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Chapter Text

“The cross means there is no shipwreck without hope; there is no dark without dawn.”
— St. John Paul II

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The night air pressed cold against Ponyboy’s skin, the kind of cold that didn’t wake you up but hollowed you out. He walked fast, his sneakers scuffing the cracked pavement, each step carrying him further away from the Curtis house. His lungs pulled sharp, thin breaths that didn’t quite fill him.

Streetlights hummed above him, buzzing faintly, flickering every so often. The world looked pale, washed in yellow that didn’t reach far enough into the shadows. Cars hissed by somewhere in the distance, a muffled rhythm of engines and tires. But out here, away from the main roads, it was just the echo of his own footsteps and the rattle of wind brushing past broken fences.

Pony didn’t know when he decided to go to Buck’s. Maybe he hadn’t decided at all. Maybe his feet just knew where to take him when home got too tight, when Darry’s voice had turned too sharp and Soda’s silence had lasted too long.

Buck’s place wasn’t safe—never had been. The smell of stale beer clung to the walls, the cigarette smoke sank into the carpet, and there was always somebody passed out on the couch. But Pony knew he wouldn’t be turned away.

Buck never asked questions he didn’t want answers to.

When Pony knocked, Buck opened the door with a tired look that softened just slightly when he saw who it was.

“Kid,” Buck said, voice low, rough. “It’s late.”

Pony just shrugged, shoulders hunched against the cold.

Buck stepped aside. “C’mon.”

Inside, the air was heavy. The TV glowed in the corner, some old Western flick playing too loud, the gunshots cracking against Pony’s ears even though the rest of the house was hushed. The couch cushions sagged, worn smooth with use, smelling faintly of spilled whiskey and leather that had outlived its shine. Pony sank into the far end, curling into himself, trying not to breathe too deep. Buck dropped back into his spot with a grunt, bottle in hand, eyes half on the screen.

For a while, neither of them said anything. Pony watched the horses ride across the TV screen, but it all blurred together, a smear of desert and gun smoke. His chest felt tight, his throat thick. He kept swallowing it down, the way he always did, but it just built heavier, pressing against his ribs.

It came slow, the way it always did. First, the sting at the corner of his eyes. Then the way his breaths stuttered, sharp and shallow, like he couldn’t quite catch one all the way. His hands twisted against his knees, nails biting into denim. He told himself to stop, to hold it in—Darry hated it when he cried, Soda always looked too sad when he did—but it cracked through anyway.

He leaned, almost without meaning to, against Buck’s arm. The older man didn’t move at first, just gave a quick glance down at him, then back at the screen. Pony’s breath hitched, and then the tears came, hot and unrelenting, streaking down before he could hide them.

The sound was small at first, muffled, a broken little gasp swallowed into Buck’s sleeve. But it grew, shaking through him, his chest jerking like he couldn’t control it. His lungs begged for air and couldn’t find enough.

“I remember…” His voice broke, the words barely audible between sobs. “I remember when Darry said I ruined their lives just by being born…”

The words fell out like a secret that had been waiting years to claw its way free. And as soon as they were out, Pony pressed his face harder into Buck’s arm, ashamed of how weak it sounded, how true it felt.

Buck froze.

The bottle in his hand lowered slowly, the movie flickering unnoticed in the corner. He wasn’t good with words, never had been, and nothing in his life had prepared him for this—for a sixteen-year-old kid unraveling against his side, whispering something so sharp it felt like a knife against bone.

His big arm moved before he could think, instinct carrying him. Carefully—like he was touching glass that could shatter—he wrapped it around Pony, pulling him in. Pony’s head ended up tucked against his chest, where the beat of his heart was steady, grounding. Buck angled his head down, trying to make his voice softer than the gravel it usually carried.

“…Pony,” he said, almost a whisper. “He never said that.”

But the boy didn’t hear him. Or maybe he did and just couldn’t believe it. Pony kept sobbing, chest heaving, the sound raw, unfiltered. It wasn’t just tonight’s fight with Darry coming out—it was everything. Every slammed door, every silence that stretched too long, every night he lay awake wondering if he even belonged in that house.

