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Johnny’s never met someone so touchy as Pony, and he doesn’t ever think he ever will.
He’s currently trying to extract himself from Pony’s absolute death grip. No matter where they fall asleep on the bed, he always wakes up to his partner plastered against him in some way. Now, he’s being pulled back against Pony’s chest as he attempts (halfheartedly) to get up for the day.
“Mmmmmten more minutes,” Pony mumbles, kissing the back of his head and throwing a leg over Johnny’s own thigh.
Johnny sighs. It’s January, it’s freezing, and the arm wrapped protectively around his chest, hand resting on his heart, is warm and comforting. He can feel the constant draft of their cold apartment air brushing his face, threatening him with chills when he gets up.
But it’s Saturday, nine-thirty in the morning, and he has a shift in half an hour, so he needs to drag himself out of bed and away from his warm and comfortable boyfriend who acts like he can’t live without trying to burrow under Johnny’s skin whenever possible. (Not actually. But he is dramatic. Johnny finds it endearing as hell.)
Pony presses a kiss to the healed burn scars on the back of his neck, and then another, and then another, and Johnny decides that he has to get up now, because they’re reaching the point of no return. He detangles himself from Pony’s clinging arms and legs, flips the covers off, and climbs out of bed, immediately recoiling at the cold of the apartment. They’d had to lower the heat or turn it off completely over the past few weeks. The university being closed over break removed Pony’s only source of income as a part-time worker in the gift shop, and they’d been struggling a lot to make up for those three and a half weeks. Pony doesn’t even make enough to cover groceries, but they’re already stretched so thin, so his scant hours of pay make a world of difference.
Johnny lays the covers back over the bed and ruffles the hair on top of Pony’s head as he shuffles forward to the place where Johnny had previously occupied. “Nmmmph,” Pony mumbles, muffled by the covers and sleep. He swats Johnny’s hand away from his head. “Go away, fuckin’ dipstick. You left me. Crash on the couch tonight,” he orders, flinging an arm out vaguely in Johnny’s direction. He smiles. It’s a completely empty threat. Even if they hadn’t started this whole relationship thing, the temperature in the apartment is so cold that they probably would’ve ended up squished together on the twin bed anyway, so that they didn’t shiver themselves to death in the night.
“We used to wake up at six every day,” he reminds Pony, searching around the bedroom for his work clothes and jacket. He discovers the pants on the floor, and a semi-clean shirt hung above the cold radiator to dry because last night someone had bumped into him and he’d spilled a tray of drinks all over himself.
“Fuckin’ unreal,” Pony mutters. He’s twisted around on the bed and rubs his eyes as Johnny gets dressed. “I couldn’t do that now. I swear I try and wake up before eight and s’like I’m a zombie the rest of the day.”
“Go back to bed, then,” Johnny suggests, pulling his jean jacket off the hook and opening the bedroom door.
“What’s the point?” Pony calls from the bedroom. “My favorite pillow just ran away.”
Johnny feels a grin break out on his face, uncontrollably. Ponyboy always says stuff like that. Really, he should be used to it by now. Most of the time he’s just joking around, anyway. But something inside him always warms up when Pony calls him his favorite anything. Johnny thinks he’s had more nice things said about him in the past two months than he has in his entire life.
This is Johnny’s second relationship, but his first real one. (He doesn’t know if the reason he wasn’t so hung up over Stephanie, his girlfriend of three months two years ago, was because he’s gay or homo or whatever. Honestly, he can’t see himself dating any guys. Girls either. It’s just Ponyboy).
He’d spent the first month of their relationship in a constant state of worrying that he’d fuck something up. Johnny knows that he’s had probably the worst role models ever for a healthy romantic relationship. During their first argument, he almost felt relieved, in a sick, twisted way. Fighting was something he knew. Then he felt physically sick when Pony ran out, and he ended up almost upchucking his dinner into the sink.
(Ponyboy had come back in all of five minutes later. They both ended up sitting at their tiny kitchen table, not making eye contact, both on the verge of panicking and crying but still too mad at each other to seek any comfort. The last time Pony was in an argument and ran out, their lives had been horribly changed. Neither of them wanted a repeat.)
Johnny thinks that they’re doing all right, all things considered. They’ve been attached at the hip since they were thirteen and fifteen, after all. Sometimes Johnny feels like he knows Pony better than he does himself.
