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“I’m home!” Darry called out as he kicked the front door open, making no attempt to stop the door from slamming into the wall. He quickly toed off his boots and set the grocery bag in his arms down on the table.
“How did you two hold up?” he asked as he caught sight of his brothers.
Ponyboy and Soda were sprawled across the living room furniture, their eyes glazed over, fixated on the TV but neither of them watching too closely. A blanket hung over one of Ponyboy’s legs, and the coffee table was littered with tissues, a half-empty glass of water, and the TV guide.
“We’ve judged seven professional chefs from this couch,” Ponyboy said.
Soda nodded beside him, rubbing his eyes. “None of them impressed us.”
Darry laughed softly as he walked across the room. Up close, they looked worse. Ponyboy’s hair lay flat on one side, ruffled from sleeping on the armrest on the other.
His hand landed softly on Ponyboy’s brow as he pushed his hair back, smoothing out one side of his hair while he did so. Then Soda’s, one hand on his head, one pulling his blanket back over his shoulders.
Warm. But not enough that he needed to worry.
“You still feel lousy?” he asked.
Ponyboy coughed into his sleeve and nodded. “Like I got hit by a truck.”
“More like a bicycle,” Soda offered, swiping a hand under his nose.
“Yeah right,” Darry said as he took a step back, still scrutinizing Soda. “If those bags under your eyes get any darker, the state’ll think I’m beating you.”
“We saw that on Divorce Court at noon,” Ponyboy said. “They almost sent him to jail.”
Darry resisted the urge to laugh as a small smile tugged at the corner of his lips. “How’d it end?”
“Don’t know.” Ponyboy pulled his knees closer to his chest. “We changed the channel because his mustache was so awful that no sentence would be bad enough.”
Soda picked up a glass of water from the table and took a sip.
“That’s mine,” Ponyboy complained.
“Doesn’t matter,” Soda replied.
Ponyboy crossed his arms. “It mattered two days ago.”
“Oh, come on, Pony,” Soda griped. “You left it at my seat at the table for an hour. You drink mine all the time—“
“Not when I know I have the plague.” Ponyboy interrupted.
“I didn’t know—“
“Cut it out,” Darry chided.
Ponyboy smirked. “That’s what I’m saying.”
“Ponyboy.”
Ponyboy stopped talking real fast. The look on Darry’s face didn’t leave much room for argument.
Soda glanced at the table. “What’s in the bag?”
“Dinner,” Darry said confidently. “Well, it will be.”
Ponyboy perked up. “What are you making?”
“Real food—something that doesn’t come from a can or a sleeve of plastic.”
Darry carried the bag into the kitchen. Ponyboy and Soda untangled themselves from the nest of blankets they’d accumulated on the couch and followed, sliding into chairs in the dining room.
Darry set the ingredients on the counter: celery, carrots, onion, a small chicken.
Ponyboy and Soda watched from the dining room table, blankets tugged tightly around their shoulders. Soda’s head fell against his hands, chin resting on the table. Ponyboy propped his head up with his elbow against the table.
Soda leaned over to Ponyboy. “That’s a lot of celery.”
Ponyboy nodded. “Bold choice.”
“It’ll cook down,” Darry told them as he pulled a knife out of the drawer and began chopping.
“And those pieces—not very uniform,” Ponyboy whispered.
Darry raised an eyebrow as he pushed the celery off the cutting board into the pan. It hit the heat with a sharp hiss. “You wanna try?”
Ponyboy shook his head; Soda wandered into the kitchen and stood beside Darry.
Darry gave him a quick look. “Sorry, little buddy, but I draw the line at letting you touch food.” He set the knife down.
“Come on, Darry,” Soda pleaded, leaning dramatically against the counter. “Let me do something. I’ve been lying around all day. I’m gonna lose it.”
Darry took a deep breath as he assessed the state of the kitchen. “Wash your hands and don’t breathe on anything. You can put the dishes away.”
Soda smiled. “Deal.”
He shuffled to the sink and Darry turned back to the pot in front of him.
“Okay, boys,” he began as he pushed the onions around in the bottom of the pot, “this is an essential step. Gotta cook them until they’re a little clear.”
“The guy on TV burnt them,” Ponyboy said.
Soda snickered. “He said it was on purpose. Yeah right.”
“That’s a real technique,” Darry said, waving the spoon at them. “Caramelization, they call it.”
“You’re making that up,” Soda replied.
“Nope.”
“Sounds like an excuse to be a bad chef,” Ponyboy suggested. He looked over Darry’s shoulder at the pot. “And it looks like you’re doing better than that guy anyway.”
Darry laughed and poured more ingredients into the pot. Carrots. Broth. Oregano. Salt. Pepper. Something Ponyboy didn’t recognize.
