Chapter Text
Harley’s house was never meant to be a place where he could find solace. Yet, when he saw the smoke that rose from the chimney—signs of life in the quaint abode—he couldn’t help but let out a sigh of relief. His tense muscles relaxed and he was given a short sense of respite. He had only been there once, but it felt more welcoming than his own home. Safe. This was a place where he could feel better.
By the time he jogged up to the front door, a question about Harley’s whereabouts popped up in his head. He had no way of knowing if he was home or not, but someone was there. Ponyboy rapped his numb knuckles on the door and waited patiently as he listened to someone shuffle around on the other side. But instead of being greeted by his friend, an older woman opened it. She looked a lot like Harley, down to the wolfish features. This must have been his mother. She was dressed very nicely, in vibrant, ironed clothes, and wore a strong rose-scented perfume. Not a strand of hair was out of place on her head.
“Hello, who are you?” she greeted, a smile on her lips that almost hid how suspicious she was of him.
“I’m Ponyboy. Harley’s friend.” Ponyboy didn’t elaborate any more on that.
She gave him a confused look. “I don’t know a Harley.”
Right. That was a nickname. He looked past her shoulder towards Harley’s room. “Your son, I mean. The one around my age. He here?”
“Oh, you mean Charleston? He’s in his room,” she said, tutting her words. He didn’t know if her tone was because she was disappointed in Harley or if she disproved that Pony was her son’s friend. It was likely both. “He’s taking some lessons right now so he won’t be available for some time.”
She meant it as a way to tell him to go away. Harley didn’t have any extramural lessons. His mom obviously didn’t like Ponyboy. He was a no-good greaser after all. She was about to close the door on him, but Ponyboy swiftly stuck his foot out to catch it before it could close halfway. He knew it wasn’t a good thing to do, but he needed something that would help him and a safe place to do it. “I can wait.”
Harley’s mom didn’t look pleased with his tenacity, but her expression stayed mostly the same as if a suspicious individual hadn’t stopped her. She reopened the door and stiffly gestured inside. “Why don’t you come in? It’s nice to meet a friend of his for once.”
Ponyboy did just that, shoving his hands into his pockets. Golly, this was going to be an awkward experience. “Okay.”
The two of them didn’t move from the foyer as they stared at each other. She waited for him to say something but he didn’t have anything to talk about. Seconds went by and Ponyboy wished that he climbed through Harley’s window instead. Finally, she spoke again. “How are you doing, hun?”
“Mm-hmm.” It wasn’t an answer to her question. That response didn’t even make sense in context. The atmosphere was too awkward for small talk. It was driving him mad.
She froze again and waited for him to continue, but he didn’t. “Did you two have something planned?”
“Not really.”
“I’m sure you can find something fun to do. So, why don’t you tell me about yourself? How are you doing in school?”
“Alright,” he lied.
“Are you doing any extracurricular activities?”
“Not anymore.”
“How’s your family? What do they do?”
Was this… Was this an interview? He didn’t know that being Harley’s friend was an occupation. He pressed his lips into a fine line and crossed his arms. “What is this?”
She didn’t falter, however. Harley’s mother motioned him further into the house, an easy smile still plastered on her face. “Oh, how rude of me. We should go sit down while we wait. I can get you some tea while we chat some more.”
Yeah, how about no? He seriously had no patience or energy to deal with this. There was no reason to wait for Harley. He pushed past her, as rude as it was. He would have been scolded if his brothers saw him do that. “No thanks. I’ll go up myself.”
“Wait,” she called out after him, voice now almost a shriek. “Get back here! He can’t see you yet!”
He didn’t respond or look back at her, quickening his pace to put space between them. God, that woman was… Well, she was something. He wouldn’t call her crazy, just strict. It was no wonder Harley didn’t get along with her.
Ponyboy opened Harley’s door after a quick knock. When he slipped inside, Harley didn’t look surprised that he was there. He probably heard him and his mom talking, which irritated him. Thanks for not coming down to get him. It would have saved him from the awkwardness.
