Chapter Text
Bronte Barlow had a restored 1955 Chevrolet Bel Air.
Like all of James' gifts, it had to be earned, and like earning always went with James, it took Bronte weeks of charming conversations with forgotten wives and well-trained media appearances to boost numbers before his request was even acknowledged. As he also came to expect, it was given to him still in need of being restored, even though James could damn well afford a new one, because James liked working with cars and had some easy arrogance to himself that made him naturally suppose all his likes were universal ones. To that, there were long, hot afternoons lost in sweat and grime and silence up until Bronte was able to get the radio to turn on; a summer of strained muscles, expensive pieces bought from sketchy mechanics, and too many cans of beer every time he got caught on with something he didn’t know how to fix.
He’d say there was not a lot to be grateful for in that life—from the little that made his list, the car won easily.
Camilla’s genes, with her dark eyes, even darker, wilder curls, and tanned skin, had not stood a chance against James’. No matter how much it made him sick with anger, Bronte talked like his old man, thought like him, looked like him: a lot of perfectly controlled fair hair, and light green eyes, and the Barlows' very distinct Roman nose, faces handsome and hard. James was a politician, a career that had brought them unimaginable wealth and respect, despite being unimaginably dirty, if any of them had bothered to understand what kind of man he was under that dangerous charm of his.
Bronte dressed like him even without wanting to: the sports coats, the blazers, the Oxford shirts and sweater vests, all crisp and clean. Ivy League lit, Camilla would say, or Kennedy-like, according to James, because he was always too quick to find a way of mentioning he had been friends with John F, once. Had been Harvard men, both of them. And even Bronte’s smiles, Camilla had long ago despaired, were the same as James', that flickering between something wide, white, and political and something truer, lopsided little things that cut their faces like knives. Sharp as glass, and all knowing.
His poor eyesight, at least, was hers, both perpetually tied to glasses, both favoring their round steel rims. Only that.
His love for his Bel Air, that was all James, too.
Growing up, the man had washed and buffed and tuned up his own Chrysler more than he’d ever checked up on his family; more than he’d ever asked his sons how their day at school had been or kissed his wife’s cheek. Maybe he’d known they would continue to function without his care, if they were any worthy of the family name.
Bronte was twelve when James woke up one weekend and decided to take him to the Barlow’s summer house for the first time since what had happened five months before, the grief still haunting each one of them in a different, all the more awful way. It had felt, at the time, like the first time James had dared to look Bronte in the eyes after all those months.
He drove him out to the old, lonely road by their vacation home, sat him in the front with the driver’s seat pulled all the way up, and taught him how to drive stick. A scrawny brat raised by rotten privilege and spoiled nepotism, sucking at a silver spoon his whole life, with a spitfire attitude and no punch to match, who probably went three miles an hour, but felt like he was flying. It made Bronte go crazy thinking about it, but that was simply how it went. He was his father’s son, all of him.
He cared for his car more than he ever did for James, or Camilla, or any friend he never bothered to keep, and had restored it with all the pride he had.
Before the Bel Air, since he was fourteen or so, unafraid of cops who were all old friends of James, he had taken up the habit of going out driving with Camilla’s hardly used Mustang during boring weekend nights, speeding through the asphalted veins of Tulsa and the dusty roads outside the city from the second the sun went down to long hours after, not worried about gas money either. These days, he would still do that with his own car. Would do it for hours and hours, gripping the wheel until he couldn’t feel his fingers, and then stop in some random field in the middle of nowhere to smoke and watch the sunrise, no matter how cold the morning got, the sky pumping red and gold onto yellowed fields.
It was no surprise, he was driving that evening. It was no surprise, The Who screaming about their generation, elbow resting half the way out the window, quietly smoking as he watched the red Corvair following some hood kid. Just out of church, he was, and approving of it. It’d been short, and the Barlow’s favorite mass was a short one. Directness befitted holiness, or so Camilla believed.
It was a whole thing, his humor after a short morning with his parents, during a long ride. He looked at the kid, and at the Corvair, and he sighed, taking one last drag of his cigarette.
