Work Text:
The outlaw town was suspiciously peaceful.
They’d covered the last stretch of Arizona desert that afternoon, then over the rocky outcropping of the California border. Stillness reigned over the little gaggle of buildings; only a few passersby to stir up the dust, the hitching posts dotted with horses swatting at flies in the heat. A saloon spilled noise and music onto the splintering slat sidewalk.
Civilization was too big a word for the place, bleached in midsummer heat and smeared with more grime than the flanks of Darry's horse. But after a full day of riding without clapping eyes on even a sign post, let alone a house, he took what he could get.
"Think we'll get kicked out again?"
Darry lifted his hat to wipe liquid heat off his forehead. He glanced at his brother. "We won't if you behave."
Soda hopped from foot to foot as a grin stretched mile-wide across his freckled face—you could cook a meal over the warmth of that smile, all teeth and flame. "I always behave!"
(Soda, for all his virtues, lied like it was a profession.)
They hitched their horses outside the saloon. Darry readjusted his hat, waiting for Soda to drop a parting kiss on his mustang's nose, before climbing the broad porch steps together. They paused outside the door. The din of too many people lapped at their feet.
Darry glanced back, towards the horses. "If we gotta make a fast exit—"
"Boy howdy, Dar, we're just askin' for work."
"You know how quick that can go south."
"And I know how quick you can pull a trigger." Soda nudged Darry lightly with his hip, knocking their daddy's holster that Darry hadn't taken off since the accident. "Besides, a place like this is crawling with scum, not lawmen. We'll fit right in."
That was the problem, but Darry only sighed, following as Soda pushed through the door. The stench of villainy engulfed them; sweat and cheap booze, tobacco smoke, horse. Weatherbeaten faces blinked from the splash of light. They were exactly the kind of folks Darry expected to find in a forgotten place like this—cowboys and gunslingers, no-good riffraff still dusty from riding the range, girls with necklines plunging off their chests and hems hiked up to their waists. Piano tunes cavorted drunkenly through the air. Somewhere, a raucous voice sang along.
The brothers paused in the doorway to take in the scene. As the saloon-goers caught sight of them, the din faded, calloused fingers slipping off piano keys. Darry wasn't ignorant to the effect they had; Soda, like a character from a legend, wind-spun hair showering gold, and Darry hulking behind him with a hand on his gun. Strangers dredged up from the sun-dried range. Dust and muscle. Lead.
"Tough crowd," Darry muttered.
"Our kind of fellas."
He glanced sideways at Soda. "You gonna take this seriously?"
"Not if I can help it."
They ambled towards the bar, slow and sauntering, Darry never taking his eyes off the watchful room. Soda hopped onto a stool. Darry leaned against the counter beside him and tossed some money down. "Beer."
The bartender had a face like a dead lizard left too long in the sun, shriveled in all the wrong places. He eyed Darry with half-lidded eyes, tracking a path from Darry's hands tapping a measured pattern against the counter, to the gun at Darry's hip. Then he tipped his chin toward Soda. "What about you?"
Seated on the tall stool, the tips of his boots barely brushing the ground, Soda swung his legs idly like a child. "Glass of milk."
The bartender scoffed. "You pullin' my leg, boy?"
"My brother asked for milk." Darry's voice rumbled deep in his throat, the warning of thunder. He straightened, looming at full height over the bar. "You got a problem with that?"
The effect was immediate as the man shrunk beneath Darry's shadow, eyes dropping to the unswept floor. "I'll check the spring house," he mumbled before scurrying away.
Soda tipped his hat back and glanced at Darry with twinkling eyes. "We talked about not scaring the crap outta folks as a first impression."
"We talked about not bein' an idiot, but there you sit."
The words held no bite. They bickered their way across the Texas range, through the New Mexico desert and into California's golden valleys, trading words the same way they fought bandits—Darry, slow and calculated, each blow landing with intention, and Soda quick on his feet, throwing scrappy jabs. They argued through the day, and when the moon made a silver trail across the sky, curled up together beside the fire Darry kindled and dreamed about home.
Soda guffawed now as he jammed his elbow into the soft part below Darry's ribs. "Damn, I thought Ponyboy was the mean one.”
"Bastard."
"See, that's what I mean!"
"Believe me," Darry muttered, "compared to Ponyboy, I'm downright nice."
