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“Fuck.” He mutters. The streets are dark, but not exactly quiet. He can still hear the laughter of the motherfuckers who jumped him.
He wants to turn right back around and kick their asses, but he knows he won’t be able to do that alone in this state.
Stupid fucking Socs.
Blood is dripping from his nose, and he’s about 95% sure his left ankle’s either twisted to all hell or sprained.
The street he got jumped on is just a little bit away from a road where he knows there’s a payphone.
Thankfully, most Socs aren’t in the business of raiding the pockets of whatever poor bastard they jump. Which, just so happens to have been him that night.
He’s limping real bad, and he’s just glad it’s late enough not too many people are out.
When he finally makes it to the phone, he leans heavily on the wall it’s mounted to, taking any weight off the ankle. He knows exactly where he is, even half-drunk and beaten-up, Tulsa’s streets are too familiar for him to not recognize.
And it just so happens he’s on the West side of town.
He digs in his pocket, pulling out the coins and carefully dropping the fifteen cents into the slot, making sure he doesn’t drop any. If he had to bend down right now, he might just pass out.
His fingers instinctively start dialing the number to the Shepard house, and the line is ringing before he even realizes.
Angela picks up.
“Hm?” she says, sounding real disgruntled and he realizes the time it must be.
“Hey, Angel.” he says, slurring and there’s a sigh from the other end.
“What’d you get yourself into this time, Curly?”
He thinks back to the party he wasn’t supposed to be at and the way he is (again) on the West side. He bites his lip, wishing he hadn’t called at all. If Tim caught wind of him doing something this stupid, he’d be grounded for a month.
He wouldn’t abide by it, but still.
He promptly hangs up.
When he gets home later she’s going to kill him, but Curly never had been one to think of the future. He was more the type to stay in the present.
Which does end up causing half his problem, but he doesn’t care enough to fix it.
He thinks of the people he can call that won’t rat him out to Tim, and he finds himself with three not-so-good options.
Scotty, who won’t tell Tim because he hates Tim. But, come to think of it, he also hates Curly.
Kimberly, who won’t tell Tim because she’s still kind of in love with Curly, but he doesn’t want to deal with the shit show that will come with her finding him hurt.
Or the Curtis house. Then again, both Soda and Darry seem to have something against him.
So, he doesn’t have any options.
Scotty’s out (he isn’t itching for a second beatdown), Kimberly’s out (he doesn’t want a repeat of the time she came to get him at a party and cried for the entire ride, saying she still loves him), and the Curtis’ are also out. (He doesn’t exactly like the 2:1 odds of someone who can tolerate him picking up.)
He sighs, and resigns himself to walking home.
That’s also thrown out the window the second he takes a step and his knee damn near buckles from the force of white-hot pain that rushes through his leg.
He curses and pulls out another 15 cents.
The Curtis house it is.
He’s praying to every god he knows and doesn’t believe in that it won’t be Darrel or Sodapop’s voice he hears over the line.
He lets out a breath when he hears the hushed voice of Pony come through.
“Hello?” he sounds like he’s whispering and Curly is suddenly reminded of the fact that both of Pony’s brothers have work tomorrow and Pony has school.
He considers hanging up and walking again, but he swallows his pride and says, “Hey, Baby Curtis.”
He hears the second sigh of disappointment that night before Pony starts talking again. “Do you know what time it is, man?”
Curly swallows and looks at the sky, trying to make a rough estimate. “Uh… midnight?”
“2 in the morning.”
Curly winces at the blunt tone, Pony is less than amused.
“Oh. Uh… sorry for callin’ this late. Early.”
“Yeah never mind all that. Why’d you call?”
“I just... Well, I just wanted to?” he says, and it doesn’t even sound convincing to himself.
Pony snorts. “Yeah, I’m sure. Because it’s totally normal to call someone at 2 AM because you feel like it. What’d you really want?”
Curly blows out a breath. Maybe he can still hang up and call someone else. Maybe Scotty.
That would be yelling and insults instead of crippling awkwardness, at least.
He doesn’t have another 15 cents.
“I’m kinda... hurt. Not too bad, just can’t walk all that good right now.”
He can tell in the awkward silence that Pony is doing that weird but cute funny thing where he wrinkles up his nose. “Are ya drunk, too?”
Curly resists the urge to laugh nervously, instead just swallowing and saying, “Buzzed, more like.”
Pony doesn’t find it nearly as funny. “Christ. Okay, where are ya?”
“Over by the library.”
Curly can hear the rustling that had been in his ear stop and assumes Pony had rolled his eyes. “Which one?”
Curly feels his cheeks heat up and he says, “On 51st.”
Pony lets out a sigh. “What the hell are you doin’ over there at this hour? Is that why you’re callin’ me before the sun even comes up? That how you got injured— Jesus, I sound like Darry. Anyway, why’d you call me?”
He puts his foot down, trying to stop the awkward position his hip is resting in. “Shit.” he hisses slightly.
“Curly?”
He snaps back into himself and realizes that he really doesn’t know why he called Pony. “Uh... I dunno. Didn’t have no one else, I s’pose. Was hopin’ you could come and pick me up?”
There’s silence on the other end before Pony clears his throat and Curly’s half convinced he’s gonna slam the phone down and go back to bed. Instead, he says something Curly hadn’t even thought of.
“I can’t drive.”
He lets his head fall back and thunk against the wall of the building behind him.
“I could try and give you a crash course over the phone.” he offers, his voice going a little high, knowing he can’t exactly call Angela back now.
“Yeah, I’m sure you could. Give me a crash course.” Pony says, and Curly can hear the sarcasm dripping from his voice over the phone.
Curly resists the urge to hang up out of embarrassment. “You could walk?”