The gang, half-scattered around the house from earlier, caught the sound. Steve paused in the kitchen doorway, Two-Bit leaned against the hall wall, Johnny shifted uneasily near the stairs. They hadn’t meant to listen.

But the words—ruined their lives—rang loud enough that none of them could ignore it.

Two-Bit’s smirk was gone, replaced with a clenched jaw. Steve’s hands curled into fists at his sides, though he didn’t say anything. Johnny looked down, shoulders caving inward, guilt hanging over him like a shadow.

None of them moved closer. None of them knew how.

Buck kept holding him, but even that wasn’t enough. Pony’s breaths came too fast, too uneven. His words had cracked something open, and now the sobs poured through the space, messy and unstoppable. The smell of smoke clung to his hair, the rough fabric of Buck’s shirt scratched against his cheek, and the steady thump of Buck’s heart only made the emptiness inside him feel sharper by contrast.

The TV droned on, cowboys shouting over gunfire. Outside, a dog barked once, then again. The radiator in the corner clanked and hissed, but none of it covered the sound of Pony’s crying. It filled the room, small but overwhelming, breaking in places that words couldn’t reach.

Buck’s grip tightened slightly, but his face stayed turned toward the screen. He didn’t know what to say. Didn’t know if there was anything to say. His jaw worked like he was chewing something that wouldn’t go down.

“…He never said that,” he repeated, softer, though it sounded more like a plea this time.

But Pony didn’t answer. Couldn’t.

The gang lingered in the doorway and hall, caught in the silence that followed each sob. They exchanged glances—quick, sharp, ashamed—but no one stepped forward. No one said, We should’ve noticed. We should’ve stopped this.

Because deep down, every one of them knew the truth: maybe Darry had never said the words, but Pony had heard them anyway. Heard them in the slam of a door, in the heavy sigh after an argument, in the way Darry’s love always came sharpened with something harder.

And once you heard something like that, it didn’t matter if it was real. It lived inside you all the same.

The sobs slowed eventually, worn down into quiet hiccups. Pony’s face stayed hidden, damp against Buck’s shirt, his breaths uneven. Buck didn’t let go, but he didn’t speak again either.

The house seemed to hold its breath with him. The gang stayed frozen where they stood, not brave enough to leave, not brave enough to come closer.

Finally, the silence settled heavy, pressing on all of them. It didn’t feel like peace. It felt like something unfinished, something rotting under the floorboards.

Pony shifted once, pulling in a shaky breath, but said nothing more. Buck stared straight ahead, eyes dim in the flicker of the TV.

And that was how it ended: not with comfort, not with answers—just the weight of what had been said, sitting thick in the air, a truth too heavy to move.

Chapter Text

“A father’s words are like a thermostat: they set the temperature in the house.”
— Adapted from Proverbs 18:21

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The kitchen was too quiet.

Darry sat at the table with his elbows braced on the wood, the kind of slouch that didn’t belong to him. Usually he carried himself like the house itself rested on his shoulders, back straight, chest squared—like if he faltered, the whole roof might cave in. But now, at two in the morning, the only thing holding him up was the edge of the table and the hum of the refrigerator.

The overhead light was weak, casting shadows across the peeling linoleum. The air smelled faintly of dish soap that hadn’t quite rinsed clean, and something sour from the trash bin that needed emptying. Through the window above the sink, the night pressed against the glass, thick and starless. Every so often, a car hissed by on the road, headlights cutting across the walls in a pale sweep before vanishing.

Darry’s hands rubbed against each other, palms rough, fingertips calloused. He wasn’t working—there was no hammer in his grip, no lumber to haul, no paycheck to count—but his body moved like it didn’t know what else to do.

The table in front of him was scarred from years of use. Scratches where Soda had cut into it by accident, burn marks from Pony’s half-finished science experiment, rings from coffee mugs that had never been wiped off in time. It was the same table Pony used to sit at every night after dinner, books spread out in neat stacks, pencil tapping against the margin as he worked through equations or underlined passages. Darry could still picture it, the curve of his little brother’s brow furrowed in concentration, the way his mouth moved when he whispered lines of poetry under his breath.

And then, as if attract by thought alone, the memory slammed into him.

