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It bothered him the most when he laid down to go to sleep.
It really wasn't much, just an involuntary squeezing in his stomach, but any rest Darry got was sacred, meaning any interruptions he got to it were a pretty big deal. Most nights, it led to nothing- but on occasion he’d have strange, disturbing dreams that kept him trapped in the clutches of his own mind until a shrill beeping woke him up. Those were the only days he didn’t wake up before his alarm.
Darry had figured out long before his life went to hell that sleep didn’t necessarily mean rest. If his condition didn’t clue him in, Ponyboy’s most certainly would’ve. When his parents were around, he was able to ignore it and still know his little brother was being taken care of; but he didn’t have those luxuries anymore. He didn’t dream often, but when he did they stayed with him long into the day. By noon, he’d probably be able to move on from whatever torment his psyche had cooked up for him the night before, but that still left him with half a day of shaky hands and ignored warning signals.
His coworkers were all good people. They were like him, though Darry doubted any of them shared his exact circumstances- and if they did, he pitied them greatly (he hated himself for this. If he didn’t want pity, why would anyone else?) despite himself. They all knew there were hospital bills for him to pay and younger brothers for him to care for. They all saw that he was young, younger than he wanted to let himself be, and they did their best to go easy on him. Everyone tried to help each other, really, because they were all Greasers who were shit outta luck and each other was all they could realistically hope to have. He wasn’t the only roofer with a second job, either. Everyone knew how exhausted they were, and they knew that exhaustion applied to nearly every single one of them. No one knew about the dreams, but if Darry had to take a guess, his coworkers had come the closest to figuring it out.
Droopy eyelids weren’t safe for the workplace, though, so on the days that followed his roughest nights Darry would do what he did best: ignore everything and work harder.
He wasn’t about to lie to himself- he knew it was probably damaging in some way or other to constantly treat himself like this. Sodapop showed him real quick that letting things pile up was never a good idea unless you were looking for a real bad time. Darry couldn’t stop, though. He couldn’t let himself. If he stopped, there would be no time for him to do what needed to get done, to pay the bills he needed to pay, to take care of the brothers who needed to depend on him.
Some days, as he carried huge bundles of roofing up creaky ladders, Darry would almost pretend he was carrying blankets on top of a badly made pillow fort instead. He’d get to lay down with his brothers (maybe even Ma and Pa) and let the tension out of his eternally aching muscles and joints and just relax for once in his goddamn life. But if he ever wanted that to happen, he had to work himself to the bone first. He wouldn’t be surprised if when that glorious day finally came, he’d be too tired to even enjoy it; maybe he’d even be too tired to realize it was happening at all.
Darry hated that two of his buddies dying didn’t change a thing in the grand scheme of things. He was still working day and night just to put food on the table. He was still plagued with restless sleep, if he was able to sleep at all.
He didn’t want to call them nightmares because he didn’t think that’s what they were. Nightmares were supposed to scare you. His dreams were bad, sure, but they didn’t wake him up with a gasp or leave him screaming in the darkness. They just made a decent day bad and a bad day worse.
Sometimes he’d wake up in a dream, thinking he’d found relief, only to realize that everything happening was real. When he woke up the second time, it wasn’t just disorienting, it was also distressing. He remembered his dreams, too. While the details blurred and melted together under hours of sunlight, the vague bits and pieces that stuck out in his memory were always the parts Darry knew had been the worst. After those dreams, his stomach would seize up sporadically for hours. The feeling reminded him of the times in kindergarten when he’d take a lump of Play-Doh and squeeze it in his fist until all of it melted through the gaps in his fingers.
In moments like those, Darry would sometimes make stupid mistakes. Most of them, while occurring on the job, meant nothing; when someone was as diligent a worker as he was the slip-ups usually amounted to nothing but a string of curses and an extra trip or two down and up the ladder. He’d seen less tired guys do worse things. That didn’t mean each incident didn’t leave his already frazzled mind reeling with what-ifs that never happened. When someone was as tired as Darry got, dropping a hammer was far more dangerous to the mind than to the body.
By the time he got home, everything hurt more than it did when he left that morning (the pain never really went away for him, not when he couldn’t ever let himself rest), but there was still more for him to do. If he was lucky, he got to shower; if he wasn’t, he just changed clothes, put on extra deodorant, and got right back to it.
Ponyboy was quieter now, less argumentative. Darry wished he could say he enjoyed it, but knowing that his peace came at the cost of multiple deaths ruined it most of the time. He couldn’t let himself be happy when his baby brother was so clearly in so much pain. Sodapop helped some, but Pony wasn’t supposed to be his responsibility. Then again, neither was working full time, but there he was at the DX every day with a dubiously genuine smile on his face.
When dinner was done and they had all survived the awkward silence together, Darry would just go straight to bed- or, he’d try to, but he was always interrupted with something, be it Pony’s homework or a leaky faucet or a spill on the carpet. Worse than the feeling of being faced with another obstacle so close to his goal was the look in his brothers’ eyes when they called him to fix their problem.
He should never have made them afraid of him.
After some unpredictable amount of time, Darry would finally get to clean himself up. He’d shower if he hadn’t already, balance the budget as if the numbers didn’t wind up the same every night, and finally, finally, collapse into the bed with that horrible squeezing sensation in his stomach.