He steps into the kitchen and puts two slices of bread in the toaster.
“Can you throw some in for me when you’re done?” Pony asks. He’s migrated from the bedroom to the couch, and is wearing two layers of sweatshirts. Johnny doesn’t blame him. It’s cold enough that frost is decorating their windowpanes. He briefly hovers his fingers over the toaster as it warms up.
“Plans today?” Johnny asks, rubbing his hands together and blowing into them. He digs around in his pocket, discovers a smoke and a lighter, and sparks one up. Pony lifts one leg onto the couch, stretching, and holds an arm out with his first two fingers extended, asking for a smoke. Johnny crosses the room and gives him his own. He’d cut back to maybe four cigarettes a day in college, on account of track, which for weed-fiend Ponyboy Curtis was essentially quitting cold turkey.
“Team run in an hour or so, then class at two, and I’ve got some paper to write. You?”
“I’ll be wishin’ it was the end of my shift all morning, and then when I actually get to the end of my shift I’ll be thinkin’ I should’a been more grateful to the morning crowd, who ain’t a bunch of broke cheap tippers.”
“We’re broke cheap tippers when we go out.”
“We’re better than them. ‘Sides, half the time them well-off college kids don’t even leave anything.” It’s hit or miss with the rich kids. Johnny either walks away with a quarter of their monthly rent, or a quarter.
The toaster dings, and Johnny throws in Pony’s slices of bread, and spreads peanut butter on his own. He’s just about done eating his first slice when a knock comes at their door.
He turns to look at Ponyboy and raises an eyebrow. He sure isn’t expecting company, and Pony’s matching expression indicates that this visit is unknown to the both of them. He sets down his breakfast and crosses the kitchen to crack open the door.
It’s their landlord. Johnny feels his stomach seize up with worry. They’re not late on anything, he’s confident about it. When he unlocks the door and opens it all the way, the landlord says this:
“Johnathan Cade? Phone call.”
He feels his shoulders sag in relief. They try and keep phone calls to a minimum, because he’s pretty sure the landlord way overcharges for them, but it’s better than an eviction notice. He’s led to the landlord’s office, where the phone line in the apartment is. The landlord sits down, and Johnny picks up the receiver.
“Hey, it’s Johnny.”
He’s expecting Dally or Two-Bit. Steve or Soda, maybe. Darry, even.
“Johnathan Cade? This is the Tulsa Police Department. We have some upsetting news for you.”
Johnny’s hand freezes, and he’s pretty sure he’s stopped breathing. Someone’s dead. Not Soda or Darry, or they would’ve called Pony. Actually, why would they call him if anyone died? He’s not related to anyone in the gang. He sure isn’t listed as anyone’s next of kin. He thinks he would know about that. So who-?
“We discovered your father dead in an alley off Main Street last night. He’d been stabbed.”
Johnny definitely stops breathing now, because he hasn’t heard anything about his father in two years. His parents weren’t even on his radar.
“Okay,” he finds himself saying, hollowly. The officer on the end of the line starts speaking. Johnny hangs up on him and walks out of the landlord’s office. He doesn’t think he can feel his hands, and it’s not just because of the cold.
He’s not sad. He can’t be. His father beat him near daily for almost eighteen years of his life. If anything, he wishes he was relieved.
For some reason, he’s not. Just shocked.
He stops in front of their apartment door, and realizes he didn’t bring keys, so he knocks on the door and waits for Pony to answer.
Pony’s gonna want to talk about this, he realizes. Johnny imagines how that will go. He’ll walk in and Pony will immediately realize something is wrong. They’ll sit on the couch together, and Johnny will be thrust out into the open. He hates talking about his dad, always has. Either of his parents, really, but Pony will push at it because he doesn’t like seeing Johnny upset, and then Johnny will crack and start freaking out and they might argue and then he’ll be late for work and walk in, an inconsolable mess, and he can’t be, because he needs the extra shift so that they can stop seeing their breath in their own home.
He takes a deep breath as he hears Pony’s footsteps approach the door. He needs to leave. He needs to ignore this, right now. He’ll go to work and he and Pony can talk about it later. Hopefully never, because maybe today he can sort out how he feels about it and then come home completely normal and fine.
The door opens and Pony lets him back in.
“Jeez, it really is like an icebox in here,” he finds himself saying, both an attempt at levity and a true statement, because it’s probably ten degrees colder in here than in the hallway. Pony closes the door, and Johnny makes a beeline for his peanut butter toast. He glances at the clock on the wall. 9:45.