Their little brother was grumpier than a brood hen and twice as unpredictable—Darry, as the usual target of his foul moods, was all too aware. "You're no spring picnic either," Soda once pointed out after listening to Darry rant about a particularly aggravating fight, ever quick to take everybody and nobody's side. But Ponyboy was two things Darry had no patience for: sullen and churlish.
He would be fifteen soon. Funny, how time changed things. Drinking at a saloon in devil knew where, Darry would give anything to fight with Ponyboy again, if only to hear that boyish bitterness—if only to know the kid was safe.
Like pulling a trigger, the mention of their baby brother ripped the mirth out from under them. Soda tugged at the chain around his neck, where the faint lines of Pony's horse medallion showed through his shirt. "Whaddya think he's doin' right now?" Soda asked, lowering his voice as he glanced around the room.
Darry snorted. "Gettin' lazy on our paychecks."
Soda kicked him. Beneath the grins and glib jokes, Soda worried his little head off about their baby brother. So did Darry, if he was being honest, but what could they do? Ponyboy was safest back in Tulsa, staying in school and living off the money they sent him. A kid's stability shouldn't be brutally uprooted for the drifter's life. Not their kid, at least. Not after—
Two glasses clunked down in front of them, sloshing with frothy white milk and alcohol so weak a baby could drink it. Darry took a sip anyway. Just as well that it wasn't strong— only fools got drunk in foreign territory.
He forced away thoughts of what he'd left behind (and why they ran in the first place), focusing once again on the hum of the room behind him. The piano playing had resumed, though not as loud. Needling gazes drilled into the back of his neck.
"Stay alert," Darry said, tankard raised to his lips. "This ain't the kinda town to welcome strangers."
Soda grinned. Nothing kept him down for long, not Sodapop. You could sooner catch a bobcat with bare hands than keep him from smiling. "It's an outlaw town, you lunk. They ain't welcoming nobody."
Fair enough. Darry felt the men's eyes on him, gazes rougher than the hands creeping toward oil-polished pistols. They watched for slip-ups, for the first sign that Darry and Soda weren't one of them—fellas who carved a livelihood out of the graves they dug for themselves. The collective bounty harbored under that roof could no doubt buy a kingdom. Darry and Soda could make a tidy profit, if Soda had the stomach for that kind of work. If his own head weren't equally worth a fortune.
The bartender ambled back, polishing the counter just beyond Darry's resting arms. "Don't get many strangers in this gin mill," he said, and Darry smelled the lie a mile away. They got plenty of strangers, alright. Theyjust made sure the poor sods left an ally, or didn't leave at all. "What brings you boys to town?"
Darry took another sip. "Lookin' for work."
He studied them, taking in their threadbare coats, the dirt caked into every crack on their faces. "What kinda work?"
"The honest kind."
"Ain't much of that 'round here." He leaned forward, voice dropping to a gravel-pitched grunt. "Now if you ain't so scrupulous, I know a feller lookin' to hire some muscle—" his glanced skittered down Darry's bulky frame, once again landing on the gun— "no questions asked."
Darry slid his tankard across the counter for a refill. "Not interested."
"Now hold on," interjected Soda, "let's hear the gentleman out."
He had that gleam in his eye, the one that robbed fifty dollars straight from a rich man's pocket but still managed to sweet-talk his way out of jail. Reckless as summer rain, that's Sodapop. Interested in everything and ready for anything, even if it meant flirting with the hangman. Soda could never keep a lover. He jilted the noose more times than most men made love to it.
But not Darry. He kept his playbook clean and square, at least when he could, when the past wasn't doing its damnedest to catch up to him. You couldn't settle old debts while busy making new ones.
"We're not interested," he said, firm.
The bartender only shrugged. "Then you better keep movin’. Dirty jobs are the only jobs in these parts."
As he shuffled away, Soda sighed. "Boy howdy, Dar, if I was as square as you, they could use us as a pair o' dice."
"Bein' smart ain't bein' square," Darry snapped. "You're free to play chicken with the law, but I ain't heaping more trouble at Ponyboy's doorstep."
Soda lifted his hands in surrender. "Easy big guy. All I'm sayin' is we need the money."
"Not by robbing trains."
"Wanted men can't afford a moral compass."
"You never had one to begin with."
Soda's smile tightened. An open wound hid behind that grin, raw in the stinking heat, and Darry had just spat salt in it. "I thought Ponyboy was the mean one," Soda mused lightly, and turned away.