There’s silence before the telltale click of Pony hanging up comes and Curly almost brings his foot up and kicks the wall.
But he’d either need to kick his probably-sprained ankle against a wall or balance all his weight on it.
Neither sound particularly fun so he just lets out a frustrated grunt Angela would’ve made fun of him for, and slides to the ground.
He stays there for what must’ve been a half hour, watching multiple cars go by. They were probably writing him off as a drunk or something. He certainly didn’t look his best.
There’s hurried footsteps coming down the alley to his right, and he tenses up, his shoulders jutting uncomfortably into the hard brick of the building behind him.
Until he realizes there’s only one pair of footsteps.
Moving at a distinctly Ponyboy-Curtis-speed-walk pace.
He turns his head to the side and, sure enough, Ponyboy rounds the corner, in a hoodie that’s way too thin for the guy’s tolerance of the cold. Not that Curly can talk. He’d lost his own sweatshirt way back at the party.
Then again, he had alcohol to stave off the cold and Pony doesn’t drink.
“Jesus, man. How’d you get here so fast?”
Pony snorts. “Took me like an hour, man.”
“And your house is two hours away.”
Pony rolls his eyes and sticks his hand out. “I’ve lived here long enough to know a couple shortcuts. Now get up, Soda’ll freak out if he wakes up and I’m nowhere to be found.”
Curly lets out a huff of laughter and grabs Pony’s hand, pulling himself up and wincing.
“Glory, man. Who the hell’d you get in a fight with?”
Curly throws his arm over Pony’s shoulder and takes a step. “Just a couple Socs. You should see the other guys.”
Pony laughs and focuses on trying to make some progress, a few more steps down the road before he stops.
“Okay. This isn’t gonna work. It’ll be three hours before I get either one of us back home and I’m not sure I’ll make it through that lecture.”
Curly sighs. “Then what do we do?”
“Maybe you stop getting into so many fights.” Pony says, halfway under his breath.
Curly ignores it. “You got fifteen cents?”
“Yeah, why? Wanna call one of your siblings?”
“Hell no. I was gonna ask if you had anyone you could call. Hopefully someone who wouldn’t call Tim.”
Pony shakes his head and Curly curses under his breath.
He looks around the street, his eyes sparking a little. “You up for a crash course in driving?”
Pony lets his head hang. “God damn it.” he mutters. “I got a choice?”
“Not unless you wanna be chewed up and spit out by both your brothers for sneaking out at two in the morning.”
Curly easily leans his weight to steer Pony towards a car on the other side of the road. Curly had long since outgrown the guilt of stealing cars (or rather the thrill, Curly had never really felt too much guilt about his criminal endeavors).
Pony looked a little hesitant but Curly picks the lock easily, with Pony half-holding him up, popping the door opens and climbing in, sliding across the seat.
The door closes after Pony, who looks real uncomfortable, hands resting behind the wheel.
“You know how to hotwire a car?” Curly asks and Pony snorts.
“Yeah, I don’t know how to drive one but I can hotwire it.” Still, he ducks down and starts the car up easily. Curly huffs out a laugh.
“Who taught you to do that?”
Pony shrugs. “Either Steve or Two-Bit, I’m not sure.”
“Okay. What do you know about drivin’?”
“You press the gas and it goes and you press the brake and it stops.”
Curly lets out a bark of laughter. “Jesus, you’re in rough shape.”
“You sure you can’t do it?” Pony whines.
“Not unless you want someone with a sprained ankle accidentally running us into a telephone pole or somethin’.”
He catches the way Pony's shoulders tense up, and he thinks, for a second, that he’d accidentally crossed some sort of line.
He clears his throat. “Uh... Anyway. You gotta shift it into first gear.” When Pony just looks helpless, Curly helps him out, shifting it himself and doubting this plan. “Now you gotta press the clutch in—that pedal there—and then you have to take your foot off the clutch, slowly, and press the gas.”
The car jerks forward and Pony slams on the brakes. “Jesus Christ, Lead Foot.”
It only takes a few more tries (and a few more stalls of the engine) for Pony to finally start driving in a normal way.
Curly sees his life flash before his eyes every time Pony accidentally jerks the car to a stop.
He’d prefer the rough driving to the thick blanket of weird awkwardness that hangs over them as it is.
They were both well aware of this... thing in between them. But it’s made a lot more apparent in close quarters.
It takes 14 minutes to get back to the Curtis house, and 2 more beyond that to reach the Shepard’s house.
“You got a surprisingly good sense of direction.” Curly comments as Pony pulls up to the curb.
“I’ve been honing it ever since I was old enough to walk the streets with my brother.”
Curly laughs and hesitates, before leaning over, stopping right before his lips would’ve met Pony’s jaw.
Pony smiles and turns, easily catching his lips.
He pulls away just a little bit, “You taste like blood.”
Curly smiles. “You still like it.”
“I ain’t bailin’ you out again next time you call me at 2 in the morning.”
“See you later, Baby Curtis.” Curly says, easily ignoring him and climbing out of the car. He limps like hell to the other side of the car.
Pony climbs out of the car when Curly almost falls, slinging an arm around his shoulder.
“Glory, man, you can’t keep walkin’ on that.”
Pony gets them both up the steps. It’s dark, and they risk one more kiss before Pony helps Curly lean against the wall and starts walking back down the steps.
“You can take care of the car in the morning, I ain’t driving without someone there to keep us from crashing.”
Curly smiles, watching Pony half jog to the end of the street.
He finally rests his hand on the door, knowing Angela’s ready to raise hell on him for hanging up on her earlier, even though his blood alcohol level is reaching zero and he can feel a killer headache coming on.
He focuses on the feeling that lingers on his lips, and opens the door.