Work Text:
Ponyboy was lying in the empty lot, the wind blowing through his hair. The wind was also blowing through the long grasses, but the grasses flowed more around him. They flicked along his jeans, and the rest of his body, though he couldn’t quite feel it. He felt quite numb but he supposed it was a gentle flow state for him, not that anything recently was.
Today was Johnny's funeral. It had hit Ponyboy like a dead weight, hard and heavy in his chest. He took a long drag of his cigarette, letting out a puff of smoke out into the purity of the nature that surrounded him.
He said he was going to quit smoking. But he couldn’t. Not at this moment. Not when he needed it.
The cigarette smoke climbed around him, a handful of cigarette buds thrown to the side so Ponyboy could grab another one from his pack and light it once he had finished the previous one. He had been out here for hours, the cycling repeating itself. He was still wearing his funeral clothes, though his tie was tossed off to the side, threatening to fly off in the wind.
Pony wouldn’t have bothered to chase after it if it did, not caring enough. All he could think about was Johnny. About his soft smile, how he could be here right now, not dead.
Staring off into the stars, not a care in the world. Not until that night, until those days were everything happened. Ponyboy hadn’t really been able to speak about it, no one asked him about it either. Not any one from the gang, not even his brothers.
And yet he wished. Wished that anyone would bring it up, ask him how he was doing instead of him silently crying in his room, in the field, at the funeral. Wished that guilt wasn’t enclosing him, choking him out. Wished that anyone would talk about Johnny’s death or Dally’s instead of treating it like a tragedy.
Like it was unspeakable.
Or at least that’s how it felt to Ponyboy.
He stared out at the stars, the rich dark blue dotted with tiny stars staring down at him as if they were judging him. If he wasn’t having a complete breakdown he might have tried to point out the constellations. Johnny always liked when he pointed them out. Ponyboy had read and studied a few books on constellations just so he could show off to Johnny.
The thought made him sigh and he shook his head. He shouldn’t be thinking about Johnny. He wasn’t dead.
Ponyboy had told himself these three words repeatedly while at the funeral. While everyone around him was mourning someone who wasn’t dead. While Ponyboy was crying his eyes out, clinging to Darry and Soda like it was death if he didn’t. Maybe it was.
He wasn’t ready to accept it. That he was dead, killed in that fire while trying to save those kids. Johnny was dead and he couldn’t accept it. Couldn’t dare to look as they carried in Johnny’s coffin. It was lined with little yellow and orange flowers, god why did it make Ponyboy think of the sunset. He had to stay gold, right?
That’s what Johnny had told him. He hasn't felt so gold recently. He had finished his English essay, sure, but he hadn’t gotten everything out he wanted to say.
What he wanted to say about Johnny. Johnny, who had become his heart, his missing piece that seemingly was ripped out of him when he had died.
No, he wasn’t dead.
Ponyboy expected Johnny to show up to the lot at any moment, lay down next to him and chat about their dream to live in the country. Swap cigarettes and stare up at multitudes of stars, like nothing mattered.
Because nothing mattered when Ponyboy was with Johnny. He could stare at his beautiful face that always seemed too tired for being so young for ages and never get tired of it.
If only he had been able to say what he wanted. What he really wanted to say to Johnny, what had been bubbling up in those days they had spent together. How his heart pounded when he thought of them together. Maybe more than friends.
But it didn’t happen.
He wouldn’t ever get to say anything to Johnny. He wasn’t here. Not now, maybe not ever.
Ponyboy was left to stare up at the stars once more, circled by the smoke of his own cigarettes. Alone and deserted in the empty fields of the lot, the grasses blew around him as he closed his eyes and fell asleep, the quiet sound of nature surrounding him as he did so.