The boy swallowed a wince when he heard Bronte’s honk, when he saw it was another car speeding closer. He had hitched his thumbs in his jeans and slouched, fast-walking already, a second from just bolting when Bronte honked again and cut the Corvair, stopping by the greaser’s side and earning himself a startled, violent honk. Window down, he called: “Hey, man. Yeah, yeah, you.”
Kid stopped. There was a tough, stubborn resignation on that face, cool green eyes finding Bronte’s with all the teenage bravado and fight of someone who was completely ready to be beaten up by both Bronte and the four other boys.
"Are you aware you are being followed?"
The greaser did some strange, almost flinch, mostly defensive tensing, eyes flickering towards the Corvair, which was slowing down not too far from the other side of the street. "Yeah."
“Well, do you want a ride home?"
Kid braced himself. Bronte was sure he recognized him vaguely, had seen him around town and school. His hair was like most of that lot of his, longer than guys’ should be, squared off in the back and longer at the front and sides, all greasy, but it had a distinct color: light brown, almost red. It wasn’t the first time Bronte had noticed and judged him for it, surely.
"Uhm," he said, eyes going between him and the other car, "I don't really got anyone who could drive me."
"I guessed," because really, he did. It was glaringly obvious. Bronte tapped his fingers on the wheel. "I was thinking about giving you a ride myself."
"The fuck would you do that?” he blurted out. His eyes flickered to the Corvair and Bronte looked too.
It was David in all his hot-tempered glory, gripping the wheel, indignant expression as he found Bronte’s eyes, adamant on not driving away from what was the most perfect opportunity of beating a greaser dumb enough to walk around town alone. Said dumb kid set his shoulders even more, and Bronte wasn’t sure how much of him wanted to make himself look smaller and how much wanted to look tougher, but either way, he was not getting what he wanted. He just looked pitiful.
Bronte felt arrogantly magnanimous just then, broad shoulders widening and rolling. “You are lucky enough to get me just out of the church and in good spirits.” His face remained hostile and suspicious. Bronte smiled, the wide one, the perfectly pearly one, gesticulating with the hand he had hanging from the car window. “Give me some trust here, man. I just want to do what Mother Mary would want me to do.”
He made a face. He asked: “You some religious freak?”
A laugh, then. “Even worse.” He ran a thumb at the corner of his lips, crooked. “Now. You’re going to have to make a decision fast. Me, or those other four fucks over there. Come on, hop in.”
He looked to the red Corvair, and back to the way he was going before all that, and then to Bronte. Bronte smiled again, shrugged again, waiting until the greaser seemed to decide his chances on a one-on-one against him were better than a one on four against the others, and decided to hop in the passenger’s seat, hands balled in fists inside his pockets. He looked the car over very carefully, like he was looking for a weapon somewhere, attentive to anything he could use to strike if the situation asked for it. Bronte, who did have a gun in his glove box, was happy when he seemed to see the rosary on the rearview mirror and lost interest, slumping back on the seat.
He smelled like cigarettes, Bronte noticed. He smelled like smoke even more so than Bronte himself, so much so that it turned into that kind of smell that came not from having had a cigarette recently, but smoking so much that the scent followed you, burrowed into your clothes, your skin, the bone marrow deep inside. Once he got in, it filled the car, and Bronte, who had a nicotine problem himself, did not judge as much as he could have, if not for the fact that he was a greaser and certainly not very clean for many other unrelated reasons.
Bronte shook his head as he sped off.
“Where do you even live?”
On the East Side, although that was more than clear to Bronte with that ugly haircut and silly shirt of his. The greaser chewed on his lips and stared Bronte up and down as if sizing up his chances of jumping on him while he drove in case Bronte did anything funny, and he did not give him his real address, Bronte was sure. Better this way—that at least proved he knew how to use some of his brains.
After he told the fake address, he prompted, “And your name?”
He hesitated. His jaw tightened even more. His eyes strained, his back rigid, and Bronte could tell whatever it was, it was something weird he was used to having to explain away, used to having it be mocked. It made him seem defensive in the silliest of ways, like he’d take any reaction or joke to heart. His voice came low, perhaps even shy despite Bronte not seeing greasers as the kind who knew how to be shy or fragile, or soft in any such human way, “Ponyboy.”