Darry sighed, pulling his hat brim lower to block the sight of his brother's eyes. They'd outraced prairie storms, lightning splintering the earth so close you could feel the electricity on your skin, and waded through floods, and haggled with the jagged mountain roads. Soda laughed in the face of danger. Seemed wrong, that a fella who came alive at the crack of gunfire could be made to bleed by nothing more than a handful of thoughtless words.
Soda slid off his stool. He stretched, arms flung long over his head, lazy as a cat with a full belly. "Well," he said, still with that measured cheerfulness, "if we ain't sticking around, guess there's no harm in making enemies."
Darry tensed. "Where're you going?"
Soda only grinned. "Even a fella with no scruples has gotta eat."
-
An hour later, Soda had the entire room wrapped around his little finger.
Well, that's what his brother probably thought. Darry was such a knob about it all, acting like Soda wanted to cheat fellas outta their hard-earned cash. ("Hard-earned," sure. These folks came by money as honestly as Soda did.) Soda couldn't help that people seemed to trust him; to be honest, even he wasn’t sure why they did.
"It's gotta be my looks," he'd told Darry once, after a lawman let him go scott-free despite catching him red-handed in the act of pickpocketing. "Folks forgive a pretty face, y'know?"
Darry had looked at him funny—that long, furrowed stare, thicker than mist at midnight—and said dryly, "Sure, kid. Bet it's your looks."
(Soda prided himself on being fluent in the silent language of Darry stares, but that one still stumped him.)
Handsomeness had become his sharpest weapon, since he didn't have much else. Ponyboy and Darry got all the brains in the family (and most of the respect to boot), leaving Soda with nothing but nice hair and strong hands. He didn't share Ponyboy's sharp-eyed intuition, and he sure as hell didn't have Darry's commanding presence. When Darry entered a room, people trembled at the bare brush of his shadow. Something about his eyes, the way he could strip men down to the bone with nothing but a glance. Folks couldn't help but respect a guy like that, all jagged lines and raw power—and if they didn't respect him, at least they feared him. Next to Darry, Soda was nothing more than a scrappy kid with nice teeth.
Still, he had an uncanny habit of walking into a crowd hostile enough to hang him at the first misstep, and walking out with twenty new pals and a couple of girlfriends to boot. Call it luck. Sodapop Curtis and his disarming smile.
"Good game," he said, swiping the cash purse he just won in poker, and dazzling the table with his sharpest grin. "Got guts for another round?"
As he dealt a new hand to the gaggle of cowboys at the table, he reassessed the room. Darry liked strategy, never making a move he hadn't spent three days thinking about in advance, but Soda was more of a gut-feeling kinda guy. He'd play this crowd for the fools they were as long as they'd let them, and when the air shifted—the murmur of violence, red-rimmed and hot on his skin—he'd sweep up his winnings and disappear with Darry.
"Cocky little thing, ain'tcha," scoffed a cowboy from across the table (outlaw, by the look of the bullet-holes in his jacket). "Where'd you get so much damn confidence, boy?"
"Oh, I can afford it," Soda said breezily, tipping his chin towards the hulking silhouette of his brother, still slouched against the bar. "Got me a guard dog."
The reminder, though subtle, sent a murmur around the table. They clutched their cards a little tighter, shifting so their pistols were easier to draw. Soda grinned. Even without glancing back, he could feel Darry's presence filling up the room, static power hiding dormant behind crossed arms. A bullet in the head didn't scare Soda, not with Darry watching his back. Easier to rob a bank than get past those vigilant eyes.
They slipped into these roles like well-worn clothes: Soda, a charming, pretty little bauble, too sweet to catch the cunning in his eyes. And Darry lurking behind like a watchful dog, daring anyone to get too close to his boy. Beauty and brawn, that's how they played it. From Tulsa to El Paso, Santa Fe to Tombstone, riding from range to range, drifting from job to job—Soda knew Darry better than the horses he wrangled, knew every little furrow of his brow, every silent look and deep sigh; and Darry knew Soda better than the sky they slept under, knew his ticks and giveaways. Knew he kept a couple cards tucked into the weather-worn crease of his boot, waiting to flick 'em out at the first distraction.