Beside him, the dishes clattered back into the cupboards, as Soda stacked them, slowly and with enough concentration that Ponyboy thought he might as well have been doing brain surgery. As he tucked the last fork into the cutlery drawer, Soda found himself directly beside Darry. He wasted no time letting his chin land on Darry’s shoulder as he peered into the pot.
Darry didn’t stop him—he just moved the ladle into his other hand and kept stirring.
He paused for a second, letting the soup settle before reaching into the drawer for a spoon.
Darry filled a spoon and held it out to Soda, lifting it into his mouth. “How is it?” He whispered.
Soda didn’t move his head from Darry’s shoulder, but obediently accepted the sample. “It would probably be really good if I could taste it,” he rasped.
Darry huffed out a laugh. “Unbelievable.”
He turned to the dining room. “Ponyboy?”
Ponyboy’s eyes met his.
“Your taste buds work?”
“Mostly, yeah.”
“Come here and taste this.”
Ponyboy made his way into the kitchen, blanket cape trailing behind him. He took the spoon from Darry, one hand hovering beneath it so it didn’t spill. He took a sip, thinking carefully.
“It’s good,” he told Darry.
“But it’s not right,” Darry said.
“What do you mean?”
Darry sighed, resting his hands on the counter. “I can’t get it right because I don’t remember.”
He cast a glance out the window. “She didn’t measure anything,” Darry muttered under his breath.
Ponyboy’s eyes widened, just slightly. “You’re making Mom’s?”
Darry nodded. “I thought I’d try.”
Ponyboy seemed to move slower as he reached to set the spoon on the counter.
“She used to add thyme,” Ponyboy said, glancing at the cupboard, then back at the pot. “She’d put it in right at the end—so the flavor didn’t blend in as much.”
Soda reached past Darry and grabbed the thyme, passing it to Ponyboy.
“She used to rub her fingers back and forth as she sprinkled it in,” Soda remembered. “She said it brought out the flavor.”
Carefully, Ponyboy shook the container and watched as the flakes fluttered into the pot.
Darry stirred it gently, watching the thyme disappear into the depths of the pot.
Ponyboy tasted it. “It needs more thyme.”
“Don’t we all,” Darry said softly.
The words hung in the air between them. Darry could have sworn he saw his past life in the doorway. Three small boys running down the hallway, tripping on their own feet as they raced to be first to the table. The most beautiful woman he’d ever known standing by the stove, steam curling above her head, spoon in hand, calling to her boys to cut it out.
Ponyboy leaned against his side; Soda’s head rested on his shoulder; reality ushered him back to his kitchen.
Soda rubbed under his nose with the back of his hand and sniffed, pulling himself away from Darry and the stove. Small steps back, almost unconsciously.
He sneezed, sharp and sudden.
Ponyboy jumped, shaking Darry’s frame, then groaned. “Soda,” he deadpanned.
“I know.”
“Shut. Up,” Ponyboy finished anyway.
Darry gave him a gentle shove. “Get out of my kitchen, Typhoid Mary.”
Soda stumbled back over to a chair in the dining room.
Darry slid away from the stove without a word, one hand brushed gently against Soda’s cheek, the other reaching into the pocket of his jeans.
“You feel warmer,” he whispered to Soda as he handed him a tissue.
“No, I don’t,” Soda said, sniffling.
Darry didn’t argue. He just squeezed Soda’s shoulder gently before walking back to the kitchen.
The soup simmered on the stove, small bubbles rising to the surface as the flavor of the thyme steeped.
Ponyboy watched carefully as Darry tasted the soup one last time.
“Yeah,” Darry said quietly, setting the spoon down, “That’s it.”
He pulled three bowls out of the cupboard, carefully ladling broth into each one. Steam curled from the bowl as he placed it in Ponyboy’s hands. Ponyboy felt the warmth spread through his whole body as he followed Darry to the dining table and slumped in his chair.
“Ponyboy,” Darry said, “could you hand me the salt?”
Ponyboy stood up and shuffled toward the kitchen.
“It’s on the table, bud. Just slide it over.”
“Oh.”
Ponyboy fell back into his chair, sulking just a little as he stared at his hands in his lap.
Soda leaned over, head falling off the elbow he had it propped on. “The salt,” he whispered.
“Oh.”
Ponyboy screwed his eyes shut and ran a hand across his face like he’d be able to wipe the grogginess away.
“My brain’s broken,” he muttered.
“Don’t think too hard about it,” Darry told him, placing a hand on his shoulder. “You’ll be back to full thinking capacity soon enough.”
Ponyboy gave him a half hearted smile and turned his attention to his bowl. He ate slowly, but steadily. One spoonful at a time, letting the flavor fill his mouth and the heat slide all the way to his stomach. He could practically feel life creeping back into his bones.
