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Curly doesn’t believe in all that lovey-dovey Valentine’s Day shit.
Angela likes the idea of a holiday all about love (even though she wouldn’t know what love was if it bit her in the ass). She goes on and on about it all February.
She’s a madwoman when the actual day comes around. He knew as soon as he got to school, there’d be a sea of red and pink, all excited. There was even going to be a pep rally for god’s sake.
Though, actually, that has more to do with February vacation being next week than anything else.
He was considering begging Tim to not make him go. But he’d seen the truancy letter, and he knew it wouldn’t get him anything but a swat on the head and a “It won’t kill ya. Don’t make me go to court for your dumb ass.”
Angela comes flouncing into the room, hair done up in the two French braids he’d heard her cursing up a storm about this morning, before the sun had even rose. She’s got pink eyeshadow on that barely shows up against her skin and red lipstick.
She has a pair of tights under her black miniskirt and he recognizes her shirt from Sylvia. It’s a baby pink spaghetti strap, with a clearly drawn-on red heart, an arrow shooting through it. It’s sinfully low cut and he rolls his eyes.
“You know what day it is?” She asks with a smile as she sits down.
“You know they’re gonna dress code the hell out of you the second you enter that building?”
She scoffs. “That’s why you’re gonna be a good brother and give me your jacket. Besides, I asked my question first.”
“I’m not giving you my jacket just because you wanna freeze your ass off.”
She looks at the clock on the wall before turning back to Curly. “I’m not gonna freeze.”
“It’s February.”
“Exactly.”
“That don’t even make any sense!”
She smiles and puts her legs up on the table. “Whatever. Answer my question, why don’tcha?”
He resists the urge to flip her off, and instead just pushes her legs off the table. “It’s February 14th.”
She rolls her eyes. “Also known as...?”
“February 14th.” he grits out.
She nudges his leg with hers under the table. “Valentine’s Day, you dickhead.”
He sighs. “I don’t give a fuck if it’s Valentine’s Day. I give a fuck that we’re gonna be late for school.”
She laughs, high pitched and short. “Gimme a break. All of a sudden, you care about havin’ a perfect attendance record?”
“I’m gonna leave you behind.”
She holds up her hands in defense, and rushes over to the front door, pushing ahead of him. She slips into her old, beat-up shoes and grabs her bag. She also grabs a jean jacket, that was thrown on the floor next to the shoes.
Thankfully, it isn’t his.
“If you did, I would tell Tim and he’d beat you up for me.”
Curly snorts. “Keep tellin’ yourself that. At most he’d tell me to knock it off.”
She smirks. “Let a girl dream.”
He puts his (even older, but less beat-up shoes he’d gotten from Tim a few months ago) shoes on and starts towards the car.
He climbs into the driver’s seat and watches Angela limp awkwardly toward him, practically walking on the side of her foot. She slams the door to the passenger side so it’ll close right with the dent.
“What’re you walkin’ around like you stepped on a landmine for?” he asks, snickering.
She glares at him and shows him the bottom of her shoe, that has a long crack in the rubber running along it. “My shoe got fucked up and now I can’t walk around normal if it rained.”
Curly nods sympathetically and pulls out of the driveway, taking off. He’s driving a little too fast, taking turns a little too wide, slamming on the brakes a little too late. It’s dangerous, sure, but it makes Angela whoop with excitement.
It takes them a minute less than it should’ve to get to the school, and the parking lot is fuller than it should’ve been ten minutes before school was even supposed to start.
Angela, of course, is thrilled, hopping out of the car and limping all the way up to the building, Curly following closely behind.
The second she’s on the dry floor, she starts walking normally, and blending into one of the group of girls she’s not really friends with seamlessly.
Curly sighs and makes his way in the opposite direction.
Just like he’d thought, everyone’s all hyped for Valentine’s Day.
The Soc girls are either wearing their cheerleading uniforms for the pep rally or done up much like Angela (though their skirts were at a much more decent length and they were basically wearing turtlenecks.) The Soc guys he saw wear red sweaters or letterman jackets.