“Your mom, by the way—” Ponyboy started.
“Is a bitch?” Harley finished. Well, he wouldn’t use that word to describe her either. “Yeah, I know. My mom’s a bitch. My dad’s an asshole. And my brother’s a douchebag.”
Ponyboy sighed as he went over and plopped onto the bed, staring at his ceiling. “You know, she said you had lessons. What’s up with that?”
“She likes to tell people that to make me seem more impressive to other people.”
“That seems excessive.”
“Yeah, she thinks that if she were to do that, it would make me apply myself more; make me live up to her expectations. Too bad I’m not aiming to be some dumb, corporate pig who laughs at Steve Allen’s jokes.”
“I can’t imagine you wearing business formal attire.”
“I would rather die.”
Humming to himself, Ponyboy continued, “You know, she also called you Charleston. Didn’t think you would have such a fancy name.”
Harley clicked his tongue. “She told you that, huh?”
He nodded. “My question is, why do you go by Harley when you could have gone by Charlie or Charles?”
“Because I like Harley. Charleston makes me seem like I’m a butler. I’m no lap dog, so don’t let me catch you calling me anything else.”
Rolling his eyes, Ponyboy agreed. Those names didn’t suit him anyway. “Uh-huh, sure.”
“Good.” Harley, who was also on the bed, was sitting against the wall near an open window. He crossed his legs and tapped his knees. “So, what are you doing here?”
Ponyboy grumbled, not wanting to go into it. It was a nice distraction while it lasted. He just wanted to move on from what happened and not feel so shitty. He needed something that would get his mind off of it; not refresh his memory. “Another argument.”
“Another argument?” Harley echoed. “Jeez. You fight with them all the time.”
He sulked. “It’s not like I want to. It’s just—”
“It’s just they aren’t able to read you like you want them to.”
Ponyboy nodded, letting out a big sigh. He looked over at his friend with a pitiful pout. “Look, can you help me or not? I need something.”
“Yeah, I got you. Want a drink?” Harley suggested. Ponyboy made a face. Drinking with Harley once didn’t change the fact that he hated the taste of alcohol. He could already feel the burn of it in his throat. He didn’t think his mind on it would change, but who knew? Two-Bit liked the stuff and it made him happy.
“As long as it makes me feel better, sure,” he said. “If only alcohol tasted better though. I think I would have a serious problem if it tasted like Pepsi.”
“Pepsi? Not even Dr Pepper or Coke?”
“What’s wrong with Pepsi?” Ponyboy narrowed his eyes.
“Fucking everything. Only annoying bitches who think they’re so special drink that.”
He really should have taken offense, but he knew that Harley was just saying that to cause problems. Ponyboy could have said any drink and he would have insulted it in the same way. He decided to tease him a bit. “I drink it, so does that include me?”
“What?” Harley sputtered, caught off guard. “No! I wasn’t talking about you. I just… I just… God, I just want coke right now.”
“Then should we go get some at the store?” He could go for another walk.
“No, not Coke. I want cocaine. That coke.”
“Oh.” Ponyboy’s ears turned red. How was he supposed to know that? They were just talking about soft drinks.
“Yeah…” Harley got up to avoid being trapped in an awkward silence. He stretched his back as he stepped closer to the door. “Anyway, I’m going to get those drinks now.”
It was several minutes later when Harley came back to the room. He had some Pepsi bottles tucked under his arms and a bottle of vodka—likely stolen from his dad’s liquor cabinet—in one of his hands. Somehow, he had snuck it past his mom. He locked the door behind him to make sure that she wouldn’t walk in on them drinking. The glasses clattered together when he put them down on the bed. Ponyboy still had no idea what he was planning.
Harley was such a hypocrite. He had just insulted the Pepsi brand and its consumers, yet here he was with several bottles. Ponyboy raised an eyebrow but sat back up as he watched his friend start mixing the two drinks into another glass like a mad scientist. Once he did that, he handed the glass over.