For a second, Bronte thought that was another weirder lie, but that defensiveness just couldn’t be faked.
“My name’s Bronte,” he ended up telling him. “It isn’t that bad, but my old man just chose it because he had a favorite writer. And the Brontë are cool and all, but he refuses to tell me which sister he was thinking about. I think he believes it’s funny instead of insufferable.” His eyes lit up a flame hearing that, posture shooting straighter. “Say, do you happen to have any older brother with a weird name?”
Maybe it was calling their names “weird”. Maybe it was simply mentioning his brother. Ponyboy clenched his jaw, eyes all cold suspicion.
“Yeah. Sodapop.”
“Just who I was thinking of.” Bronte sent him a smile. “Had some classes with him. Chill guy, I guess. We never really talked. And you? I don’t think we have anything together. What grade are you in?”
“Got put up a grade,” he said, ducking his head. “I’m startin’ my sophomore year now.”
“You’re not sixteen?”
Between all of James' businesses, Bronte was quite good at hiding condescending sarcasm with a faux-interest that seemed properly genuine. While he could absolutely tell the kid wasn’t sixteen, he guessed, if Ponyboy Curtis (he was almost sure it was Curtis, if he was Sodapop’s brother) had gotten out of his way to mention he got put up a grade, he would probably be the type of kid who wanted to hear he looked older than his actual age.
Proven by how less defensive he looked, trying to hide his pleasure as he said: “I’m fourteen.”
Six years older than Levi, then.
“You’re tall,” which was only half a lie, technically. His brother had been tall, with wide shoulders and pretty smiles for all Bronte remembered, and Ponyboy looked like he would be too, one or two years from then. “You know, I got held back my freshman year. You must be smart.”
He cracked a smile. It was held back, and he was still refusing to look at Bronte, but it was a smile. “I jus’ like readin’.”
Surprising, that a kid from that side of town knew how to do that.
“If you tell me Emily isn’t your favorite Brontë sister, I will have to call those guys back to jump you.” Which may have been a bad joke to make, but Ponyboy didn’t seem any more uncomfortable or ready to punch him hearing it than he’d already been the entire ride. Bronte, possessing a deep-set, haughty certainty, Ponyboy would not even know who the Brontë were, and by ‘like reading’ meant he sometimes did the mandatory readings for his English class, asked with all pseudo-genuineness of the world: “Are you reading anything now?”
He shrank, averting his gaze. “Got a Robert Frost book from the library.”
“Which one?”
He turned his head to the window. “New Hampshire.”
“Nature’s first green is gold,” he quoted, “her hardest hue to hold.”
“Her early leaf’s a flower; but only so an hour.” Ponyboy looked at him finally, surprise and delight and unsureness wrapped in one. Bronte, who did not expect him to actually know Frost, felt a similar thing, although he did his best not to show. “You read a lot?”
Bronte shrugged, perhaps a little tense. “What’s a lot?” And then, he made himself smile, eyes flickering towards the kid.
“But you like it? Frost?”
“Frost’s one of the greats.”
It seemed like she said Ponyboy’s magic words: the greaser straightened up, still a bit stiff, but mostly full of interest, face carefully open as he stared at Bronte. “What are the others?”
“You want my top three?” He said it half as a joke and Ponyboy huffed like he took it half as a joke, maybe because taking it as something genuine felt embarrassing to both of them. When Ponyboy shrugged lamely, Bronte had the strange feeling that, were he feeling less on guard around a Soc, he would be saying yes without pause, and that made Bronte himself hesitate, sending him a side glance. His fingers tapped the wheel, a thoughtful hum leaving him. It seemed important, all of a sudden, to get it right. To remember everything he had ever read and choose the real good ones Bronte wanted to see if he knew. “Hemingway’s my number one, I think. Then, Kafka, and Allen Ginsberg. Yours?”
He paused, too. He thought about it carefully before saying in a soft voice, “Dickens. Salinger. And I guess.” Ponyboy paused. He scratched his cheek, hesitant when he said, “Alcott too.”