He had been younger then, though he didn’t feel it. Twenty, maybe. But already old in the way grief and bills make you.

The fridge had broken—again—and the repairman said it would take money they didn’t have. The stack of envelopes on the counter screamed in red letters: past due, final notice. Soda had been working double at the DX, barely holding it together, while Darry took every roofing and construction job that came his way. His body had been wrung out, but the numbers never balanced, no matter how many hours he bled into them.

And he had snapp ed.

“You think I wanted this life?” His voice had risen, raw and sharp. “You think I chose to raise a kid while still being one?! We’d have money if I wasn’t raising you.”

The words had cracked through the kitchen like glass shattering. He hadn’t even realized Pony was there at first.

But he had been.

Standing in the doorway, skinny arms clutching a sheet of paper, a drawing sketched in pencil lines. Something with horses, maybe. Or a sunset. Darry couldn’t remember the details anymore, just the way Pony’s face closed down like a door slamming shut.

Quiet, too quiet, before he slipped away down the hall.

He never showed Darry his drawings again.

Now, years later, Darry sat at the same table, staring at that old, faded sketch still pinned to the fridge with a crooked magnet.

He didn’t even know why Pony had put it there. Maybe Soda had. Maybe Pony had forgotten. The paper had yellowed at the edges, pencil smudges blurring where they’d been touched too many times. But the shape was still there—lines careful and deliberate, the kind of care only a kid who wanted to be seen put into something.

Darry’s chest tightened. His hand raked through his hair, tugging at the roots like pain could ground him.

“I never wanted him to think he shouldn’t have been born,” he whispered. The words stuck to the silence, too thin to change anything.

But maybe he had made him think it anyway.

The thought gutted him.

His mind dragged him back, unrelenting, to every fight since. Every time he’d barked at Pony to use his head, to quit dreaming, to toughen up. Every time his voice had carried more steel than warmth. He’d thought he was protecting him—from the world, from Socs, from the weight of being poor and fatherless.

But maybe all Pony had heard was that he wasn’t enough.

He leaned back in his chair, the wood creaking under his weight. His eyes burned, but nothing came. He hadn’t let himself cry in years.

Crying didn’t fix the bills.

Crying didn’t put food on the table.

Crying didn’t keep Pony safe from the world— or from him .

The clock ticked louder.

Darry’s hands tightened on the table edge, rough wood biting into his skin. His shoulders hunched forward, his breath shallow, as if even the air in the house didn’t want to fill his lungs.

He thought of Pony at Buck’s, though he didn’t know the details. Thought of his kid brother, somewhere out there, crying into someone else’s shoulder, telling someone else what Darry had made him feel.

His jaw worked, grinding against the silence. He wanted to stand, to rip the drawing down, to crumple it and pretend it had never existed.

But he couldn’t move. Couldn’t bring himself to touch it.

The kitchen felt colder by the second, the air biting harder. The coffee in his mug had long gone stale, a bitter scent rising from it every time he breathed too close. His stomach twisted, empty, but he couldn’t eat.

He leaned forward again, elbows back on the table, burying his face in his hands. His shoulders shook once, not quite a sob, more like the body’s betrayal when it carried too much weight.

The house didn’t answer.

The clock ticked. The fridge hummed. A car passed by outside, headlights cutting across the thin curtains, then fading again.

And Darry stayed there, in the cold kitchen, staring at nothing, the weight of what he’d said years ago pressing against him harder than the silence ever could.

The drawing stayed pinned to the fridge.

The words stayed lodged in the air.

And the distance between brothers stretched wider, unseen but felt, an ache that no one knew how to name.

Chapter Text

"The family is the cradle of life and love, where we are born and where we grow."
— St. John Paul II

The garage smelled like oil and rust, heavy in the air, seeping into Soda’s clothes and skin. He sat on the low workbench, elbows braced on his knees, hands clasped too tight. The silence pressed in thick, only broken by the ticking of cooling metal from Steve’s car, half pulled apart in the driveway.

The world felt stripped bare tonight. No laughter, no easy words, no Pony trailing him around the house asking if he could braid his hair, no Darry pretending the weight didn’t hurt his back. Just cold air drifting in through the half-open door and the hum of distant traffic on the main road.

