Bit sits down to join them. He quickly gets involved in a battle of wits with Marcia as the other three sit back and watch the movie.
When the credits roll, Two-Bit offers to drive the girls home but they turn him down. The group settles on walking.
By that time of night, it’s dark out and getting cold. Under his jean jacket, a little shiver runs through Johnny. He can tell Pony’s even worse off with a sleeveless sweatshirt. Pony hides the goosebumps while he talks to Cherry.
Johnny listens as the two talk. All of them listen as Pony talks about Darry and how he thinks his older brother hates him. Johnny feels his heart drop a bit when he hears what Pony thinks of his brother. He and Two-Bit voice this but Pony shuts them down.
Bright headlights pierce through the darkness and the chatter. The group hears the engine rumbling up the road before they see the car. A proper tremor racks through Johnny when the car comes into view, a shiny mustang.
It’s blue but not like Dally’s raw eyes or Soda’s soft ones. It’s cold like stormy skies and Johnny has to do his best not to let his fear take over.
When two guys, apparently the girls’ boyfriends, get out of the car, drunk and swaying, Johnny’s eyes go straight to their hands. One’s bare but the other has thick fingers, bony knuckles, and harsher rings. There are bands on four out of his five fingers. Johnny barely resists a flinch when Bob, that's what Cherry called him, starts to gesture flagrantly.
They’re talking and threatening and shouting but Johnny can’t focus on what they’re saying.
It’s like when he’s at school and the teacher moves just a bit too fast. Johnny’s too caught up in trying to understand what they were going over to know what the teachers have moved on to.
Johnny’s still stuck on the rings, on the car, on how the scar lining one of his cheekbones is burning. The phantom blood that drips to his jaw is staining his shirt.
“Who you callin bums?” Two-Bit asks. Johnny had been too distracted to hear the lead-up but with the tone Two-Bit’s using and the palpable tension, Johnny is able to find his footing. His hand finds the knife in his back pocket.
“There’s three more of us in the backseat. Don’t be starting anything. Does five on three sound like a fair fight, greaser? Can you do the math on that?”
Two-bit bends down to pick up a glass bottle.
“I think we can hold our own just fine” Two-Bit rebuttals, unflinching. With a smash, he hands the remaining neck of the bottle to Ponyboy.
Pony adjusts his grip. Johnny knows from the look on his face, and from knowing Ponyboy, that he’d never use it. Two-Bit knows it too but it’s for the theatrics of it all.
The socs buy it.
Bob takes a step forward, arm winding up when Cherry throws herself in the middle of it.
“Stop!” She cries, “Stop it! I hate fighting, I hate it. We’ll come with you” She looks back at Marcia with a resigned nod. Marica steps forward too.
“I hate fighting,” Cherry mutters.
Before leaving, she says a couple of last words to Pony. Johnny can hear something about “I never would’ve used it” and “watching the sunset too”. Johnny can’t help but be curious, a thin veil over the curling feeling in his gut.
It’s the same feeling he used to get when Dally would talk about Sylvia.
Cherry and Marcia wave goodbye to them and the car skids off. Two-Bit’s left looking at a small piece of paper.
“What’s that?” Pony inquires.
“Marica’s number” Two-Bit replies, almost wistfully, “It’s probably a fake” He tacks on.
The three start walking. Johnny can tell Pony hasn’t cooled down. If anything, the near skirmish has fired him up. Two-Bit and he listen when Pony says it’s not fair that greasers get it the way they do, that the socs get all the breaks.
Johnny can’t help but feel the same way as he thinks of his parents and having to sleep out in the lot. He thinks of Dally being in and out of jail, Darry becoming a parent because his own died in a car crash. Pony’s parents died in that car crash. Johnny mulls it around, sitting heavy in his stomach, as he takes each step.
Two-Bit splits to head home. Pony says he’s got a bit more time till curfew so he and Johnny sit down in the lot. They lay down in the cool grass. It’s soft and although it’s cool to the touch, with his shoulder pressed to Ponyboy’s, he feels warm.
They lie in a comfortable silence until Pony starts talking.
He’s talking in the dreamy, reverent sort of way that makes Johnny wonder if he knows he’s thinking out loud. He’s talking about some wonderful world where he lives in the country and Soda has a horse and Darry doesn’t need to work so hard. Johnny’s there too, right by his side.
They’ll be watching the same stars but everything will be a little bit easier.
Johnny doesn’t question it, he believes him.
That world sounds nice.
Before long, Johnny can’t help but fall asleep to the sound of Pony’s voice, lying on cool grass with warm shoulders under the same stars he’s always known.
If the stars were going to belong to anyone it’d be Pony, Johnny decides right before he drifts off. Johnny would give him the stars. With the stars, Pony would craft this alternate life for himself and the gang.
It would be nice, Johnny thinks.