“Really? You liked Little Women that much?” When he shrugged, it was with a great amount of embarrassment coloring his face, and a deep frown that made Bronte feel like he had lost just about all the progress he had made. Bronte laughed. “Sorry. I like Alcott too, even if the ending is a little disappointing.”
“You don’t dig it?” he asked. “The ending?”
“No,” snorted Bronte, and it wasn’t even because he hadn’t been prepared for Beth’s death at thirteen. “Do you?”
“Jo marrying that guy sucked,” admitted Ponyboy.
“You’re not one of those nut jobs that think she should have married Laurie, are you?”
Ponyboy shook his head. “It would’ve been tuff if she ended up alone.”
“Tuff,” Bronte agreed, snorting again.
Dickens, Salinger, and Alcott. Frost, well enough to finish a quote by him on a whim. Bronte looked at the boy again, trying to catch anything new. He still just looked like a greaser. He still looked wary, and dirty, and just as reckless as any dumb hood from his side of town to have even agreed to getting into Bronte’s car. But he liked poetry, and he liked books. It made Bronte’s eyes linger, just a bit. It made him reconsider, when he was usually one to form a first impression of someone and refuse to let go of it, no matter what.
“It’s a respectful big three,” he allowed, at last. “And at least you didn’t say Keats is one of the greats.”
The boy made a face. “What’s wron’ with Keats?”
“His writing is saccharine, for one.”
Ponyboy snorted at the word choice, which Bronte guessed was a normal reaction. His peers seemed averse to any word that could ever even be considered a little more complex. He asked: “How did ya’ got held back?”
Bronte grinned.
“Keats didn’t help me with math. Or science. Or my abysmal attendance record.”
“Don’t you Socs just pay to pass?”
“Holy Mary,” he laughed. “Old woman would sooner pay them not to let me pass if she felt like I didn’t do enough work.” They had offered to bump him up despite his grades, which everyone knew was about Levi as much as it was about James' money and reputation, but Camilla had been so firmly against it, she’d swayed James. “Good for you, too. Otherwise, that's how you get asses like David Cavalin over there. You dig Keats?”
“He’s cool.”
“So you don’t think his poetry has more aesthetics than real value?”
There it was: a flash of argumentative interest in those green eyes, the momentaneous indignation before a strong denial—that was, until a forced stop, Ponyboy shutting his mouth fast, shrugging lamely. “If ya’ think he is, won’t disagree.”
A disappointment. Bronte hadn’t thought it would be one.
Bronte found “his house” soon enough. The place he was asked to stop by was small and beat up, like all houses around that part of town, and he wouldn't have looked twice at any of those crack dens if he hadn't been pointing to where Bronte should go. He guessed it was a close enough neighbor, and the Corvair hadn’t seemed to follow them, so it seemed like all was fine.
Ponyboy hesitated.
"Uhm," he stopped out of the car, holding the passenger's door open. "Thanks for the ride."
Bronte smiled. "Try not being followed again, Ponyboy," he told him. “And read Ginsberg if you can find him. You would like it even more than I did, I think.”
Ponyboy stood by the sidewalk as he sped away. Bronte looked at him from the rear-view mirror, getting smaller by the second, and then he did what he did best: he went for a real fucking drive, the growl of the engine going straight to his head, the speedometer ticking up, up, and houses and people and trees whipping past at dizzying speed.
-
Bronte went to one of Randy’s parties that weekend, mostly because Randy hated him, and hadn’t invited him, and so Bronte was obligated to make an appearance and steal Marcia for himself for as long as he could.
Marcia had a beautiful laugh, and a lovely face, and no coyness at all. Was as loyal as girlfriends went, as far as he could tell—but she didn’t seem to notice Randy almost died of jealousy every time they talked. Randy would never speak of it, would not want to appear insecure, and so, Bronte went after her. Bronte talked, and talked, and made her laugh until Randy’s face turned into a particular shade of red no other human was capable of.