Sodapop Curtis. The Golden Brother. The one who was supposed to make it better.

And all he could remember was how he’d failed.

It had been months ago, maybe longer, but the memory hit him as sharp as if it had just happened.

He had been laughing. Loud. Careless. Talking to Steve, not watching his words, letting frustration bleed into a joke that wasn’t really a joke.

“God, if it weren’t for Pony, maybe I wouldn’t feel like I was drowning all the time. I’m trying to carry both of them, man. I’m tired.”

It hadn’t been meant for Pony.

It hadn’t even been meant to be true.

He had just been venting, running his mouth the way he always did when the pressure got too tight.

But Pony had heard.

Soda could still see the way his kid brother had stopped in the doorway that night, whatever words he’d been about to say dying before they reached his lips. His shoulders had stiffened, his face shuttered off, and then he’d turned away without a word.

Soda had thought it would blow over. Pony was sensitive—sure—but he always bounced back. He always forgave.

Only he hadn’t.

The rest of that week, Pony had been quiet. Too quiet.

He’d stopped leaving little notes tucked into Soda’s lunch sack, the way he used to. Soda hadn’t realized how much those notes meant until they were gone—the silly doodles, the “don’t forget your cap today!” reminders, the quick, messy “love you” scrawled at the bottom.

He hadn’t asked to braid Soda’s hair anymore, either. It had been their thing—Pony’s small fingers combing carefully through tangles, Soda pretending to grumble but secretly loving it. And then, suddenly, it stopped.

The absence had been louder than words.

Now, sitting in the garage with the cold biting through his jacket, Soda felt sick. The memory looped in his head, sharper every time, twisting in his stomach until he thought he might be sick for real.

His hand drifted to his pocket, pulling out a crumpled piece of paper he’d found weeks back while cleaning his room. It was one of the old notes. He smoothed it carefully across his knee, the creases stubborn from being folded too long.

“Drink water today! I love you. You’re the best brother ever. –Pony”

The words hit him like a punch. His throat closed up, his chest burning. Pony had meant it. Every silly little doodle, every reminder, every “love you” — he’d meant it.

He had given Soda his love in scraps of notebook paper.

And Soda had thrown it all back in his face with one careless sentence.

The paper trembled in his hands. His vision blurred, and before he could stop it, the tears came—hot, unrelenting.

The garage swallowed the sound of his sobs, muffled them until they sounded far away, like they weren’t even his. He pressed the note against his chest, crumpling it again, his breath hitching hard.

The oil-stained air seemed thicker, harder to breathe. His palms stung from how tightly he clutched the paper. The bench dug into the backs of his thighs, unforgiving, grounding him in a body that felt too heavy.

He thought about Pony, probably lying awake somewhere else in the house—or maybe not in the house at all, maybe avoiding them, avoiding him. He thought about the way Pony’s eyes used to light up when Soda laughed, and how that light had gone out the second he’d overheard that careless vent.

Soda pressed his knuckles to his mouth, biting down on the skin to keep from making a sound. His shoulders shook anyway, silent tremors breaking through, his hair falling into his face. He couldn’t remember the last time he had let himself cry. He wasn’t supposed to. He was the golden one, the easy one, the one who made things better.

Only he hadn’t.

The note slipped from his hand, falling to the floor. It landed face-up, Pony’s crooked handwriting staring back at him. Drink water today. I love you. You’re the best brother ever.

The words mocked him. Or maybe they begged him.

Either way, he couldn’t bear to look at them anymore.

The silence of the garage stretched long and heavy, pressing into his ears, into his lungs. The faint hum of distant cars only made it worse, a reminder that the world kept moving while he sat here unraveling.

He dragged in a shaky breath, swiping a sleeve roughly across his face, though it did nothing to clear the ache in his chest. The note stayed on the ground, waiting. He couldn’t pick it up again.

And that was how it ended—Soda sitting hunched on the workbench, empty, the oil-slick air pressing down, the note abandoned at his feet.

A brother who was supposed to make it better. A boy who stopped believing his love was wanted.

And silence, always silence.