Soda, on the other hand, spent most of the meal pushing a carrot back and forth across the bowl unenthusiastically.
Darry didn’t comment until Soda stood up, pulling the blanket off the chair and tossing it back over his shoulders.
“What are you doing?” Darry finally asked.
“I’m gonna lie down.”
Darry looked down at the bowl in front of him. “Not in the middle of dinner, you’re not.”
“I’m done.”
Ponyboy glanced between them, eyes darting back and forth. He set his spoon down, eagerly awaiting to see how this would unfold.
“No way. You’re gonna finish it.”
Soda looked back at the half-full bowl on the table. “Dar, I can’t,” he whined.
Darry took a deep breath. And for once in his life, he decided to pick and choose his battles. “Put it in the fridge.”
Soda blinked slowly. “Seriously?”
Darry nodded, raising an eyebrow as if to tell him to get out of there before he changed his mind. “It’ll still be there in a few hours when you realize you’re starving.”
Soda obliged, putting the dish in the fridge, then flopping back onto the couch with a small groan.
Ponyboy finished his last bite, letting his spoon clink softly in his bowl as it slipped from his fingers.
“Good job, buddy,” Darry said.
Ponyboy shrugged. “It was really good.”
Darry smiled. He pulled himself out of the chair and whisked the bowls back to the kitchen, turning off the stove and leaving the pot out to cool.
By the time he left the kitchen, Ponyboy had nearly made it back to the living room.
Darry turned the TV back on as they settled on the couch. He watched carefully as they folded right back into the places he’d found them in a few hours ago when he’d returned home, like the couch had been molded to their frames.
Ponyboy’s eyes drifted to the TV. “What are we watching?”
he asked sleepily.
Darry just shrugged. “Whatever came on. It’s not cooking.”
“Thank god,” Ponyboy mumbled as he laid his head down on the pillow.
The movie was worse than Darry had hoped. A tale of forbidden love and longing that seemed to drag on with predictable beats and plain dialogue—the exact type of film that reminded him why he didn’t waste his time seeing movies in theaters anymore.
He spent more time watching his brothers than the movie. Ponyboy couldn’t look away, shocked by each development—though his reactions happened a second later than they should have while his brain tried to process the plot as it unfolded.
Soda had started on the opposite end of the couch, but now lay with his feet tucked beneath Ponyboy’s legs and his head tilted against the couch arm—lips parted, eyes shut, snoring softly. He hadn’t even made it through the first commercial break.
Darry stood up from the chair, stretching to ease the dull ache in his back that lingered after the full day of work.
“Hey, Pepsi-Cola,” Darry whispered, crouching beside the couch.
Soda didn’t stir.
Ponyboy lifted his head and looked over from the other end of the couch. “He asleep?” he croaked.
“Out cold.”
Ponyboy snorted out a laugh and rested his head back on his pillow, eyes returning to the movie.
Darry tucked an arm behind Soda’s neck and the other under his knees, scooping him off the couch.
It took less effort than he anticipated. Soda didn’t protest—he hardly even moved—just let his forehead fall against Darry’s shoulder as a small sigh escaped his lips.
They disappeared down the hallway.
He could still hear them.
Soda’s voice first—quiet, sleepy, thick with congestion. “How’d I get here?”
Darry’s sharper reply—dry, witty, laced with love. “You walked.”
And in the empty living room, Ponyboy was left with only his thoughts. His eyes drifted closed as he remembered the road trips of his youth. Hours passing in the car, streetlights whizzing past, the sound of cicadas in the grass on summer nights echoing until the lull of the car and his mother’s singing put him to sleep.
He never walked into the house after a late night drive. One minute, he’d be in the back seat, the next, he’d be tucked into his bed. Once in a while, he’d wake up as his father’s hands pulled him from the car and carried him home. He’d never open his eyes. As far as anyone knew, he was asleep. He couldn’t walk. He needed his father to carry him.
“Ponyboy,” Darry’s voice whispered in the living room.
Ponyboy’s thoughts returned to the present, but his eyes didn’t open.
“You awake, bud?”
Ponyboy didn’t move. He felt a hand on his shoulder, then an arm beneath his knees. The next thing he knew, he wasn’t on the couch anymore.
His face fit perfectly against Darry’s neck. He couldn’t help but nuzzle closer as they began the trip down the hallway.
“You’re a terrible actor,” Darry said softly as he laid Ponyboy down on the bed.
“Thanks,” Ponyboy murmured. He hoped Darry would hear him without having to spell it out. Thanks for carrying me anyway. Thanks for reminding me of how easy things used to be. Thanks for taking care of me.
“Love you, buddy,” Darry’s voice drifted through the room as the door clicked shut behind him.