Cherry Valance, on the other end of the spectrum, was a sweet girl with not that much of a sense of humor—not since they were fourteen—and fucked up taste when it came to men, who looked at Bronte as if he was Tulsa’s own Oliver Twist, orphaned and penniless and dirty whimpering for some more food. When she smiled at him, there was so much pity in those eyes, it could kill any less secure man. That party, she could not even muster that, just a small nod of acknowledgment as she dipped, hugging herself.
“She fought with Bob,” Marcia told him, rolling her eyes. Marcia was a good friend, but tired of Bob, Bronte knew, unsympathetic and bemused when it came to that particular relationship. “He saw us talking to some greasers yesterday and you know how he gets.”
He touched her back, dipping his head so he could whisper some joke about just how Bob got in her ear and make her look at him with bright eyes and a breathtaking smile, and he did not think of the greaser he had talked to the same day as them. Too pretty a girl on his arms, to think of it, and too fucked up a game he was playing against poor Randy.
He was skipping English, smoking by the school parking lot, and leaning against his car door with Sevastopol Sketches in one hand, cheap paperback spine cracked, the next time he saw Ponyboy Curtis that Monday, this time far from alone. Bronte tilted his head, lifting the book in a nod, and he nodded back, small, hiding it as he turned to his friends. It made Bronte smirk as he looked down at the pages.
Later that evening, he was at the DX, some greaser dude pumping gas on his car. It was not Sodapop, who he knew worked there. Even from some shared classes two years ago, Sodapop Curtis was hard to forget or mix up with someone else─man was that movie-star kind of handsome, the kind you could not help but turn to turn your head to look at when he crossed you on the street, and this one was just some dude. He did see Ponyboy’s brother, as well as Ponyboy himself, later as he pulled out of the station, but he was too busy to care about some hoods when Levi was his next stop.
He found him again around town, three days later, during one of Bronte’s late night drives—it was a chilly Wednesday, chilly enough for him to feel it even while driving with his windows close, and Ponyboy was using the same stupid shirt he had that first day, with the same tense, cornered look, hands grasping a paperback on his lap, sat by the crosswalk like an abandoned dog, faltering on the streets dirty and greasy because he had nowhere else to go. He shrank when he saw the car approaching, going taunt when he recognized Bronte parking by his side and rolling his window down.
He stood up immediately, getting closer with a look that made it very hard to tell if he was relieved it was not some other random Soc coming to mess with him or still too suspicious to be able to feel any relief at all.
“Are you lost?” asked Bronte and he made a face, all contempt. Bronte’s eyes went to the paperback all crumpled in his hands. Smiled, seeing the cover just barely illuminated by the streetlights. “Hemingway, huh?”
Ponyboy looked down at A Farewell to Arms as if he’d forgotten he was holding it. “Yeah.”
“Is it any good?”
“It’s four in the morning.”
“So?”
“Why are you here?”
Bronte lifted an eyebrow, smiling, “I guess for the same reason as you.”
“Why are you trying to talk to me about Hemingway at four in the morning?”
“Because I like talking about Hemingway.” Bronte got out of his car, at that. Ponyboy gave a step back, staring at him like he was ready for anything he thought might come. The older boy lifted his hands, playful. “Hey, I swear on God’s name, asking you what you think of the book is the only reason I bothered stopping.”
“You didn’t know I had a Hemingway.”
“But I hoped you had some book I could ask you about.”
Ponyboy stared at him. Bronte looked back.
“It’s Hemingway,” he ended up saying.
“Which is to say?”
“I guess it’s─he has some good quotes there.”
“But you hate it.”
Ponyboy considered it. Bronte could see in those eyes, the struggle of wanting a lot to talk about something, but not wanting to talk to the person asking, much less wanting to talk to him there, in the dark, in the cold, in the danger. Then, “Mr. Syme said he’s the best American writer to ever live, but it’s─most of it is just dry.” Bronte laughed, surprised by the honest, annoyed despair in Ponyboy’s face, and Ponyboy sent him a look. “It’s just bland babble and Catherine sucks.”
Bronte leaned back against his car. “It’s his not best work.”
“You said he was your favorite.”