Soda didn't do bounty work, that's his deal-breaker. Better to shoot a man dead than cage him for the rest of his life, stripped of hope and freedom. And Darry wouldn't run heists, no stick 'em ups or shoot-outs, no stage coach robbing, nothing that might attract a sheriff's eye. Most jobs they took were plain old ranch work, mending fences and herding cattle, training horses when they could, until the law caught up and they moved on. They got by how they could, honest as they could.
But, well, if Darry bloodied his knuckles in a back alley from time to time, too much pent-up anger needing an outlet, who's to say? And if Soda used his God-given charms to con a saloon full of outlaws—well, thieving lowlife were fair game, in his book. Darry fussed, but never outright stopped him. Darry was no safer from Soda's smile than the fools getting swindled at poker.
(Besides, they'd been out of work since that cattle drive in Prescott. Unless Darry let go of his scruples and decided to shoot up a bank, this was the only way to stay afloat.)
So here's how it worked, the two of them: Soda did the dirty work, and Darry cleaned up the mess.
The hidden ace rubbed against Soda's ankle as he shifted in his seat. So far, he hadn't needed it. The fellas across the table slouched over their cards, some fidgeting, others staring with blank eyes. He kinda felt bad for them—they were on their way to losing another round and an ungodly amount of cash.
Darry cracked his knuckles, elbow knocking idly at the counter, and Soda caught the motion. He knew what it meant: Darry was getting antsy. Soda felt it too, the growing crackle in the air, the hum of dissatisfaction. His ruse ain't so convincing that every rum-roughed bastard was bedazzled by him. The game was about balance. Playing just long enough for a worthwhile purse, but not so long anyone noticed they were never dealt a good hand. The piano tune raced out of time with the ticking clock. Steady, steady. Read the room. Watch the time.
Soda's gaze drifted up past his cards to meet Darry's. They locked eyes for a moment. Soda raised an eyebrow. Darry nodded.
"Well, fellas," Soda said, sweeping up his earnings, "it's been a pleasure—"
And then, just as he made to stand, a burly ruffian dropped into the empty chair beside him.
"Whip smart little cuss," the stranger drawled, too close. Dirt-crusted and unshaven, with tobacco-yellowed teeth, scarred in places Soda didn't know you could be injured. Soda found himself looking for the swarm of flies—boy howdy, a stench like that shoulda attracted them by now. But maybe the group of thugs shambling aimlessly behind him were the flies. (Maybe Soda was, too.)
"You boys need something?" Soda asked, all air and teeth, too pleasant.
The outlaw grinned— "Just admirin'—" and dropped a heavy arm over the back of Soda's chair.
The effect was instant. Darry stepped forward, slow but precise. His eyes sizzled with a warning shot.
The thug guffawed at the sight of him and waved his flask in Darry's direction. "Call of your dog," he told Soda. "I only wanna chat."
Soda glanced at Darry, a silent battle telegraphed between their eyes. Soda always admired his self control, the tightly-wound way he kept his temper on a leash. But this— the arm on the back of Soda's chair, the threatening closeness—this was Darry's limit. If Soda gave the indication, he'd rip the fella’s throat clean from his neck.
So Soda smiled instead. Take the odds, roll the dice again. Smooth the growing violence in the room, defuse the murmur of tension racing without bridle among the saloon-goers. Calm the bronc. Play the game. Smile.
Darry didn't want to stand down, clear as day in the set of his jaw. But he still stepped back when Soda shook his head. Bolstered by this small act of submission, the outlaw grinned and scooted an inch closer.
"It's a good hustle," he said, nodding towards the deck of cards, gaze never leaving Soda's. "All that big-eyed fawning, real coy, real innocent. Betcha win a lot."
Soda winked. "Can't beat luck."
The outlaw's eyes flicked towards Darry. "Luck, sure." Then, grabbing the hem of Soda's sleeve, gave a shake. "There's a card hidin' in here, I'll wager."
Darry lifted his chin, too quiet. "You're gonna lose a hand, buddy."
"That a fact?" He made eye contact with Darry and slowly, amiably, flicked Soda's hat of his head. “I’m tremblin’.”
The hat drifted gently to the ground. For a moment no one moved, the silence simmering thick to a boil under Soda's skin. He grinned, wicked sharp, all predator now. "You’ve got guts, I’ll give you that."
"A little smoke don't scare me." Then, looking down, he sneered at the contents of Soda’s glass. "Y'know, real men drink whiskey."