“You can do that?” Pony asked incredulously, staring at the liquid that still looked and smelled like Pepsi. He took a tiny sip. It even tasted like it too. The sugary sweet concoction was so refreshing that he wiggled his toes.
“You can make almost any drink alcoholic,” Harley answered nonchalantly, mixing a glass for himself.
Ponyboy drank some more. If Soda saw him now, he would have been so shocked. He was the one who was acting up? That may be true, but he liked to see it as him not holding himself back anymore. His brothers knew nothing about him and neither did the gang. They didn’t care about him—not really, at least. That thought caused his heart to clench.
He didn’t come to Harley’s house to be in the dumps. Fuck his emotions. Fuck his thoughts. He just wanted to be free from his shackles; to drink this dangerous, magical potion that would relieve him of his pain for a couple of hours. He wanted it to squash his negative emotions like a bug. He held out his glass, “How much more of this do I have to drink to stop feeling?”
No answer came his way. Instead, he experienced it firsthand. It became clear how dangerous the concoction he was drinking could be. Turns out, mixing drinks can get you really drunk. Crazy, right? Who would have known? Ponyboy should have, especially after he drank a couple of glasses.
The Pepsi masked the alcohol perfectly. Since he couldn’t taste it, he kept drinking it. He didn’t realize how drunk he had gotten until he became so dizzy that a gentle breeze could knock him over. There was a warmth under his skin that was so unbearable yet weirdly nice. Skin flushed, he felt like he was burning up. Words were on his tongue, waiting for the right push to be released.
“I can’t do this anymore,” Ponyboy blubbered, standing up on wobbly legs. The world swayed around him like he was standing in the center of an out-of-control carousel. “They treat me like a kid. I’m not… I’m not a kid. I hate when they treat me like I’m some needy child but then complain that I’m annoying to be around.”
“Jesus,” Harley sighed to himself. “I should have figured that a sad Ponyboy equals a sad drunk.”
“I’m not sad. I can have fun! And I’m not needy!”
“I didn’t say you were needy.”
“I’m not needy!” Ponyboy reiterated, glaring at his friend. He threw his arms up in frustration.
“I told you, I didn’t say you were!” Harley yelled back. Then, he quieted down, pinching the skin between his brows. “I can’t even tell if you’re sad drunk or mad drunk now.”
Maybe he was both. He didn’t know why he was so irritated all of a sudden, but he couldn’t stop himself from yelling. “Shut up!”
Harley took a longer sip of his drink, not even flinching at his outburst. It was like he expected him to yell at him. Or maybe he just didn’t care. Again, it could have been both. Ponyboy took a few steps in a pacing manner, stumbling over his feet. The room kept swaying. Moving while drunk must have been one of the hardest things he has ever done. It was so disorienting.
“You’re drunk, man,” Harley reminded.
“So are…” Ponyboy said with much difficulty. “So are you.”
“Yeah, but I feel good enough to drive.”
Ponyboy finally sat back down and Harley made him another cup. He could have sworn he put a lot more vodka in the ratio this time. “You can’t say that when you don’t have a license.”
“I do too.”
“Fake licenses don’t count.”
“Whatever, let’s just drink until we stop functioning.” Harley walked over to a record player hidden in the corner of his room. He turned it on after picking out a vinyl. It started to spin on the turntable, the needle scratching across its surface. Soon, music started to blast from the speaker of some alt-rock band that Ponyboy didn’t recognize. He didn’t particularly care for the music, but it helped distract him from whatever gloomy shit he was dealing with. He took another sip and everything started to fade away from him—the blasting music, Harley’s mother’s screams to turn the volume, and the room around him.