“This one is his worst,” he admitted, and he smiled, delighted by Ponyboy’s annoyance with all the painful ache of a bitter older brother who had not been an older brother for a long time now, “but it still has some amazing prose. And A Moveable Feast is a masterpiece. Besides, sure, his books are full of repetitions and parallel sentences, and some think those’re annoying. I like it.”
“Like havin’ a headache,” Ponyboy said. “You’re a funny guy.”
“A riot.” Bronte looked him up and down. “Do you need a ride today too?” and the way Ponyboy’s face contorted answered all he needed to know. Bronte shook his head. “Would you accept it if I offered to give you one again?” And, upon a pause from the younger boy, he added: “I wouldn’t jump you, if that’s what you’re worried about. Couldn’t even if I felt the need to for the first time in my entire life. I play tennis. Went to nationals and everything. Coach would kill me if she knew I fought someone. It would mess up all my training.”
‘Coach’ was Camilla, but Ponyboy didn’t need to know that.
Ponyboy mumbled: “Beatin’ someone up ain’t fightin’.”
“Would still hurt my fists. That would be an issue.”
The boy scoffed, sending him that look again, as cool as he seemed unsure. He hesitated for longer than was normal.
“I can drop you off at home.”
Ponyboy sent him a face that made it clear that if he wanted to be home, then he would already be. Bronte could give him that.
Bronte said, “Do you want to go to the DX, then? I was going to buy myself something.”
Ponyboy considered that. He looked over at Bronte, lifting an eyebrow with a bemused judgment. Bronte never took particular care to how he looked during his night drives, much less when his insomnia was so bad as it was that day; the shorts he was wearing were too short, exposing a good amount of tanned thigh, and his white polo shirt was tucked in, his brown loafers stolen from James. He was dressed very Soc-y. He was dressed a lot like James did those slow summer days when the man would drink and play tennis with important, rich men at their vacation home, if not for the fact that, when he’d looked before, the shadows under his eyes were deep, and purple, and very telling on how exhausted he was actually feeling.
Ponyboy said, slowly, “Okay.”
They went to the DX.
Bronte bought a Coke for Ponyboy and a beer for himself, and Ponyboy snorted, but Bronte simply tried to hit his head (lightly) with the cans as he closed the refrigerator’s door. Kid dodged.
“Go get some chips for me,” Bronte told him. Ponyboy rolled his eyes and went. He was a younger brother at heart, Bronte guessed. It made his chest tighten, which was why he tended to keep himself far away from anyone younger than himself, besides how annoying they tended to be.
So Bronte paid and he drove to the parking lot of a nearby church, then dark and empty. They sat on the concrete block at the front of an empty parking spot.
He opened his can and took a sip before he asked, “Bad day?”
Ponyboy chuckled, small. He looked small, then. Looked a lot like he was fourteen, more so than he had before, and Bronte guessed the boy ought to be cold, with those dumb, ugly sleeves of his. Maybe it would teach him a lesson, but Bronte doubted a kid from that side could learn such lessons about fashion.
“It’s just my brother.” He turned his head away from Bronte, hugging his knees. It was a hollow thing, painfully cliché when he said, “He doesn’t get it.”
“You?”
“Anythin’ that ain’t a plain hard fact,” explained Ponyboy, sounding just a tad bitter. “But he uses his head. He says I don’t so much.”
“From all the brief two talks we had, I’d say you use your head more than half the people I talk to in this town.”
Ponyboy snorted softly. “You’re you. The things you need to use your head for and the things we do ain’t the same. I mean—books are good and all, but if you’d wanted to jump me that day, you’d just do it, ya’ know? ‘Cause I didn’t even think about how I could be jumped until I was already being followed. And you surprised me again today, ‘cause I’m never paying attention. None of the guys’d get caught like that.”
“Weren’t you just mad at your brother for not getting you?”
“Well, was. Now I’m annoyed at you, and thinking if a Soc agrees with me, maybe I’m wrong.”
Bronte laughed, loud and bright. He told him, “Drink the stupid Coke, Curtis.”
It was after a sip and a pause that Ponyboy asked, “What’s your issue? I mean, what kind of Soc cares to give a ride to a greaser or to stop to talk to him in the middle of the night? To buy him a soda and ask him about books? You gotta be a real loner, or a real loser.”