Greaser girls are all dolled up and the guys are wearing red t-shirts instead of white.
There’s more than the usual number of students making out in the hall. It makes him want to throw up.
It's just a day, and everyone’s going fucking crazy.
He walks past his own locker, which hadn’t been used at all that year and continues going to his first period class.
His history teacher didn’t give a fuck about Valentine’s Day. He knows some of the teachers had decorated their rooms, but his history teacher could barely bring herself to decorate at the beginning of the year. At most she’d give a lecture about Saint Valentine.
And she let him sleep through most of the class, so that was a plus.
Pony was always complaining about how she looked at him funny after the whole Windrixville thing, but she seems to like Curly well enough. For whatever reason.
The hallway is sickening, even just to walk through. There are paper decorations and cards hanging off every locker and girls carrying around bears and chocolates their boyfriends gave them.
The worst of it, though, comes in the form of Ponyboy Curtis’ locker.
It looks like Cupid himself threw up all over the locker. There’s paper hearts and cards and everything. The whole thing is absolutely overflowing with pink and red. Holy shit, it was bad. There’s even some chocolate sitting in front of the locker and it makes Curly mad as all hell.
He’d never shied away from the fact that he’s jealous. He never fucked around with that “I’m not the jealous type” bullshit because he is.
And he’s proud of it, too.
Pony, like any of the Curtises, had grown into quite a fine creature, even though he had a hard time seeing it himself.
Even with the slightly off-putting, yellow-y pale blond hair he’d been rocking since he came back from the church, it was clear to see he was the type of guy girls would start chasing after.
Just like Darrel and Sodapop before him.
Don’t get him wrong, he’d been expecting some form of Valentine’s sentiment on the locker but it was killing him how so many people thought of Pony when writing up their romantic well wishes.
He’s a lot stormier when he gets up the stairs to his first period class.
Mrs. Simao, the saint she is, greets him at the door. She doesn’t say anything, just nods, her eyes all too knowing.
He nods back and sits down in his spot. It’s at the front of the room, right in front of a window and right next to her desk. Not in a goody-two-shoes way, though. He likes talking to her every once in a while, but he doesn’t ask a bunch of questions and yell at people to shut up unless they’re being real annoying.
He puts his head down immediately.
He doesn’t want to deal with any of this after the mess that he just saw in the hallway.
“Hey, Coach!” he yells out, jogging up to the guy and stopping short.
“Yeah?”
“C’ I go to the bathroom?”
The man sighs, rubbing his forehead with two fingers. “Try to stay on the school grounds, at least.”
Curly shoots him a smile and a thumbs up, before circling back around the gym and into the back hallway where the lockers are. He immediately makes his way out the side door.
The sting of the cold is a little harsh on his bare legs and he finds himself cursing the stupid gym dress code, not for the first time.
There aren’t many people out in the middle of the day. There’s a few people scattered throughout the outdoor bleachers, but he doesn’t pay any mind to them.
He just walks. He’s not quite sure where he’s going. Probably to the parking lot. He’s been done with the day since it started, he really doesn’t want anything more than to go home and sleep it off.
But he gets interrupted by a familiar voice yelling out, “Hey!”
It sounds weird, almost like Pony’s sick. Curly figures out why when he looks to the side and sees him hanging there from the e bleachers, upside down. It’s a hell of a dangerous position to be in, especially considering he’s way at the top, only his legs hooking him to the bench.
“Hey, Pone.” he says, walking up to him.
Even up close, Pony’s a few feet above him, and he tries looking further back, all it does is make him yelp and grab onto the bench.
Curly steps back, so he won’t fall off and crack his head open. That’s the last thing either of them need.
Pony’s right back to giving him an upside-down smirk. “Wanna be my valentine?”
Curly rolls his eyes. “Can’t you pick from any of those cards on your locker?”
Pony’s face shifts, and his expression looks crestfallen. He pulls himself up and grabs his bag, practically jumping down the bleachers and jogging over to Curly.
“Why’re you upset? It ain’t like I told ‘em to put shit on my locker.”