Look, Ponyboy didn’t know how he got so drunk. He swore all he drank was Pepsi with some alcohol mixed in it, but he guessed that was the issue. But the next thing he knew was… well, nothing. Ponyboy couldn’t remember much of that night. It was like his memories were imprinted on a film gauge, but the second half of that night had been destroyed and unrecoverable. He figured that this was what blackout drunk meant.
He woke up the next morning with a pounding headache and the desperate need for a bathroom trip. The morning light that shone through the blinds quickly became the bane of his existence as his eyes stung the moment he opened them, thus making his headache worse as a result. It was as if a sledgehammer was bashing into his temples. There was a terrible taste in his dry mouth. He swallowed thickly.
He was lying on Harley’s dirty floor next to a puddle of his own stinky vomit. Some dirty clothes were draped over his body to act as a blanket. In contrast, Harley was sleeping soundly in his bed. Loud snores rang throughout the tiny bedroom. Ponyboy clicked his tongue, bitter that at least one person was sleeping so well. He squinted. Christ, someone needed to put a curtain over those blinds.
Ponyboy’s stomach flipped when he got up, mouth salivating. He covered his mouth with his hand and rushed out of the room to the bathroom. As soon as he got there, he hunched over the toilet and spewed whatever was left in his stomach. He was sort of glad that his bile didn’t taste like Pepsi. It would have ruined it for him.
He went over to rinse his mouth with water, bending over to splash his face as well. He wondered if there was any pain medication in the medicine cabinet. Knowing this family, there probably were several bottles stocked. He stood back up and reached out to look at what was behind the mirror and froze.
What the hell?
At first, he thought he was hallucinating. There must have been leftover drugs in his system but he couldn’t remember touching anything that would cause him to see things. But, then again, he couldn’t remember anything after a certain point. Something definitely happened between Point A and Point B because his hair was no longer light brown, slightly red. It was blond.
His hands instantly shot up to his head. No. No. No! What happened to his hair?!
Panic rose to his chest as he tugged at it, praying that it was a wig all along, but it wasn’t. At some point, while drunk, he had gotten it bleached. Ponyboy wanted to cry.
Not his hair, he whined to himself. It was his pride. It was what labeled him as a greaser. He didn’t even look like himself anymore. He wrinkled his nose as he attempted to steady his breathing and get over the initial shell shock of the situation.
Okay, it wasn’t bad, he tried to convince himself. He needed to calm down and think a bit. Harley… Oh, shoot, Harley! He must have known more about what happened.
Without another second wasted, he rushed back into Harley’s room. His friend was still on the bed, dead asleep. Ponyboy pounced on it, slamming his hands on his shoulders and shaking him.
“Harley!” Ponyboy hissed. When Harley didn’t stir, he slapped him across the face with moderate strength. “Wake up, man!”
“Ow!” Harley cursed, shooting up. “What the fuck? Did you just slap me?”
“Never mind that! My hair!”
Harley blinked heavily. “What about it?”
Ponyboy wanted to scream. How could he not see the haystack on his head? “It’s blond.”
“Yeah, I know it is. I bleached it.”
So, he was the culprit! He growled, “Why the hell would you bleach it?”
“Oh, I don’t know why,” Harley answered, obviously lying.
“That’s not a good reason!”
“Why are you so mad? You’re the one who was okay with it. We thought it would look cool and did it.”
That threw Ponyboy through a loop. He didn’t remember giving consent for it at all, but if he did, all he could do was blame himself. He was the one who got drunk. He let go of Harley and slumped onto the floor. Anger sizzled out and was replaced by hopelessness and devastation. It took him forever to get his hair to look the way it did before. It was tuff and now he looked like some pansy. People were going to make fun of him.
“What’s wrong now?” Harley asked, crossing his legs.
“It looks silly,” Ponyboy whined. He pulled at his hair again.
Harley rolled his eyes. “Jesus. No, it doesn’t. It looks fine, man.”
Just fine? Ponyboy slumped his shoulders. Seeing this, Harley quickly added, “It looks good. Very tuff.”
It sounded sarcastic, but the words perked him up some. He needed to hear that. “Does it really?”