He always leaves at 9:50. It’s a ten minute walk. He just has to stay here for five minutes.
He takes a bite of his toast, and his hand shakes on the way up. He avoids eye contact with Ponyboy, staring at the ground two feet in front of him.
“So?” Pony asks, leaning against the doorway of the kitchen. Johnny stares at him.
“Who was it?”
Fuck. Johnny really can’t say the police, and god he does not want to deal with this right now. He needs to try and ignore it.
“Uh, Two-Bit,” he tries. His house has its own phone line, and he’s pretty likely to be calling Johnny.
“Really? Two-Bit on a thirty second phone call? You finally learn how to get him to shut up?”
Johnny just shrugs. He needs to say something, because fuck, Pony’s right, Two-Bit always yammers on for at least ten minutes. He can’t think straight, can’t think of any good story, any excuse. He’s not a very good liar outside of playing cards.
Pony’s feet come into view from where he’s staring at the ground. He grasps for straws, anything to say about the phone call. He wonders if his hands would be this numb even if it were warm out.
Say you told him you’re just trying to save to get the heat back on. Good excuse. Good excuse.
He tries to open his mouth. Can’t say anything. The peanut butter feels like tar in his mouth. He chokes it down, and inhales frigid air like he’s drowning.
“You good, man? You look like you’re about to be sick or somethin’.”
“Yeah. Fine,” Johnny manages. The officer had said his father was stabbed. Was he mugged? Maybe he was doing the mugging? He wonders how his mother feels right now. Then hates himself for thinking that, because his mother rarely hit him but she was almost as bad.
“Your hand is shaking.”
His father being dead feels like the sun one day disappearing from the sky. At least, that’s what it would’ve felt like to him before he moved out. The number one reason for all of his pain as a child. Gone.
He should be happy. He should throw a party, honestly.
“S’cold,” he says. It comes out as barely a whisper.
Pony’s right next to him now. Johnny can’t tear his eyes away from the ground. Christ, his father made him feel like shit daily. Why does his last act—dying—have to do this much damage to Johnny, too?
His father had never once done something good for him. Yet here Johnny is now, the best his life has ever been, far away from his parents and Tulsa, loved and in love in a way he’s never known, and he still has to feel that suffocating feeling, of dread and trying to exist in a soulless house and running out whenever the broom or two by four came out, tears in his eyes but never on his face if he could control it.
He hasn’t even seen him since he moved out. He’s never wanted to. He doesn’t want to have to remember this. His father means more to him dead than alive.
“I have to go,” he blurts out, putting his uneaten plate of toast down and rushing to the door. Pony is too grounding for this. Always makes him stop and think. He needs to leave.
“Wait, Johnny-”
and he’s out.
-
He’s exceedingly polite, doesn’t forget a single order or request, does all his side work and makes decent tips through his first shift. It’s a Saturday, so they’re busy, even for a morning, which allows him to almost forget about earlier. Nothing interesting happens, and he’s kept busy, which he needs more than anything right now. Any time he stands still enough to think about his dad dead in some alley, he finds something else to do. It leaves him feeling perpetually sick for the whole day. He can’t figure out why he’s this messed up about it. He’s sure plenty of guys he knows who have shitty fathers would be fine right now. Happy, even.
He tries his best to act normally, serves food even though his arms haven’t stopped shaking since the morning. It’s so bad two of his co-workers notice. They’re regular, normal friends of his. Guys he’s gone out with after work a few times. One of them asks him if he’s on drugs, the other if he’s having a nervous breakdown.
He swallows, wipes his shaking hands on his shirt, and denies both with a chuckle. He’s fine.
“Just got some bad news earlier. I’m cool.”
Is it? Is it bad news? Or is it the best news of his life? Or does he not care? Or does he care too much?
He feels like shit either way.
The night shift is five times busier than the morning, the bar filled to the brim with intoxicated college kids.
Johnny doesn’t drink at all. Never has, and he hopes he never will. Every time he serves someone a Coors he remembers the clink of dozens of beer bottles rolling against each other on the floor or their shitty house back in Tulsa. He remembers the sound of them breaking from where he would sit outside, too afraid to go inside but too afraid to leave.
