Chapter Text
“You about done?”
“Just about,” Steve tightens one last bolt and wipes his hands on his jeans, “why? You tryin’ to get rid of me or somethin’?”
Soda rolls his dancing brown eyes, grinning so dazzlingly it steals his breath away. He hated it sometimes, how Soda could turn his head to mush like he was some pansy ass girl mooning over her first crush.
“Your shift ended ten minutes ago genius, and we both know Garrow ain’t gonna pay you overtime.”
Steve glances at the clock above the tool rack and sure enough the long hand was nearing quarter past. Shoot, he’d been fighting those brakes for nearly an hour.
“Glory, I didn’t even notice.”
It wasn't the first time he’d gotten too caught up in his work. Afternoons like this- when Soda was stuck manning the counter and he was alone in the garage- made it all too easy to get fixated on the cars, each one a puzzle to be solved with grease and metal and a bit of cursing while Jailhouse Rock played softly in the background.
“I knew you wouldn’t,” Soda shook his head, “I swear you’re even worse than me when you get focused. You get that one fixed?”
The car in question was a gleaming silver Corvair, the type of car he could only ever dream of driving. It almost felt wrong to touch it, but he had to if he was gonna fix it which is what the DX had been hired to do.
“Not yet,” the admission came tinged with embarrassment. It wasn’t often he had trouble figuring out what was wrong with a car- any car- but whatever asshole soc owned this beauty of a vehicle had fucked up the brake system in a way Steve had never seen before. It was proving an unfortunately difficult fix.
“You’ll get it,” Soda promises, his easy confidence a boon to Steve’s own, “you always do. Now hurry up, Johnny’s here lookin’ for you. Says you’ve got a school project or somethin’.”
“ Shit ,” he’d forgotten all about that. Soda laughed, slinging an easy arm around his shoulders and all but dragging him into the store. Steve let him, leaning into his side and ignoring the butterflies in his stomach at Soda’s very nice arm muscles being right there .
When they get inside, Johnny is flicking through a magazine, leaning against the counter and pushing his bangs out of his face every so often when they get in his eyes. He needs better hair grease- Steve’s own hair never gets messed up half that bad.
“Watcha readin’ Johnnycake,” Soda snatches it out of his hand and riffles through it, “sports Illustrated? Not really your thing, is it?”
“Nah, but Darry’s birthday is soon, right?”
“Yeah, next month,” he flipa through the magazine with a bit more consideration this time, “he’d probably like this real well too.”
“Good, cause I’m givin’ it to him,” Johnny grabbed it back, “so don’t you get any ideas Sodapop Curtis! I’ll have enough money by next week.”
“I’ll save it for ya,” Steve offers, taking the glossy pages and stuffing it behind the counter, “make sure this vulture here,” he pinches Soda, who yelps and shoves him in retaliation, “doesn’t try and poach it.”
“Thanks man.”
“No worries. You go to the library yet?”
“Me’n Pony went yesterday.” Johnny says, “I think I got some books that’ll work. Pony helped.”
Shoot, this whole paper was annoying, but they both needed the marks, and Mr. Delvine was a strict old bastard for all his subject was interesting. Steve liked his biology class just fine but that was at school itself, not when he had to write a paper on his own time.
“Glory I don’t envy you there,” Soda eyed the textbooks Johnny had pulled out of his bag with disdain bordering on trepidation. “Hey speaking of Pony, check on him when you get back, would ya? He’s been awful quiet the past couple days an’ im startin’ to get worried.”
“He seemed fine at school,” Johnny put in, in that earnest reassuring way of his, “but sure Soda, we’ll make sure he’s alright.”
“Thanks y’all,” Soda grins, “just try and keep Darry off his tail, he’s been mighty hard on him as of late.”
Steve snorts. “As if we could keep Darry from doin’ anything. Superman’s stubborn as they come.”
“Yeah, yeah, just make sure my kid brother isn’t hidin’ away in his room and that’s good enough.”