“Yes, Rapunzel. It suits you. Have you looked at yourself properly?”
Not since he left the bathroom. There was a mirror in the room which Ponyboy looked at. It wasn’t terrible. Now that he wasn’t freaking out, he could appreciate the work. It wasn’t sloppily done at all. Harley did a fantastic job at bleaching his hair, in fact. He combed through it so that it would look closer to how he usually wore it… and it was different, for sure, but he knew he wasn’t used to seeing it that way and that was what was getting to him.
The more he stared, the better it looked. Okay, fine. He could get behind it, but that still didn’t mean he was happy that it happened. Maybe in the future, he would like it more. It’ll look better once he greases it. And if he still didn’t like it after all of that, his hair was going to grow out anyway. Maybe he could convince Harley to dye it back to its original color.
Harley’s mom knocked on the door, telling them that they had to go to school. Both of them groaned.
“I don’t want to go,” Ponyboy said. He was still too hungover and he didn’t feel ready to show off his new hair.
“Then let’s skip,” Harley suggested. That sounded like a fantastic idea and he wished he could do it. However, the gang would tell his brothers if they couldn’t find him after his outburst at the house. He banged his head against his knee.
“I don’t think I can today.”
“Do what you want. I think our history teacher is going to make Goofy impressions throughout the class though.”
Ponyboy made a face. “No way.”
“See for yourself. I think I’m going to spend my day trying to convince people to bungee jump with a normal rope.”
Ponyboy groaned and flipped his hood up. It helped with light filtration. He didn’t comment about how that could kill someone. It sounded like a lot more fun than sitting through a lecture though. “Do you have anything I can take that would help with this headache?”
Ponyboy’s headache didn’t go away when he arrived at school. He slipped into his desk, hoodie still on his head. He groaned and rested his forehead in his arms. The students were so loud, words like mini jackhammers. He wasn’t a minute into the class and he was already regretting his decision to go to school. The pain medicine was helping, but it wasn’t enough.
“Good morning, everyone,” the teacher greeted, looking around the room. Their eyes fell onto Ponyboy. “Mr. Curtis, hood off and eye up front, please.”
Damn it.
With a lot of attitude for the small movement, Ponyboy pulled the hood off. The class stared at him. Some people (his bullies and other assholes) laughed but most people stayed silent. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat.
“Oh, new hair color?” the teacher casually asked. Ponyboy was grateful for that.
“I wanted to try something new,” he said, shrugging.
“Well, it looks nice.”
The topic soon changed to the lesson plan, the hair already forgotten. He guessed that it wasn’t a big deal after all if that was the reaction he got. Maybe Harley was right. And maybe he would be able to get through this day despite how terrible he felt.
As the lecture went on, however, Ponyboy wanted to eat those words. Just as Harley said, the teacher started to make a terrible attempt at a Goofy impression. It sounded more like if a clown was in that one drunken scene in the Dumbo movie. He didn’t see how that was relevant to what they were learning about, but perhaps the teacher thought it would make them remember the material better. He wondered how Harley knew this was going to happen since they were in the same class.
The teacher did the Goofy laugh and Ponyboy was ready to throw in the towel. Yep, he couldn’t do this. He raised his hand and requested to go to the restroom. The teacher gave him an annoyed expression and made a sly comment about how he should have gone before the class started, but his request was granted anyway. In the end, he didn’t go to the bathroom. Ponyboy left the school altogether. Luckily, he didn’t have his backpack on him or it would have looked suspicious.
He didn’t know where he should go, but he remembered that Harley said he wanted to convince people to jump off bridges with a regular rope. He didn’t know if he went through with it nor did he know what bridge though. Skipping school alone was a lot less fun. He needed to find something else to do.
Ponyboy walked down the road, not paying attention to where he was going. The cool air helped numb his pain. He turned around a corner and instantly regretted not paying attention because he walked straight into none other than Dallas Winston.