Soda tipped his chair back on two legs and took a lazy sip of milk. "Real men ain't dumb enough to pick a fight with my brother when he's already pissed."
"Well, see, I got my own hidden ace," the man said, slipping a piece of paper from his sleeve. He unfolded it, grinning like a devil, and dropped it onto the table. "Wanted for murder, eh?"
The likenesses weren't perfect. The real Soda didn't look so angelic, and the real Darry didn't smile enough to be recognizable as that grinning mug. But those were their faces, all the same, printed nice and neat above a bounty big enough to buy a tidy parcel of land. And beneath the bounty:
"WANTED, Dead or Alive: Darrel & Simon-Paul Curtis."
For a moment, no one spoke, as all eyes focused on the bold headline. Then Soda, wrinkling his nose— "Least they could do was get my name right."
The bounty hunter’s hand drifted towards his gun. "No need for a mess, boys. Let’s do this quietly."
"I ain't so good at that."
"We're all outlaws here," said Darry. "The fellas in this room ain't on your side."
"Oh, we'll see about that." The bounty hunter shifted in his seat, glancing around the room. "Outlaw loyalty only goes so far when you’ve been cheatin’ at cards all afternoon.”
Darry sighed, shoulders dropping. "What the hell." And oh, Soda knew that tone—
In a single stride, Darry crossed the distance and slammed his fist into the bounty hunter's jaw.
The room exploded into chaos.
Quick as a cat, Soda leapt to his feet. Laughter bubbled off his tongue as he rammed his elbow into a guy's throat. Nothing like a brawl to get the blood pumping. Beside him, Darry kicked the bounty hunter's chair out from under him and grabbed another thug before he could reach Soda, throwing him across the table. Violence erupted across the saloon, a screaming, scratching cacophony.
"Time to make a fast exit?" Soda shouted over the racket, dodging a punch and throwing his own.
Darry socked someone in the nose. "Thought you said we wouldn’t need one."
They fought the way they knew best—dirty. Kicking at kneecaps, going for eyes, honor abandoned for the sake of making it out on top. The saloon was already a powder keg waiting to blow, too much masculinity and nowhere to put it. Now chaos broke loose like a rodeo bronc. Glass shattered and chairs flew. Blood polished the floor waxy red. Most of the men didn't even know why the brawl started, but were too caught in the adrenaline to stop. Let 'em get their licks in; the more pandemonium, the easier it would be for Soda and Darry to slip out.
At some point they got separated while fighting their way towards the door. Soda caught a glimpse of Darry from across the room, a raging bull of power. He shook off three guys as if it was nothing. His fist, like a bullet, made of lead. Darry was feared for a reason; nobody could take him down.
Soda fought in his own golden cyclone of jabs and taunts, and for the thousandth time, breathed a prayer of gratitude that they left Ponyboy safe in Tulsa. Soda could hold his own in a fight—an asset, not a hindrance, shoring up the gaps of Darry's weaknesses with a quick eye and back pressed to Darry's. But Ponyboy was too young for this kind of life.
Hell, so was Darry.
The thought caught him by surprise as he was slugging some guy's brains out, the reminder that his powerhouse of an older brother was barely twenty-one. Still just a boy, really, even if he looked twice his age more often than not. Soda did his best to take care of him. But Darry was better than this life he’d been exiled into. Soda wasn’t good for much, but Darry—
Blood ran in rivulets down Soda's busted knuckles. They shouldn't be here.
"Darry," he shouted over the uproar, "let's get outta—"
The chair smashed against the back of Darry's head so fast, Soda almost missed it. He blinked and it was a pile of broken pieces on the floor, Darry on his knees, the world a flash of color around him. Splinters under his palms. The bounty hunter standing over him. Darry had lost his hat. Blood seeped through his hair and ran down the side of his neck.
He tried to get up, clumsy, but a booted foot kicked his arm out from under him. He hit the ground hard, shoulder first. Metal gleamed. A pistol barrel, aimed towards the back of his skull
"Darry—!" the name ripped from Soda's throat, and then he was across the saloon and hurling straight into the bounty hunter, the crack of knuckles against jaw so loud, it could've been a gunshot.
For a moment, they tussled on the floor. Splinters in their clothes and blood on their fists. The ruffian was stronger, but Soda was quick. They rolled, over and over, hitting table legs, getting stepped on. A fist collided with the side of Soda's face. He saw red, tasted copper. Couldn't make sense of anything except that his brother was still on the ground.