Steve rolla his eyes, already knowing he’d do it. He’d do anything for Soda. Anyway, he probably wouldn’t have to do much to get the kid out of hiding with Johnny around. Ponyboy was a whole different person around Johnny, more settled than he was with any of the rest of them. For a while after the Curtis parents passed, the only time Ponyboy ever left his room except to go to school was when Johnny came over. The rest of the time he’d been a ghost. Soda had been real worried about it for a while. Hell, Steve had too. The kid was always quiet, but for a while there it started to feel like he was gonna disappear.
“We’d best get goin’“, Johnny says, “the sooner we get this paper started the sooner it’ll be over.”
“Amen to that.”
They waved goodbye to Soda and headed out, Johnny lighting up a cigarette as soon as they got out the door. He was near as bad as Ponyboy when it came to smoking.
Despite Johnny’s usual silence, Steve would be lying if he said he minded the company. For all he liked bantering with Soda and arguing with Two-bit, hanging with Johnny was fun in its own way. Steve didn’t mind the quiet, and the times when they did chat Johnny was wicked funny.
“You got any idea what subject we should write this paper on?”
“Glory man, I dunno,” Johnny shook his head, “I swear I don’t have a clue what’s goin’ on in that class half the time.”
“Delvine ain’t exactly keen to repeat himself either,” Steve agrees. He didn’t have quite the same struggle as Johnny did with bio, but he certainly wasn’t any sort of savant either, and there was many a day when he wished their teacher would slow down or repeat the more confusing bits.
“Pony said once that when he gets really into lecturing he looks like a walrus,” Johnny told him with a rare grin, “like when his mustache flutters and he puffs up and clasps his hands. I haven’t been able to take him seriously since.”
Steve snorts. “Shoot man, he ain’t wrong.”
“I think-” Johnny cut himself off, the blood draining from his face.
Expecting socs, Steve follows his gaze, fist automatically closing around the switch in his pocket, but it’s not rich kids that he sees.
There’s a body crumpled on the side of the dirt road, almost in the ditch, a kid in blue jeans and tennis shoes Steve recognized as well as his own because Soda had worn them for three years before he outgrew them and passed them down to Ponyboy.
Shit.
Johnny reaches Ponyboy a second before he does, and loathe as he is to admit it; it's probably a good thing because the sight he’s greeted with leaves him turning his gaze away, choking back bile.
“Is he-?”
He can’t even bring himself to say it. It was bad enough when those socs got ahold of Johnny, and he wasn’t hurt near as bad as this. Surely no kid as small as Ponyboy could get jumped this badly and survive it.
“He’s breathin’,” Johnny snaps, rare fury showing, and Steve remembers with a sudden jolt that this is Johnny’s best buddy, like Soda is to him, and that’s what spurs him into action.
He’s not sure if he’d survive it if Soda ever got jumped this bad. It’s a good thing Johnny Cade has always been the strongest of all of them.
Dropping to his knees beside Johnny he swallows back another gag. Tufts of reddish brown hair are scattered around, like someone hacked at it with a knife. Scratches and nearly bald patches mar the kid’s scalp, blood congealing in his hair and running down the purple lump that used to be his face.
“Pony, Pony, hey,” Johnny’s voice is soft as he carefully cradles Ponyboy’s head, setting it in his lap. He strokes the kid’s bruised forehead, “Can you hear me? It’s me, Johnny. You’re safe now Pony, I promise, those socs won’t hurt you no more.”
The kid’s head lolls, even with Johnny’s support. His left arm is bent at such an unnatural angle that it couldn’t possibly be anything but broken. Steve might actually throw up.
“Ponyboy? Ponyboy hey,” he reaches out to shake the kid’s shoulder but thinks better of it, dropping his hand uselessly back onto the ground beside him. The kid’s already broken- maybe beyond repair- and he’s scared to touch him in case it just makes everything worse. Steve is known for many things, but gentleness is not one of them, “your brothers are gonna be real upset if they can’t see those green eyes of yours when we getcha home so you better wake up kid, you better wake up-”
If it weren’t for the subtle rise and fall of Ponyboy’s chest, Steve would think Johnny’s earlier assessment was mistaken. He’s seen a lot of fights, a lot of beat up kids, a lot of jumpings- but he’s never someone pass out and not wake up a second or two later. At least not anybody who survived. Pony’s horrible, unnatural stillness sends cold dread trickling through his chest.