The memories are even worse tonight. They choke him up as they rise, forbidden, in his mind. Remember when you spilled a glass of water and he hit you so hard you had a headache for days? Remember when you stole change to do laundry and he took you into the yard and hit you with a two by four until you could barely stand? Remember feeling glad when he’d hit mom and not you, you sick bastard? Remember? Remember? Remember being afraid? Jumping at every little thing, because he was always trying to hurt you? Once you walked in and he broke a bottle over your head, and you started crying, and he got mad and almost broke your nose. Remember that?
Twice, he has to hide in a back room of the bar, shutting his eyes and smacking himself upside the head telling himself to just forget about it, it’s been almost two years since you’ve even seen him, and taking quiet, deep breaths for long enough to pull himself back together and go back to fucking waiting tables.
Strikingly, in the middle of clearing someone’s plate, he remembers that dead people have funerals, and freezes for a moment at the thought of him and his mother standing over the open casket of the man who’d hit them both senseless. She would cry, and he would hate it. He’d hate it like how his dad used to hate tears. (His mom used to push him around all the time. Less, as he got older, but then she’d slam doors on his hands or hit him with a broom. And then sometimes she’d apologize, and tape up his near-broken hands, and kiss them better and say goodnight and leave him in his room and go to bed.)
His head swims with nausea at the conception of any kind of funeral, but he forces himself to move because throwing up on someone’s table would honestly probably get him fired.
He feels like he’s just barely surviving through the night. Every time he finds a clock, it seems like it’s only been a few minutes.
When they finally, finally begin to close, he has a splitting headache. One of his co-workers catches him staring into space for too long as he tries to clear a table covered in empty bottles of booze.
“You don’t look too good, man. Go home. I’ll clock you out.”
Johnny nods, mutely. He goes to grab his stuff from the back room and takes ten deep breaths before he walks out the door.
He’s even worse than this morning and Pony’s probably gonna be pissed at him for bolting out. Not that he’ll be awake when Johnny gets back—some time around 2:30 in the morning.
Shit. Why did he leave like that earlier? Why does he always fucking run from his problems?
He doesn’t want to talk. He wants to go to bed and not wake up for a week. Or to not wake up until his father’s body is buried in the ground and rotting in hell.
When he got older, sixteen instead of six, he barely ever cried when his old man hit him. Now, if his dad by some miracle appeared, he thinks he’d start bawling like a baby. Somewhere along the line, he’s gone soft.
He’s gone soft, but he’s been so happy until today.
Is it worth it?
It’s wickedly cold outside, and all he has is a jean jacket. Even though it’s on the wrong side of two in the morning, and the wind sends his teeth chattering, he doesn’t hurry home.
He arrives five minutes later than it usually takes, buzzes himself in, climbs up the stairs, and reaches for his keys.
Shit.
In all his hurry to get out in the morning, he’d forgotten them. He lets his forehead fall against the peeling wood of their door and fights tears. He doesn’t even have anything to pick the lock with. Fuck. He can’t cry over being locked out.
He stands in the hallway for minutes. It’s probably warmer out here than in there.
Johnny raises his hand, and knocks solidly. No hope in trying slip into bed without waking Ponyboy. He needs him to open the door.
He sees a light turn on under the door, and hears footsteps, and Pony opens the door a crack before closing it, unlatching the chain, and opening it fully. Johnny opens his mouth and can’t even whisper a “sorry” before Pony pulls him in for a hug and shuts the door. Johnny was right; it is much colder inside, but Pony’s warm and holding the back of his head and kissing his temple. Johnny wants to fucking scream.
“‘M gonna go shower,” he says when they let go of each other, bringing a leg up, then another, to untie his shoes.
He does shower, water washing the smell of college bar burgers off of him and warmth sinking into his bones. He cuts it short at four minutes and gets dressed in their bedroom. Pony sits perched on the edge of the bed, staring out the window.
He sits down next to him on their shared bed, with his partner not looking at him or even seeming to pay him any attention. But Johnny can sense the worry and care radiating off him. He feels all his desire to bury down his stupid fucking feelings and resentment deep and never look at it again emerge. He just wants to sleep. If he’s asleep, he won’t feel like this.
Then Pony moves closer to him, and rests his head down on Johnny’s shoulder, and that desire seems to dissipate. He opens his mouth and is helpless to stop the truth from coming out.
“My dad’s dead.”
He thinks he feels arms encircle him, but he’s not sure. He’s fighting tears so, so hard, because he’s realized one thing:
He doesn’t want his dad to make him cry again.