Weight slammed into his chest and forced him down. He struggled uselessly. A knee punched into his stomach, knocking the air clean from his lungs. He gasped. Choked. The bounty hunter pinned his arms to the ground, too heavy even for Soda's anger, the flash of metal in his periphery.
"Little runt,” the man grunted, steadying his pistol.
Soda had stared down the barrel of a gun more times than he could count, but the fear always felt the same. The electric sizzle, heat pounding in his head as he fought to free himself. Blood. Everywhere. On himself. On his attacker's face.
"Dead or alive," the bounty hunter said, the words rasped over yellow teeth. "But dead is easier."
His thumb on the hammer, pulling it back with a click. Finger on the trigger.
Bam.
Blood exploded over Soda's face as the bounty hunter slumped to the ground. The hole in his forehead stared back at Soda like a bloody third eye. And there, behind him—
With blood streaming down the side of his face, Darry swayed unsteady on his feet, but never so strong as when he hauled Soda up and clutched him tight, holding his little brother with the hand that didn't grip their father's gun.
"Told ya to behave," he mumbled.
Soda pressed his cheek to Darry’s heart. It beat steady.
-
Three things happen one afternoon in a dusty saloon, so far beyond the limits of civilized country, they say God Himself had forsaken it. The bartender remembered, but he wouldn't tell the story. "Those boys ain't legends," he said, when pressed. "Didn't you see their faces? They were kids, hiding beneath all them layers of blood."
But sometimes, when drunk, when bribed with better stories, the tale would slip out. Here’s how it went:
One: A pair of brothers walked into a bar. The first tall and broad, cut from the hardened muscle of desperate men, with eyes so sharp his gaze drew blood. The other, lean and fair-headed, his laughter like a noose, poison dripping off the white-toothed fangs of his smile.
Two: They fought like the devil himself, two winds in the same cyclone. Fighting with one was fighting with both; you couldn't get a lick in without the other appearing to make you pay for it, four fists but one mind.
Three: When the younger was pinned with a gun to his head, manic fear rimming his white-eyed stare, the older stood up from a dead knockout and shot the bounty hunter cold.
Corpses weren't unusual in those parts, where lawlessness ran more rampant than vermin. But something about his eyes when he did it, something about his brother on the ground with tears mixing in the blood on his face. They say some men are born in eternity's shadow, with every milestone of their life a grave marker. They say some men are made to put others in the ground, that the stink of fate hangs too heavy, their hands built for nothing else. They say some men carry death with them wherever they go.
But he was just a boy.
He pulled the trigger like it was the only thing he knew how to do. And afterward, as the brawling faded into a shocked daze, he hauled the corpse off his brother and grabbed the kid to his chest, holding him with the same merciless hands that delivered death only moments before.
Maybe that's why they remembered him, long after he and the kid stumbled to their horses and disappeared into the red rock hills. He pulled the trigger without hesitation, and didn't flinch when the man dropped dead. No remorse. No indecision. Typical, for strangers in those parts.
But afterward, he hugged his brother.
And from his place behind the counter, watching with weary resignation as his saloon was ransacked (again), the bartender swore he saw tears in Darrel Curtis Jr.'s eyes.
-
They rode like hell until the red desert dust swallowed them up, until they got so lost in the rocky cliffs, no one would ever find them. Darry lost track of time. The sun was mid-retreat behind the cliffs when they finally stopped, shadows stretching long towards the faraway plains.
He swung his leg over his horse and stumbled when his feet hit the ground. The earth dipped and rose. For a moment, he couldn't find the sky.
Soda patted his horse's heaving flanks as he slid off. He lost his hat somewhere in the fight, his hair bared to the sky, wind-tangled and soaked with sweat. Manic eyes gleamed gold as he approached Darry. "That was fun."
The bounty hunter's blood spattered his face. Another patch of red covered the side of his shirt, down near his hip. Darry reached for it, but Soda smacked him away. "Some rawheel was takin' pieces with his knife. He got me in the soft part, nothing serious."
Darry wrinkled his nose. "He pulled his blade in a fistfight?"
"Exactly, folks these days got no honor. Oh, by the way—" Soda pulled a coin pouch from his satchel and waved it in Darry's direction— "swiped enough off those coots to buy Ponyboy's textbooks, and some left for us."