Johnny hadn’t been this bad. He’d been half conscious, the conscious being the important part, had known who they were, had cried.
But Pony isn’t waking up.
“He isn’t waking up,” Steve can hear the panic creeping into his voice, “why isn't he waking up?” Johnny looks as scared as he feels, “C’mon kid,” this time he does shake him, just a little, “wake up!”
“Stop,” Johnny grabs his hand, “You don’t wanna hurt him worse.”
Steve flinches like he’s been burned. The kid…he’d never hurt the kid, not really. Sure he’s not Ponyboy’s biggest fan, but he’s still Soda and Darry’s kid brother, the baby of the gang, the only one of them still even half innocent. It was their job to protect him, he wouldn’t- couldn’t- hurt the kid. Not even trying to help him could he hurt him- and he had to help him.
“We gotta get him out of the street,” he steels himself, “he needs a hospital.”
Johnny nods, still tracing soothing movements across Ponyboy’s forehead. The tenderness in the action contrasted against the violence painted across Pony’s face is almost more than Steve can take.
“We need to do something,” he repeats, unable to do anything else and horrified by it. They need a plan, need to get the kid someone who can help, need to wake him up. Need to tell his brothers that they’ve all failed at the gang’s most important unspoken rule- keep the kid safe. Need to tell them that their kid is hurt, maybe even- no, not dying, never dying, he’s fourteen he can’t be dying, he’s not dying-
Darry had the truck today because he was working, but there was no guarantee he’d be back yet, and the DX was closer, four blocks away instead of six.
“Go get Soda.”
“You go” Johnny’s sloe black eyes are hard, “I’ll stay with him. Soda will take the news better from you anyway.”
He only hesitates a moment before nodding and dashing off. It wasn’t often Johnny Cade put his foot down, but when he did, the gang usually listened. It’s funny, Steve muses, as his feet dig into the hard packed earth and he races towards the DX, Johnny seemed at his oldest whenever he hung out with Ponyboy. Sometimes when it was just him and Johnny, Steve forgot Johnny was only a year younger than him, but around Ponyboy Johnny’s quiet maturity and protective nature were obvious to everyone but the kid himself.
The kid…
Steve forces himself to run even faster, dreading what he’s about to do. This would break Sodapop’s heart. Ponyboy had always been Soda’s treasure, ever since Mrs. Curtis had told him when he was two that she was making a little brother just for him. Learning his baby brother had been jumped- jumped worse than he’d ever seen- might kill him.
When he bursts into the DX and meets Soda’s immediately suprised gaze it’s through numb lips that he manages to force out two words, the only two words with the power to break him.
“It’s Ponyboy.”
Soda’s face cycles through too many emotions to count in the span of half a second, before settling on panic masked under false calm.
“How bad?”
Steve swallows, hesitating.
“Bad.”
Soda doesn’t waste another second, jumping over the counter and sprinting out the door, not even bothering to lock the store behind him.
“What happened?” He demands. Soda is no track star, not like Ponyboy, but with the adrenaline that must be pumping through him right now it’s all Steve can do to keep up with him.
“Jumped. Socs probably but we…we couldn’t wake him up.”
“What?” Tears start to fall down Sodapop’s face and it kills Steve a little bit, the way it always does when Soda cries, but he doesn’t even seem to notice. “What do you mean- he’s not- he can’t be-”
“He’s breathing.” Steve assures him, but it wasn’t reassurance enough for him earlier and it definitely isn’t enough for Soda now, because his eyes take on an almost feverish desperation and he forces himself to run even faster.
Steve has a sinking feeling it won’t be enough.