“You gotta be really lonely to spill about your brother to a Soc like me,” retorted Bronte, and Ponyboy turned his head towards him, scrunching his eyebrows like someone who knew he couldn’t deny it, but really wanted to.
“It was a very shitty day,” he finally said with the tone of a tired agreement. He sent Bronte a careful look. “You know Bob Sheldon?” which was, in a lot of ways, the same as asking Bronte if he knew Tulsa, or Hemingway, or God.
“Yeah,” he said casually. “Why?”
Ponyboy looked down at the Coke. “I think he wants to kill me.”
“Why?”
Ponyboy shrugged. “I talked to his girlfriend.”
Bronte laughed again, a flash of Marcia’s pretty, lopsided smile crossing his mind, Cherry’s miserable, beautiful face at the party. “It was you, then? Yeah, he was really pissed about it, from what I heard.”
“Are you guys friends?”
“Used to be. But Bob—Bob isn’t dumb, but he likes acting like he is, you know, and I just couldn’t keep trying to reason with that.” He took a generous sip of his beer. “Are his murderous wishes one of the reasons your day was shit?”
“A big one.”
Bronte put his beer on the sidewalk. He took a pack of Marlboros from his jacket and offered it to Ponyboy. He looked back, pausing, and took up said offer. “If he does get close to actually killing you,” Bronte said, watching as he took a lighter out of his jeans, “just say my name.”
“Why?”
Which could mean, why would that make him stop, why do you care, why are you even here still. Bronte smiled and said, “Because if you get murdered, then I guess there’d be no one else in this entire town with an opinion about Hemingway, even if it is the wrong one.”
He scoffed, not quite satisfied with the answer.
But they drank, still, and they smoked, and after it, Bronte drove him “home”. Ponyboy pointed him towards the same house that wasn’t his. When Bronte came to a stop, already having seen the East Side of town with him more times than he ever had before, Ponyboy got off with a ride home and a free drink, and a smoke. He should feel quite thankful, Bronte thought. Those streets around there were no good for his car, and he should be crowned a bleeding heart for putting his dear Bel Air through all that.
He did keep a little bit of an eye out for Ponyboy after that. At least, he did in the sense that he gave him a nod of acknowledgment when he passed him at school, and eyed any cover he saw the boy holding. Caught him with On the Road once, a beat-up library copy.
Bronte only had class with one of the friends he had seen Ponyboy walking with, in the form of English with a small, slight guy who looked like he should be a freshman, hair even worse than Ponyboy’s: disgustingly greased and so long even combed to the side, it fell in shitty bangs across his forehead. Looked like a hood, if Bronte was honest, deep scar on his cheek and the big dark eyes of someone waiting to be stabbed. No good, honest guy feared something like that.
He was Ponyboy’s friend, though. When Bruce Vandet tried messing with the dude, Bronte felt inclined to kick the back of Bruce’s chair, instead of his usual chuckle and ignore tactic.
Ponyboy’s friend went so tense it seemed to hurt and resolutely refused to look his way. Bruce, however, turned immediately, all blue eyes and Beatles-like brown hair and a sneer. Pretty, pretty boy, he was, and Bronte smiled, a smooth, “Come on, man,” with the undercurrent of a laugh casual enough that Bruce paused, and then scoffed, and simply went back to ignoring the greaser. Annoyed, but ultimately harmless.
“You are such a bitch,” Bruce hissed at him later, but he still left Bronte fuck him that Thursday night, in his own car, so who was the real bitch?
After all, it wasn’t Bronte with cream leather seats to clean and a darling girlfriend who was cheating on him with the same guy he himself was cheating on her with. Nor was he the one so boringly hobless he had to bully some poor little greaser to fill out his days—if he was, he wouldn’t bitch and moan just to step back without a fight the second the guy who was fucking him told him to, as the next English class proved was what Bruce would do. Soon, it had turned into one of many games Bronte liked playing, not at all him caring about Ponyboy’s friend.
He was his father’s son, hadn’t he said?