"Rascal," Darry said, shaking his head. He instantly regretted it when the world reeled, but blinked his way through it to make another pass at Soda's shirt. "C'mon, let me look at that cut."
"Head wound first," Soda said.
Darry protested— "You got stabbed —" but truth be told he felt kinda woozy, and when Soda grabbed his arm, it didn't take much effort to bring him down. He fell, more than sat, on a straight slab of stone, too dizzy to keep his feet.
"Hell of a concussion," Soda muttered.
Darry slumped forward, resting his face against Soda's stomach as gentle fingers prodded the back of his skull. "Don’t write nothin’ stupid on my gravestone."
"‘Here lies an idiot, killed by chair,’” Soda singsonged. His hands carded through Darry’s hair. "Lotta dried blood back here. They got you pretty good."
A lot of dried blood on Sodas shirt, too—Darry smelled it, tasted it when he opened his mouth to speak—but it wasn't Soda's. He opened his eyes, and in the dancing light spots, saw the scene once more: Soda on the ground, a gun pressed to his forehead. In that moment he’d looked like a baby again, the way Darry saw him in dreams, when they were little and nothing bad had ever happened to them. The memory fractured in an echo of blood and gunfire. Darry closed his eyes.
"Think they'll send out a posse?"
Soda snorted. "That bastard probably has a bounty bigger than the state of Texas. No sheriff is gonna waste a posse looking for his angel o' death."
"He was gonna kill you," Darry said, too quiet. Maybe his voice cracked. He couldn't really tell, he wasn't thinking too good. Light spots everywhere. A pistol between his kid brother's eyes.
The hands slid out of his hair and a moment later Soda crouched at eye level, holding Darry's face with a touch so much like their mother's it made him wanna cry.
"Thanks for having my back," Soda said. And then softly, because he knew Darry too well, because no matter how old they got, Darry still couldn't hide from that probing look, "You did the right thing, Dar."
A part of him always worried this was just another of Soda's elaborate cons, lies built up so thick over time he couldn't tell where they began or ended. Killing ain't ever the right thing, that's what his father would say—if his father were still around to say anything. Darry wasn't proud of the man he'd become. He wasn't proud of Soda either, not the lightning fast way he lied, thieving without fear. They left Tulsa as one thing and reached California as something else entirely, barbed-wire and broken glass, hearts harder than prairie stone.
But some things hadn't changed, still making Darry's chest swell. Soda still cried when they found dead creatures in the wilderness, still got excited by store-bought taffy, and fawned over his horse like a fourth brother. And Darry still waited for Ponyboy's letters with baited breath, in the rare times when they stayed in one place long enough for mail. He'd go to hell for his boys. Stealing, killing, drifting from town to town, looking for work where he could—he'd turn himself inside out to keep them safe.
"You did the right thing, Darry," Soda said again, and for a moment, eyes closed to painful light and the look in Soda's eyes, Darry let himself believe it.
Later, after Soda cleaned the blood out of Darry's hair and poured alcohol over the wound until Darry was spitting curses their mama would've smacked him over the backside for knowing, after his head cleared enough to see straight, he stitched up Soda's gash. It wasn't bad, neat and shallow in the flesh of his side. Soda didn't flinch, not even from Darry's work-rough hands wielding a needle.
"I hear there are ranches in the valley," he said while Darry worked. "If we keep riding 'til we lose the stink of what happened here, I bet we could find that honest work you're always yammering about."
Darry grunted. "Think you could settle for a boring life?"
"Ain't boring if you're in it."
Darry tied off the thread and doused the whole thing in alcohol. Soda pulled down his shirt. He perched on the rock beside Darry, kicking off his boots and tossing his holster aside, already settling in to make camp for the night.
"We do this for him, y'know," Soda whispered, and his voice betrayed the first flicker of vulnerability Darry had seen all day. "Don't forget that—I didn't choose this life no more than you did."
"I know, Sodapop." Darry shifted, pressing their shoulders together. "You did good today. Had my back when I needed you."
Soda glowed, wiggling under the praise like a little dog. But when he spoke again, his voice was still quiet. "What do you think Ponyboy's doing?"
"Probably wondering what we're doing."
A beat of silence passed. Then, "I hope he never finds out."
Darry sighed. "Me neither, buddy."