Curly sighs. “I know.”
It’s silent for a moment, and Curly can basically hear the cogs in Pony’s brain turning as he tries to decipher the statement, read between the lines even though there aren’t any to read.
“What do you want me to do about it, then?”
Curly huffs out a laugh. “You ain’t gotta do anything, Curtis.”
A wicked idea forms in his mind as he catches onto the fact Pony has his bag with him.
“Unless you wanna skip out on the rest of the school day, o’ course.”
Pony bites his lip. “I dunno, Curly. There’s still a couple hours left.”
“A couple hours of pep rally. Y’know, the one thing you’ve ever actually said the word ‘detest’ about?”
The tips of Pony’s ears redden and he swats at Curly. “I was bein’ dramatic.”
“But you’ll come with me?”
Pony smiles exasperatedly. “Yeah.”
Curly grins and grabs him by the wrist. Careful (always so careful) never to grab his hand. Never to hug him, never to hold him, never to kiss him, not when anyone’s around.
“Nice.”
He pulls them both towards the parking lot and hops into the driver’s seat leaning over and unlocking the passenger door in time for Pony to yank it over and throw his bag into the back seat.
He has to try twice to shut the door with the right amount of force, before finally settling.
He puts his seatbelt on, and Curly waits for the click, even though he’d usually just drive off if someone was fucking around with their seatbelt.
Pony’s got a reason, at least.
As soon as they’re away from the school, Curly can feel the red-hot pit of jealousy he’d felt easily settle, knowing it was him who Pony was skipping the pep rally for. Him who Pony asked to be his valentine. And him who was currently driving down the street with Pony right next to him.
He drives slower than the speed demon in him demands, using all the right signals and following all the laws he usually thought were just filler.
He can hear Pony humming along quietly to a song, and it strikes him how empty the street is.
The first red light they run into, Curly takes one hand off the wheel and rests it over Pony’s hand, on the seat.
It prompts Pony into action. He reaches into the backseat and pulls something out of his bag.
He sits back up, looking straight, with a box of chocolates in hand.
He cracks it open easily, popping one in his mouth and asking Curly, “What flavor?”
“Uh...” Curly says, sparing a single glance at the box and being overjoyed to find it not being heart-shaped. “Chocolate?”
Pony smiles and picks one up. “Catch.”
Curly opens his mouth, turning his attention away from the road for a second as Pony throws him the chocolate.
After an almost-swerve and an amazing catch, Curly bites down on the chocolate.
It breaks open and he finds it weird for just a second that the chocolate is hollow. But then there’s some sort of syrup or something coating his tongue. It tastes like all the worst parts of chocolate. Like... the bitter part that usually only comes out in dark chocolate.
And he hates dark chocolate.
Pony seems to have no problem with any of it, but, then again, all three Curtis brothers went wild for chocolate anything.
“Wanna ‘nother one?” Pony asks around the small ball of red-tinted chocolate in his mouth.
Curly turns onto his street and shakes his head, a slow grin spreading on his face. “I’m good. You’re sweet enough for me, doll.”
Pony makes an exaggerated gagging noise and Curly laughs heartily, turning into his driveway
“Oh, come on! I thought you liked stupid shit like that!”
“Not when it sounds like it was taken from the worst romance book you could find!”
Curly laughs and looks side to side for just a second before leaning over, capturing Pony in a kiss.
The slightly sour taste of raspberry fills his mouth and he deepens the kiss before remembering they’re sitting in plain view of anyone walking by.
He pulls away and takes pride in the way Pony’s cheeks and ears still both turn bright red, no matter how many times they kiss.
“You were holdin’ out on me.” he says, with a mocking sad tone and a shake of the head. “I didn’t know you had raspberry chocolate in there.”
“You asked for normal chocolate!” Pony protests and Curly laughs, getting out of the car and walking up to the door.
Angela can find her own way home.
As Curly walks into the house, Ponyboy Curtis walking right next to him, talking on and on about chocolate. He thinks the whole Valentine’s Day thing might just grow on him.