“I don’t even know if I’m happy ‘bout it yet,” he says, gripping the edge of the mattress. “I can’t tell if I’m relieved, or sad, or what,” he continues. “God, I don’t wanna be sad about it. He made me depressed enough when I was a kid.” He laughs, wetly, and shuts his eyes tight, blocking out the sight of their tiny bedroom, willing the tears to just be gone.
“Feels like I’m messed up about people dying, sometimes.” He’s thinking about Bob Sheldon now. How he’s never forgiven himself for it. Terrible people die in Johnny’s life—terrible people who, out of anyone else he knows, deserve life the least—but for some reason he can never handle it.
“I think,” Pony says, voice quiet and muffled in Johnny’s shoulder, “I think that if you say you know exactly how you feel about death, you’re lyin’ to yourself and you’re lyin’ to everyone else.”
For a second, Johnny feels a horrible stab of jealousy towards Ponyboy. He had mourned his parents, who loved him and never hit him and who probably died thinking of him. He wishes that he could just feel happy that his dad’s dead. Instead, he’s all mixed up inside like a tornado’s ripped across his brain wires.
Then he feels bad about being jealous, remembering the awful nightmares that still happen sometimes and the screaming matches he used to get into with Darry, the the immeasurable guilt all three of the brothers carry around with them every day.
Based on what Pony had just said, about not knowing how to feel about death, Johnny guesses that he’d felt pretty mixed up when his parents died, too.
“I don’t want to cry over this,” he admits to Pony. “Feels like lettin’ him win. He… he always laughed. When I cried.”
It’s probably the most he’s ever said about how his father treated him.
He feels Pony nod against his shoulder. “‘Kay. You don’t have to. Let’s go to bed, yeah?”
They lie down. It’s still freezing, even with all the blankets in the house on top of them. He presses closer to Pony and ends up lying practically on top of him. He can hear his heart beating through the sweatshirt.
“If… if you can’t help crying,” Pony begins above him, hesitating a bit. His voice sounds weird with Johnny’s ear pressed to his chest.
“If you can’t help it… treat it as a fuck-you. He hated it, but he’s not around no more to see it.”
Johnny hears those words, and immediately his eyes are wet with tears he’s been holding back all day. He blinks them back, furiously, eyelashes brushing the soft material of Pony’s sweatshirt.
He thinks about how he’s never been told it’s okay to cry a day in his life. That awful way his father used to look at him when he cried, before he learned his lesson and tried his best to stop.
How he’ll never have to look at him again. Never see that twisted smile, never have to stop his father from attacking his mother. He blinks, and the first tear falls from his eyes.
Fuck you, he thinks, and starts sobbing.
Pony holds him as he shakes, crying harder than he ever has in his life. They sit up, and he reaches for tissue after tissue. If the lights were on, it’d be an ugly cry, face covered in snot and hyperventilating so hard he can’t speak. The lights aren’t on, so the only evidence of his tears are wrenching gasps and cries that he’s helpless to stop. He tries to muffle the noise in Pony’s shoulder, but the feeling of someone holding him so firmly, a hand rubbing up and down his back in soothing motions, just sets him off worse. He sobs and he sniffles and he shakes, wrapping his arms around Pony and grasping his sweatshirt tight.
“Oh, baby,” Pony whispers, one hand coming up to cup the back of his head. His thumb and fingers start gently running through Johnny’s still-damp hair. He can’t even respond, only shuts his eyes and makes the world disappear.
He cries until it’s just stray tears and sniffles, and painful hiccups wrenching through his chest. Pony pulls him even closer, and they lie back down again, him still curled up practically on top of Pony.
“Thank—” hic “—you,” he gets out, bringing up a sleeve to dry his eyes again.
“Course,” Pony replies, still running a hand through his hair. “Always.”
They stay in comfortable silence for a moment before Pony breaks it.
“I care about you so damn much, you know that?”
Johnny nods. “Yeah. I—“ hic “—c—“ hic “—fuck—“
He hears Pony snort, a little, and can almost see him smile. He takes three deep breaths and tries again.
“I do too. Love you so much it’s—“ hic “—it’s hard sometimes. Scares me a little,” he admits.
Pony presses a kiss to the top of his head.
“Love you too, Johns,” he says. Johnny manages a smile.
He sleeps, and he doesn’t dream about his father.